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That's a very rich world perspective. Fossil fuels have - at the same time as the pollution - caused a huge improvement of living standards. A substantial part

That's a very rich world perspective. Fossil fuels have - at the same time as the pollution - caused a huge improvement of living standards. A substantial part of the human population tripling in size comes from that, and huge number of people would die if fossil fuels magically disappeared.

te_chris 3y ago
Living standards increases right the way to extinction. Ultimate tragedy of the commons.
drekk 3y ago
The richest 1% is responsible for 49% of lifestyle emissions. The poorest 50% are responsible for just 10% of emissions. It's really disingenuous to act like most of our CO2 emissions are being spent lifting people out of poverty rather than on luxuries like meat consumption or fast fashion. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001391651771068 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001391651771068...
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > "The richest 1% is responsible for 49% of lifestyle emissions. [...] luxuries like meat consumption or fast fashion" How many megatons of meat do you think Musk eats a month? Does Bezos put a billion burgers into his belly? The vast majority of meat is consumed by people in that bottom 99%. For that matter, how many fast-fashion trendy patterned stockings do you think these men wear? It's really disingenuous to act like you're against luxuries for the 1% and then use meat and cheap clothing as your examples of great evils to be eliminated. Who would be sacrificing if large scale production of these cheap goods were banned? Not the 1%. What you are proposing is not to tear down the 1%, but to suppress the standard of living for the 99%. Maybe you just chose bad examples by accident though, do you have any proposals that would actually limit emissions from the 1% instead of capping the quality of life for the other 99%?
  - oivey 3y ago
    He’s not taking about the richest 1% of Americans. Even if he was your examples are disingenuous. Musk and Bezos aren’t representative of even the richest 1% of Americans.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      I knew this was coming, all Americans are the global 1% right? Did I even say anything about America? Regardless... Get a napkin and sanity check yourself. 1% of 8 billion people is 80 million. There are 330 million people in America. If all of the global 1% are in America and not also in Europe and Asia, which is obvious bullshit, then only 24% of Americans are in that 1% and the remaining 76% are in the lower 99%. And do you really think only Americans eat meat and wear cheap clothing? Get real.
      - oivey 3y ago
        What are you even talking about? The person you replied to didn’t say Americans. Were you trying to use Bezos and Musk as representative of the top 1% of the worldwide population? That’s even worse.
        mcpackieh 3y ago
        I'm telling you that meat eating and fast fashion are not "global 1% issues". You are the one who brought up Americans, not me or the other guy. Meat eating isn't a 1% thing whether you're looking at the global 1% or the American 1%; meat is consumed by almost everybody in the lower 99% no matter which way you slice it.
      - dang 3y ago
        Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We end up having to ban accounts that keep doing it, and we've already had to warn you more than once: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37708114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37708114 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36792165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36792165 (July 2023) If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- gruez 3y ago
  Your link doesn't work. I'm getting "The requested article is not currently available on this site." Also the studies I've seen to this effect use a questionable form of attribution when it comes to the "1%". Specifically they include emissions from companies that they invest in.
ajuc 3y ago
In the limit almost all people die in both extremes (if we stop all fossil fuel use today and if we don't limit fossil fuel use at all). There is middleground that saves most of people. We're not doing that because we value our comfort now more than other people's lives later.
uoaei 3y ago
It's a rich world perspective to buy new cars every couple years, including electric cars which massively frontload the emissions borne of those cars, or to go home every night and stream 1080p video into your living room for hours on end while serving up gigs of photos and video to your phone through Instagram and TikTok. Datacenters are something like 20% of all energy consumption. In many parts of the world, even places you've heard of, people walk or bike everywhere they need to go and spend their free time sitting around chatting with neighbors. No one's arguing to delete fossil fuels, but it makes sense to minimize usage to freight and public transit.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > Datacenters are something like 20% of all energy consumption. Do you have a source for that? It didn't sound right and my quick Googling suggests that it's off by around a factor of 20 or more. (Some put datacenters as low as 1% of total electricity consumption, which is a subset of all energy consumption.)
  - uoaei 3y ago
    It was admittedly hearsay. My research says it's about 2% of energy use in the US and 1% of electricity use worldwide with remarkable constancy in electricity demands due to storage and computing efficiency gains. Thanks for the reality check.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> Fossil fuels have - at the same time as the pollution - caused a huge improvement of living standards. And before that we used Whale oil, which we got through a global slaughter of whales and we nearly drove them to extinction. Then it was time to move on.
- gruez 3y ago
  There's a huge difference between migrating off something because there's something objectively better (oil is cleaner and cheaper compared to whale oil), and migrating off something for environmental reasons. The former doesn't require any sacrifices and will happen voluntarily. The same can't be said for the latter.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    what do you mean by oil is cleaner? Whale oil is food, while petrochemicals are a poison

te_chris 3y ago

Living standards increases right the way to extinction. Ultimate tragedy of the commons.

