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If OP's argument is that we could have bought time had we taken action, then Svante Arrhenius was publishing results about this in the late 1800s as the industr
by DoingIsLearning 3y ago
If OP's argument is that we could have bought time had we taken action, then Svante Arrhenius was publishing results about this in the late 1800s as the industrial revolution CO2 was in full swing.
Lack of information was never the problem. Money and Liability are the only two things that the people that can make a change will speak.
Start suing start and start lobbying. It is pretty much the only thing left bar from going full eco terrorist (which I believe is entirely likely in our current timeline).
- peepeepoopoo26 3y ago[flagged]
- esalman 3y ago:facepalm: The folks warning us about climate change are literally trying save both human life and the planet.
- peepeepoopoo26 3y agoAre you sure? A lot of persuasive voices have been popping up lately that border on advocating for human culling. See also: the degrowth/antinatalist/ecoterrorist crowd.
- rickdeckard 3y agoThen I'd suggest not to be persuaded by such voices. Also, it's generally reasonable to not measure every topic based on the most fringe-opinion of it.
- jiggawatts 3y agoReducing corporate profits to save our lives is apparently "terrorism" now. Didn't you get the memo?
- LordShredda 3y agoChanged over hundreds of thousands of years, not within 100 years
- rickdeckard 3y agoEverything of a certain scale had an impact on the planet's biosphere, some events led to extinction of entire species. The topic here is an ongoing "activity" of humanity which has set the course to make large areas of this planet uninhabitable. We could just continue our path and wait for this to happen or take action in our own interest as a species. > To be opposed to any changes to the planet whatsoever is to be directly opposed to human life. I'd say that sentence can be used to normalize any large-scale destructive behavior, if you replace "the planet" with "society" it could even be applied to destructive actions against humanity itself...
- staplers 3y agoStart suing You mean the "got caught" tax? Still cheaper. The entire system (from monetary policy to shareholder value) is incentivized to extract all resources and grow capital until everything is dust. Even our "natural parks" are sold to corporations for resource extraction. There is no going back. Only certain catastrophe or a radically alternative system is implemented.
- mavhc 3y agoTax everything the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it causes, then use that money to clean up the pollution. Magically cheaper ways to clean up pollution, and ways to cause less pollution will be then created
- jobigoud 3y ago> Tax everything the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it causes This would be very fair but note that it instantly kills anything that produces nuclear waste, as you must factor in the cost of maintaining that waste for 100 000 years or more.
- pyrale 3y agoIt would instantly kill anything full stop depending on what you call pollution. There is no such thing as a fully cyclic industrial production system. Nuclear is only special in that it's one of the very few industries for which we are careful to track its impact. If we started using the same standard for everything we do, everything would disappear overnight, starting with agriculture.
- mavhc 3y agoIf so then there's no solution except most people dying, which is why we should at least try something better
- pyrale 3y ago> Magically cheaper ways to clean up pollution, and ways to cause less pollution will be then created Sure. Also while we're at it, we can tax companies for not using perpetual motion in their industrial processes, and, magically, perpetual motion machines will be invented.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vasco 3y agoYou can surely justify doing whatever you want regardless of how bad it is if your justification is that you're saving all humanity. Even killing the people you want to save. Eco terrorism is just like any other form terrorism. Usually the religious terrorists also think they are completely in the right and commanded by God. Nobody becomes a terrorist thinking they are wrong in their beliefs. Vote for what you want, form a new party, join a company working on climate change, stop having kids and stop buying things. Those are all things that will help without forcing your views on others through force, and if the majority agrees we'll deal with it. Advocating for terrorism is a new one.
- rickdeckard 3y agoAgree. But majority agreement is not a measurement for reasonable action. When seatbelt laws were introduced, the science was clear, the majority of the public was against it. You could have decided to voluntary wear a seatbelt, and still put no dent in the stats of lethal car-accidents...
- misja111 3y agoThis is not a good comparison. The people not wearing seatbelts didn't affect the lives of others, they only (voluntarily) risked their own. ECO terrorism is trying to force others to live how they want them to live. Regardless how convincing your belief, I don't think this is ever a good strategy.
- noobermin 3y agoI don't understand. How does not wearing seatblets being a risky choice for one's self strengthen your point? It was indeed exactly forcing people to live a different way by compelling them by law to use a specific implement while driving or riding in a car.
