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I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict

I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict the necessary pain to control carbon, our governments will be consumed by populist anger. Only the Chinese system appears to have any hope of controlling people’s behavior that much without riots. And what a terrifying system! Even their control began to slip after a few years of zero Covid. We will just have to deal with the consequences while we try to innovative our way out of this mess. It’s made me a AI accelerationist. Of the two civilizational dooms, I’ll take my chances with the computers.

maxrecursion 3y ago
Our governments are so dysfunctional and corrupt our only hope is that AI will actually be benevolent and can help guide us and solve problems. Because, as the comic, and thousands of other examples show, our governments aren't actually capable of leading and solving problems, even when the problems are blatant. Same when the solution is easy, but it will cause the wealthy to lose money, see US health care and taxation systems.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  > hope is that AI will actually be benevolent and can help guide us I think that a lack of biochemistry will probably quickly lead to the conclusion that it’s not worth it.
- lm28469 3y ago
  We should stop acting like AGI is just a matter of time and that it'll save all our problems, this is borderline a cult at this point.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Devasta 3y ago
I feel the same. The entire planet enacted a total reorganization of society in a matter of weeks! Oil is worthless if we aren't all consuming, governments can give generous payments to those who need it without nonsense about how we will pay for it, it was a frightening but honestly optimistic time, we had problems but they can be solved, its only a question of willpower. Now we can see that vast quantities of people in the first world think not being able to go to Arbys is a human rights violation, and worse still the friendless losers who were pining to back into the office. If sitting indoors is too much of a sacrifice for people, what happens when they need to make real changes to their lifestyles?
- ryandrake 3y ago
  > I feel the same. The entire planet enacted a total reorganization of society in a matter of weeks! I'm not sure what this refers to but it's not COVID response. At least where I live (the USA), outside of the major metro areas, nothing was enforced except school closures. The Stay At Home "mandates" (more like suggestions) and business "closures" were all pretty much unenforced and widely ignored. Even if our government, by some miracle, manages to enact effective climate rules and legislation, it will be ignored if not enforced. You can't just write a law or set a mandate and then say "Well, our job is done!"
drexlspivey 3y ago
You can’t just shut down the fossil fuel industry before you have alternative green energy infrastructure in place, this is a multi decade project. Otherwise the price of oil shoots up and you get inflation which affects most people’s ability to get by. “Populist anger” might be justified if people have a hard time paying their bills.
- egeozcan 3y ago
  > “Populist anger” might be justified if people have a hard time paying their bills I do agree that finding alternatives quickly is crucial. However, when all is said and done, our financial concerns and even our personal well-being don't matter as much in the grand scheme of things.
  - gruez 3y ago
    >However, when all is said and done, our financial concerns and even our personal well-being don't matter as much in the grand scheme of things. That might be true, but most people care very much about their own "financial concerns" and "well-being".
- Shacklz 3y ago
  > “Populist anger” might be justified if people have a hard time paying their bills. If the costs of current living standard wasn't externalized to future generations (to the detriment of the environment), they couldn't afford those bills to begin with. Unfortunately, it's very hard to reduce people's living standards once they got used to it. So yes, the end result is what you're saying - however, I think it's a very important nuance. It was always a card house; we just chose to ignore the issue and continued to build on top of it.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    "externalized to future generations" Exactly. Too few people understand economics, that current costs are being brought down by offsetting future costs. The same with any pollution in any industry. If the industry is allowed to follow bad practices, and cause pollution but not deal with it, then they are not bearing the brunt of the full costs of generating that pollution. Someone has to clean it all up eventually, typically the government, then people complain about taxes. You can complain about taxes, but you just voted for someone to cut regulations on industry which then causes the pollution which needs tax dollars to clean it up. (I know CO2 is not a 'pollutant' technically, it is just another example of the 'cost' to the environment is not being allocated correctly to the producer. I feel need to be correct since even using the word 'pollutant' is a right wing argument point on why climate change advocates don't know what they are talking about.).
konschubert 3y ago
You are right that degrowth is not a politically viable path to saving the climate. Additionally, it is not effective unless you want to return to pre-industrial society. What works is: Changing the source of the energy we consume. Solar is the cheapest source of energy now. Wind is good in some areas. Nuclear can be useful too. The amazing thing is that solar is so cheap now, there is basically no way stopping it. We may still want to burn gas and oil in the off-hours, but it will be expensive and consumption will be much lower than today.
- beretguy 3y ago