drekk 3y ago

The richest 1% is responsible for 49% of lifestyle emissions. The poorest 50% are responsible for just 10% of emissions. It's really disingenuous to act like most of our CO2 emissions are being spent lifting people out of poverty rather than on luxuries like meat consumption or fast fashion. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001391651771068 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001391651771068...

mcpackieh 3y ago
> "The richest 1% is responsible for 49% of lifestyle emissions. [...] luxuries like meat consumption or fast fashion" How many megatons of meat do you think Musk eats a month? Does Bezos put a billion burgers into his belly? The vast majority of meat is consumed by people in that bottom 99%. For that matter, how many fast-fashion trendy patterned stockings do you think these men wear? It's really disingenuous to act like you're against luxuries for the 1% and then use meat and cheap clothing as your examples of great evils to be eliminated. Who would be sacrificing if large scale production of these cheap goods were banned? Not the 1%. What you are proposing is not to tear down the 1%, but to suppress the standard of living for the 99%. Maybe you just chose bad examples by accident though, do you have any proposals that would actually limit emissions from the 1% instead of capping the quality of life for the other 99%?
- oivey 3y ago
  He’s not taking about the richest 1% of Americans. Even if he was your examples are disingenuous. Musk and Bezos aren’t representative of even the richest 1% of Americans.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    I knew this was coming, all Americans are the global 1% right? Did I even say anything about America? Regardless... Get a napkin and sanity check yourself. 1% of 8 billion people is 80 million. There are 330 million people in America. If all of the global 1% are in America and not also in Europe and Asia, which is obvious bullshit, then only 24% of Americans are in that 1% and the remaining 76% are in the lower 99%. And do you really think only Americans eat meat and wear cheap clothing? Get real.
    - oivey 3y ago
      What are you even talking about? The person you replied to didn’t say Americans. Were you trying to use Bezos and Musk as representative of the top 1% of the worldwide population? That’s even worse.
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        I'm telling you that meat eating and fast fashion are not "global 1% issues". You are the one who brought up Americans, not me or the other guy. Meat eating isn't a 1% thing whether you're looking at the global 1% or the American 1%; meat is consumed by almost everybody in the lower 99% no matter which way you slice it.
    - dang 3y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We end up having to ban accounts that keep doing it, and we've already had to warn you more than once: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37708114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37708114 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36792165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36792165 (July 2023) If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
gruez 3y ago
Your link doesn't work. I'm getting "The requested article is not currently available on this site." Also the studies I've seen to this effect use a questionable form of attribution when it comes to the "1%". Specifically they include emissions from companies that they invest in.

ajuc 3y ago

In the limit almost all people die in both extremes (if we stop all fossil fuel use today and if we don't limit fossil fuel use at all). There is middleground that saves most of people. We're not doing that because we value our comfort now more than other people's lives later.

uoaei 3y ago

It's a rich world perspective to buy new cars every couple years, including electric cars which massively frontload the emissions borne of those cars, or to go home every night and stream 1080p video into your living room for hours on end while serving up gigs of photos and video to your phone through Instagram and TikTok. Datacenters are something like 20% of all energy consumption. In many parts of the world, even places you've heard of, people walk or bike everywhere they need to go and spend their free time sitting around chatting with neighbors. No one's arguing to delete fossil fuels, but it makes sense to minimize usage to freight and public transit.

sokoloff 3y ago
> Datacenters are something like 20% of all energy consumption. Do you have a source for that? It didn't sound right and my quick Googling suggests that it's off by around a factor of 20 or more. (Some put datacenters as low as 1% of total electricity consumption, which is a subset of all energy consumption.)
- uoaei 3y ago
  It was admittedly hearsay. My research says it's about 2% of energy use in the US and 1% of electricity use worldwide with remarkable constancy in electricity demands due to storage and computing efficiency gains. Thanks for the reality check.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> Fossil fuels have - at the same time as the pollution - caused a huge improvement of living standards. And before that we used Whale oil, which we got through a global slaughter of whales and we nearly drove them to extinction. Then it was time to move on.

gruez 3y ago
There's a huge difference between migrating off something because there's something objectively better (oil is cleaner and cheaper compared to whale oil), and migrating off something for environmental reasons. The former doesn't require any sacrifices and will happen voluntarily. The same can't be said for the latter.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  what do you mean by oil is cleaner? Whale oil is food, while petrochemicals are a poison