- A_non_e-moose 3y agoSeatbelts made cars more expensive for people who didn't want them and a person without a seatbelt is much more likely to traumatize someone in an accident with their easier and more gruesome death. Few decisions are made in a vacuum with no impact to others.
- misja111 3y agoSvante Arrhenius considered the greenhouse effect to be a blessing, because arctic regions would become fertile and a possible new ice age could be averted.
- melagonster 3y agoeven this is true, there are vast amount of people will killed by typhoon, drought, storm and other disaster. in another way, it is posible that global warming can kill all creature on earth bfore polar become fertile.
- misja111 3y agoI'm not saying he was right, I'm just stating what he was writing about the greenhouse effect at the time; so unlike what OP suggested, he wasn't warning people about it, quite the opposite, he was celebrating it.
- melagonster 3y agothank you, I understand you displays his opinion, not yours. I wanted to make sure no people trust him here. In another way, there are opinions which similar to his opinion are a little racism. people who probably killed by typhoon usually are not western/white county.
- hackerlight 3y agoWhat about people that live in the tropics? What are they to do? Migration laws are strict all throughout the Global North.
- misja111 3y agoIf you're trying to argue with Svante Arrhenius you're too late, he passed away a long time ago. I'm just stating his opinion in reaction to OP, I don't agree with it.
- moffkalast 3y ago
- raverbashing 3y agoLet me tell, the biggest (de facto) "ecological saboteurs" are the "ecologists" who pushed against nuclear power
- rex_lupi 3y agoI get your point, but meaning of the word "eco-terrorist" is kind of the opposite
- kawogi 3y agoThen, I'm one of them. I own a PV covering 120 % of my yearly power consumption. I obtain the remaining (night-time) energy from a 100 % renewable provider (no nuclear). I rarely use my car, which only consumes 5 l / 100 km. Most is done via bike. I work from home, use a Fairphone and teach my kids to produce less waste and try to repair everything that breaks. I'd rather invest my money into developing seasonal power storage than building another nuclear plant. France is already overheating their rivers and Germany has to fill the gap, whenever they have to shut down too many their plants. In Germany we still have to figure out how to get rid of the existing nuclear waste (and fix the previously failed attempts). Uranium has to be imported from other countries. Fukushima and Chernobyl are still not cleaned up. Even regular plants take decades to be decommissioned. We still cannot eat Mushrooms and Boar from Bavarian forests due to Chernobyl. I know that being anti-nuclear is an unpopular opinion on HN, but that's how I think about that.
- saiya-jin 3y agoTry scaling your solution to 8 billions of people... oh you can't. You can't even scale it to Europe level, nor Germany level. Welcome to reality where imperfect solutions are required. Nuclear is much better than coal, which is what Germany runs on now, 'thank you' for polluting half of the world with mildly radioactive waste from burning coal and killing way more people than all nuclear disasters combined. Its unpopular opinion since its stupid, very narrow, ignore-bigger-picture approach. We can do better than that. Not surprised its coming from Germany, since greens there brainwashed once a great nation into some seriously stupid long term moves (from economical and environmental view) that hurt and will hurt whole Europe for next few decades. I'd say Germany economy is still strong despite government it had/has, not thanks to it.
- cm2187 3y ago...and in the 70s they were told the exact opposite [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
- gameoverhumans 3y agoYour own link points out that "... less than 10% were inclined towards future cooling, while most papers predicted future warming." Even if that were not to be the case, I'm still not sure why it would be relevant in any kind of good-faith discussion/debate about our rapidly changing global climate. 1970-1980 was a ten year period, forty years ago.
- ben_w 3y ago> Some press reports in the 1970s speculated about continued cooling; these did not accurately reflect the scientific literature of the time, which was generally more concerned with warming from an enhanced greenhouse effect And the term "Gell-Mann amnesia effect" wouldn't be coined for another few decades.
- psychoslave 3y agoI see the eco-terrorist tag more and more abused for anything. I mean, if some organization plan to terrorize population, for example with bombs killing random citizens, that's matching terrorism for sure. Otherwise that is raw propaganda.
- eyko 3y agoFear of death is not the only kind of terror.