  > Nuclear can be useful too. I wouldn’t call it just useful. As far as I understand it’s the best realistic shot we’ve got.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    Why not solar, wind and storage? To decarbonise transport storage needs to massively increase. There are 30 million cars in the UK, that alone is 3TWh of storage, which isn't far off a day's total energy use. If we can make 3TWh then it's reasonable that we can make 2 or 3 times that much. It won't be financially viable to operate a nuclear plant for the few days a year that the wind and solar and storage and imports can't cover the use, better to simply increase storage and production a bit more.
    - tonyarkles 3y ago
      Last time I worked the numbers on nuclear vs storage, I came up with… for the same amount of money and for the same amount of generation capacity, battery storage could provide about 4 hours of electricity before needing to recharge while nuclear could provide about 24 months without needing to shut down for a few days for a fuel change. Pumped hydro storage was better, if you have the water resources and elevation change nearby. Lots of places don’t.
      - fifilura 3y ago
chimprich 3y ago
> We will just have to deal with the consequences while we try to innovative our way out of this mess. We've already innovated our way out of this mess. We have all the technology available now to decarbonise the economy (well, mostly; we're still a bit limited in a few areas; but we can get a lot of the way there). Covid is a good example. In most of the liberal democracies people accepted the restrictions their governments argued were necessary to combat Covid. I think these restrictions were significantly greater than what is needed from individuals to combat climate change.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  "We have all the technology available now to decarbonise the economy (well, mostly; we're still a bit limited in a few areas; but we can get a lot of the way there)." Then why can't we? The answer is that it would take some Government mandates, and we are back to the original post, that if the Government mandates anything, it will hurt some sector, and then there is popular uprising. At least in US, 50% of country is ready to go to war anytime someone sneezes and merely forgets to say 'bless you'. How do you fight climate change, even if technology is available, if 50% of the country literally believes in a real physical hell (not just a concept), and that the other side are demons here to steal the blood of their children. How does the committee organize rolling out a technology when half is praying and citing versus and that is the starting point for any technology roll out plan.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I think your take is giving much too much credit for "governments wanting to do the right thing" if it weren't only for those pesky populists. Take your China example. The issue wasn't just that the government wanted to control Covid and the people pushed back. The issue was that their zero-Covid policy was extremely stupid. I kept thinking "Umm, what do they think is going to happen when they eventually open back up - of course Covid is going to ravage through the populace." And that's exactly what happened. The policy did extremely little to actually save lives in the end compared to much less restrictive policies elsewhere. So I'm actually less pessimistic about the case for the energy transition. I do think it's particularly unfortunate that our tribal politics has led to people lining up behind "drill baby drill" even if there is no economic basis to do so. But I do think since we know the transition is possible without draconian cutbacks in standard of living that governments can help craft effective incentives to make the change more quickly.
- trogdor 3y ago
  >Take your China example. The issue wasn't just that the government wanted to control Covid and the people pushed back. The issue was that their zero-Covid policy was extremely stupid. I kept thinking "Umm, what do they think is going to happen when they eventually open back up - of course Covid is going to ravage through the populace." And that's exactly what happened. The policy did extremely little to actually save lives in the end compared to much less restrictive policies elsewhere. According to data published by John’s Hopkins, China’s overall number of Covid deaths per 100,000 population was 7.6, compared to 341 in the United States. Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
manx 3y ago
How would AI be beneficial in your opinion?
- Ancapistani 3y ago
  I'm pretty confident AI will be at least as helpful here as a blockchain will be.
snowpid 3y ago
Can elaborate which governments do you have in mind? The EU reduced CO2 Emissions in the last years https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20240214-1 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...
foxyv 3y ago
There are ways to reduce carbon emissions drastically without incurring populist anger. It's not so much the population that would be angry from these measures as the corporate interests that supply carbon fuels and products that use them.
tim333 3y ago
I've tended not to worry about the warming much partly on the basis that AI/acc and similar tech will fix it all. Reasoning: Intelligent robots and AI will be able to build all sort of stuff and even without that solar + wind nuclear will probably overtake fossil fuel shortly. We can have the bots cover the Sahara with solar and run carbon capture. Also fusion may work although I'm not so sure about that one.

maxrecursion 3y ago

Our governments are so dysfunctional and corrupt our only hope is that AI will actually be benevolent and can help guide us and solve problems. Because, as the comic, and thousands of other examples show, our governments aren't actually capable of leading and solving problems, even when the problems are blatant. Same when the solution is easy, but it will cause the wealthy to lose money, see US health care and taxation systems.

