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The single most important thing facing humanity right now is carbon in the atmosphere. There isn't even really a close second. I don't care about anything else

The single most important thing facing humanity right now is carbon in the atmosphere. There isn't even really a close second. I don't care about anything else Elon does if he successfully gets the right to care about the atmosphere (or care about owning libs via solar roofs and cyber trucks). He would go down as a martyr in my book.

Zigurd 2y ago
What about...? This is mid. I would have gone for the multi planetary million years civilization argument.
Jensson 2y ago
> The single most important thing facing humanity right now is carbon in the atmosphere Preventing nuclear war is still higher.
- ben_w 2y ago
  The effect of the carbon can cause such a war; the impact of such a war is likely to kill fewer than the carbon. I'm optimistic about the carbon these days. But I also think the Trump administration's position on Ukraine is going to result in a lot of countries developing their own independent nuclear capabilities, and that itself creates more risk of nuclear war. Perhaps it will be limited to Panama and America attacking each other. The world is looking at how worthless has been the signiatures on the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances and considering matters accordingly.
tzs 2y ago
> The single most important thing facing humanity right now is carbon in the atmosphere Then supporting Musk makes little sense. He's massively cutting funding for research into addressing climate change or enforcing regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He played a major role in electing a President who says climate change is a hoax, wants to kill renewable energy, wants to greatly increase fossil fuel use, and wants to get rid of any regulations that try to at least reduce emissions from that fossil fuel. He promotes conspiracy theories that explain away things that might have been due to or partially due to climate change, thus downplaying the need to address climate change. E.g., that the California wildfires in the Los Angeles area recently were due to a "globalist plot to wage economic warfare and deindustrialize the United States". Even if a few on the right buy a few EVs specifically because of Musk it won't outweigh the damage the things described above are doing to the effort to fight climate change.

Zigurd 2y ago

What about...? This is mid. I would have gone for the multi planetary million years civilization argument.

Jensson 2y ago

> The single most important thing facing humanity right now is carbon in the atmosphere Preventing nuclear war is still higher.

ben_w 2y ago
The effect of the carbon can cause such a war; the impact of such a war is likely to kill fewer than the carbon. I'm optimistic about the carbon these days. But I also think the Trump administration's position on Ukraine is going to result in a lot of countries developing their own independent nuclear capabilities, and that itself creates more risk of nuclear war. Perhaps it will be limited to Panama and America attacking each other. The world is looking at how worthless has been the signiatures on the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances and considering matters accordingly.

tzs 2y ago

> The single most important thing facing humanity right now is carbon in the atmosphere Then supporting Musk makes little sense. He's massively cutting funding for research into addressing climate change or enforcing regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He played a major role in electing a President who says climate change is a hoax, wants to kill renewable energy, wants to greatly increase fossil fuel use, and wants to get rid of any regulations that try to at least reduce emissions from that fossil fuel. He promotes conspiracy theories that explain away things that might have been due to or partially due to climate change, thus downplaying the need to address climate change. E.g., that the California wildfires in the Los Angeles area recently were due to a "globalist plot to wage economic warfare and deindustrialize the United States". Even if a few on the right buy a few EVs specifically because of Musk it won't outweigh the damage the things described above are doing to the effort to fight climate change.