- pyrale 3y agoYeah, we don't speak enough of the existential dread people have of seeing someone throw paint on a building.
- psychoslave 3y agoSure but fear created by biosphere collapsing all around, massive human migrations, desertification and miscellaneous climate catastrophes are not things that mere terrorist groups can plot. :)
- hkt 3y agoRe: eco terrorism, I strongly suspect this will happen too. Domestically in places like the UK where the penalties for peaceful protest are increasing dramatically, and internationally when people start realising their lives being destroyed by climate change is as a result of westerners refusing to make even basic choices to mitigate their impact on the world.
- Gud 3y agoWhy is legal action and eco terrorism the only two options? Better to work on solutions, like fusion power and battery technology for electric transport.
- Loic 3y agoI will not comment for eco-terrorism, but if you want to get the companies to change what they are doing you only have one solution: the power of the law. This is because taking care of your externalities as a company means instant added costs. You save money only on the long run as you make your production processes more efficient, you reduce waste, improve your supply chain, etc. So, if you want a change now, you have only the law to force the company because on the short term it will be bad for the profits. Changing the laws take time, finding a point where you hook into and take a legal action is going faster and can have rippling effects. You can see such action in Montana. And of course in parallel you need to develop the technologies, reduce consumption, reuse, etc.
- moffkalast 3y ago> fusion power and battery technology for electric transport You mean praying for a miracle to save us instead of doing what's needed? Both of those can just as easily turn out to be unfeasible.
- Gud 3y agoNo, I mean developing the technology required to sustain a population nearing 10 billion people. What makes you think the good people working at Commonwealth Fusions Systems are “praying for a miracle”? They are putting in the effort, not praying.
- eesmith 3y agoThe prayer is that such systems will be working soon enough, and deployed soon enough, that it will be an effective way to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to Wikipedia, Commonwealth Fusions Systems doesn't expect a working pilot plant for at least another 10 years. Commercial deployment will take even longer. But we need such reductions NOW. And that's assuming it works, and not an overly optimistic expectation. I've been reading about plans for fusion power ever since I was a teenager in the 1980s. Also, the Wikipedia entry for CFS comments "as a result of sanctions against Russia, CFS faced significant supply chain problems". CFS cannot simply use effort to make all future supply chain problems disappear. They can only pray there isn't a COVID25 that makes 2020 movement restrictions seem a walk in the park.
- blooalien 3y ago> "Start suing start and start lobbying." This could actually have an effect (at least in the USA) now that those kids in Montana set a precedent with a favorable ruling in their case if enough people take the cue and file credible (non-frivolous) cases. It's certainly a preferable option over the whole "eco-terrorism" path which in the end will likely just escalate to literal all-out civil war.
- DoingIsLearning 3y ago> which in the end will likely just escalate to literal all-out civil war. Why though? Purely hypothetical as I would prefer to not end up on a list. But lets say hypothetically, if people started targetting Oil&Gas board members and lobbyists. Do you actually believe that there would be a significant percentage of the population against it, to the point of precipitating us/them factions? Or would it just create fear and intimidation of key policy makers and light speed business plan transitions away from hydrocarbon economies? For clarity most of these companies already have plans in place they are just waiting it out because there is still another 30 to 40 years horizon of 'profitable' extraction.
- blooalien 3y ago> "Why though?" From what I've seen, humanity in general appears to be gravitating toward further and further political and ideological extremes, and corporations / governments / media appear all too happy to "profit" from encouraging those divisions and capitalizing on them in any way they can. To approve wars, tax expenditures / shelters, government spending, whatever all they do to gather more of everything for themselves. That combined with "eco-terrorism" feels like a dangerous path to me. One that could easily go way out of control entirely too quickly once started. Especially with all the other craziness that's goin' on in the world right now, with Russia "saber-rattling" their nukes, North Korea tryin' to get nukes goin', climate change, growing scarcity of certain super-important resources (water especially), etc. All seems like it's leading to pretty certain violence sooner or later, if humanity don't start lookin' for some better options real hard, real fast. > ... "as I would prefer to not end up on a list." Pretty sure we're all already "on a list" somewhere if Snowden's "revelations" taught us anything. "They" are watching at all times. ;) What you really don't want is to get flagged for a "closer look".