Aeolun 3y ago
> hope is that AI will actually be benevolent and can help guide us I think that a lack of biochemistry will probably quickly lead to the conclusion that it’s not worth it.
lm28469 3y ago
We should stop acting like AGI is just a matter of time and that it'll save all our problems, this is borderline a cult at this point.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Devasta 3y ago

I feel the same. The entire planet enacted a total reorganization of society in a matter of weeks! Oil is worthless if we aren't all consuming, governments can give generous payments to those who need it without nonsense about how we will pay for it, it was a frightening but honestly optimistic time, we had problems but they can be solved, its only a question of willpower. Now we can see that vast quantities of people in the first world think not being able to go to Arbys is a human rights violation, and worse still the friendless losers who were pining to back into the office. If sitting indoors is too much of a sacrifice for people, what happens when they need to make real changes to their lifestyles?

ryandrake 3y ago
> I feel the same. The entire planet enacted a total reorganization of society in a matter of weeks! I'm not sure what this refers to but it's not COVID response. At least where I live (the USA), outside of the major metro areas, nothing was enforced except school closures. The Stay At Home "mandates" (more like suggestions) and business "closures" were all pretty much unenforced and widely ignored. Even if our government, by some miracle, manages to enact effective climate rules and legislation, it will be ignored if not enforced. You can't just write a law or set a mandate and then say "Well, our job is done!"

drexlspivey 3y ago

You can’t just shut down the fossil fuel industry before you have alternative green energy infrastructure in place, this is a multi decade project. Otherwise the price of oil shoots up and you get inflation which affects most people’s ability to get by. “Populist anger” might be justified if people have a hard time paying their bills.

egeozcan 3y ago
> “Populist anger” might be justified if people have a hard time paying their bills I do agree that finding alternatives quickly is crucial. However, when all is said and done, our financial concerns and even our personal well-being don't matter as much in the grand scheme of things.
- gruez 3y ago
  >However, when all is said and done, our financial concerns and even our personal well-being don't matter as much in the grand scheme of things. That might be true, but most people care very much about their own "financial concerns" and "well-being".
Shacklz 3y ago
> “Populist anger” might be justified if people have a hard time paying their bills. If the costs of current living standard wasn't externalized to future generations (to the detriment of the environment), they couldn't afford those bills to begin with. Unfortunately, it's very hard to reduce people's living standards once they got used to it. So yes, the end result is what you're saying - however, I think it's a very important nuance. It was always a card house; we just chose to ignore the issue and continued to build on top of it.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  "externalized to future generations" Exactly. Too few people understand economics, that current costs are being brought down by offsetting future costs. The same with any pollution in any industry. If the industry is allowed to follow bad practices, and cause pollution but not deal with it, then they are not bearing the brunt of the full costs of generating that pollution. Someone has to clean it all up eventually, typically the government, then people complain about taxes. You can complain about taxes, but you just voted for someone to cut regulations on industry which then causes the pollution which needs tax dollars to clean it up. (I know CO2 is not a 'pollutant' technically, it is just another example of the 'cost' to the environment is not being allocated correctly to the producer. I feel need to be correct since even using the word 'pollutant' is a right wing argument point on why climate change advocates don't know what they are talking about.).

konschubert 3y ago

You are right that degrowth is not a politically viable path to saving the climate. Additionally, it is not effective unless you want to return to pre-industrial society. What works is: Changing the source of the energy we consume. Solar is the cheapest source of energy now. Wind is good in some areas. Nuclear can be useful too. The amazing thing is that solar is so cheap now, there is basically no way stopping it. We may still want to burn gas and oil in the off-hours, but it will be expensive and consumption will be much lower than today.

beretguy 3y ago
> Nuclear can be useful too. I wouldn’t call it just useful. As far as I understand it’s the best realistic shot we’ve got.
- ta1243 3y ago
  Why not solar, wind and storage? To decarbonise transport storage needs to massively increase. There are 30 million cars in the UK, that alone is 3TWh of storage, which isn't far off a day's total energy use. If we can make 3TWh then it's reasonable that we can make 2 or 3 times that much. It won't be financially viable to operate a nuclear plant for the few days a year that the wind and solar and storage and imports can't cover the use, better to simply increase storage and production a bit more.
  - tonyarkles 3y ago
    Last time I worked the numbers on nuclear vs storage, I came up with… for the same amount of money and for the same amount of generation capacity, battery storage could provide about 4 hours of electricity before needing to recharge while nuclear could provide about 24 months without needing to shut down for a few days for a fuel change. Pumped hydro storage was better, if you have the water resources and elevation change nearby. Lots of places don’t.
    - fifilura 3y ago

chimprich 3y ago

> We will just have to deal with the consequences while we try to innovative our way out of this mess. We've already innovated our way out of this mess. We have all the technology available now to decarbonise the economy (well, mostly; we're still a bit limited in a few areas; but we can get a lot of the way there). Covid is a good example. In most of the liberal democracies people accepted the restrictions their governments argued were necessary to combat Covid. I think these restrictions were significantly greater than what is needed from individuals to combat climate change.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
"We have all the technology available now to decarbonise the economy (well, mostly; we're still a bit limited in a few areas; but we can get a lot of the way there)." Then why can't we? The answer is that it would take some Government mandates, and we are back to the original post, that if the Government mandates anything, it will hurt some sector, and then there is popular uprising. At least in US, 50% of country is ready to go to war anytime someone sneezes and merely forgets to say 'bless you'. How do you fight climate change, even if technology is available, if 50% of the country literally believes in a real physical hell (not just a concept), and that the other side are demons here to steal the blood of their children. How does the committee organize rolling out a technology when half is praying and citing versus and that is the starting point for any technology roll out plan.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I think your take is giving much too much credit for "governments wanting to do the right thing" if it weren't only for those pesky populists. Take your China example. The issue wasn't just that the government wanted to control Covid and the people pushed back. The issue was that their zero-Covid policy was extremely stupid. I kept thinking "Umm, what do they think is going to happen when they eventually open back up - of course Covid is going to ravage through the populace." And that's exactly what happened. The policy did extremely little to actually save lives in the end compared to much less restrictive policies elsewhere. So I'm actually less pessimistic about the case for the energy transition. I do think it's particularly unfortunate that our tribal politics has led to people lining up behind "drill baby drill" even if there is no economic basis to do so. But I do think since we know the transition is possible without draconian cutbacks in standard of living that governments can help craft effective incentives to make the change more quickly.

trogdor 3y ago
>Take your China example. The issue wasn't just that the government wanted to control Covid and the people pushed back. The issue was that their zero-Covid policy was extremely stupid. I kept thinking "Umm, what do they think is going to happen when they eventually open back up - of course Covid is going to ravage through the populace." And that's exactly what happened. The policy did extremely little to actually save lives in the end compared to much less restrictive policies elsewhere. According to data published by John’s Hopkins, China’s overall number of Covid deaths per 100,000 population was 7.6, compared to 341 in the United States. Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

manx 3y ago

How would AI be beneficial in your opinion?

Ancapistani 3y ago
I'm pretty confident AI will be at least as helpful here as a blockchain will be.

snowpid 3y ago

Can elaborate which governments do you have in mind? The EU reduced CO2 Emissions in the last years https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20240214-1 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...

foxyv 3y ago

There are ways to reduce carbon emissions drastically without incurring populist anger. It's not so much the population that would be angry from these measures as the corporate interests that supply carbon fuels and products that use them.

tim333 3y ago

I've tended not to worry about the warming much partly on the basis that AI/acc and similar tech will fix it all. Reasoning: Intelligent robots and AI will be able to build all sort of stuff and even without that solar + wind nuclear will probably overtake fossil fuel shortly. We can have the bots cover the Sahara with solar and run carbon capture. Also fusion may work although I'm not so sure about that one.