
Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment? - patientplatypus
I guess this is sort of an open-ended question, but I just wanted to know if people on HN were hopeful about solving environmental change&#x2F;damage.<p>Last June is now officially the hottest June ever recorded. I guess you can add that to the laundry list of environmental issues we have. My worry is that its looking more and more like we need some sort of technological miracle (or everyone <i>everywhere</i> just stops buying <i>most stuff</i>). And tech seems to be a step function - sometimes you get big things like the Internet and the Engine which can spawn lots of smaller things. But those big things historically have seemed to come about by chance and happenstance as much as hard work. I sometimes worry that we might not solve the environmental crisis because we just won&#x27;t get lucky.<p>Does anyone else feel this way? Or are people here mostly hopeful that this thing will all work itself out (please say how!)? Anyone here working on that next big thing?<p>PS<p>If you don&#x27;t believe in a coming environmental catastrophe, that&#x27;s fine and I&#x27;d be happy to have your opinion on why you think so in this thread. But tin foil hatters and political partisans are boring and this isn&#x27;t really what this thread is about - please spend your time elsewhere. Thanks!
======
anm89
Unfortunately not at all.

A lot of this comes from extensive travel and spending time in the third and
second world. Many of the poorest billion simply do not realize that it is
against their interest not to, for example, dump chemicals and trash in water
they drink from and bathe in. Or just simply that littering is a problem. To
be clear I'm not faulting them, like everyone else they are mostly good people
and if they had better access to information I have no doubt they'd act
differently but there is a huge need to educate people that is not being met.

It's also just hard to imagine consumption of everyday objects at the global
scale.

But it's really hard to feel like recycling one more bottle is going to save
the world when you've seen dump trucks waiting in line to dump industrial
waste in rivers. But this sort of thing is likely happening every day,
repeatedly, in many places around the world.

I once drove through a section of highway in north western Peru that was just
an open air landfill on both sides, maybe 5 feet tall on average, continously
for an hour. It's just hard to imagine that stuff like this exists if you've
never been exposed to it.

And that doesn't even match things I've seen only in documentaries like
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dd_ZttK3PuM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dd_ZttK3PuM)

I believe that our problems are technically still fixable but that the
coordination necessary is, if not totally infeasible, far beyond our current
willpower to achieve.

The rich (and all but the poorest Americans are rich for this discussion) will
basically be fine maybe minus inconveniences for the near future.

But I think things are going to get drastically worse for many people over the
next 50 years.

~~~
Skunkleton
> Many of the poorest billion simply do not realize that it is against their
> interest not to, for example, dump chemicals and trash in water they drink
> from and bathe in. Or just simply that littering is a problem.

To be fair to the poorest billion, the richest billion also doesn't really get
this either.

~~~
netsharc
Indeed, how's the water in Michigan, and even "recycling" in the US means the
trash gets shipped to Asia/Africa to be burned.

It's "lack of information" or in this case being mislead by whoever promised
them their recycling is contributing to being green...

~~~
Skunkleton
I was so disappointed when I found out that this is how my recycling was being
handled. I had this image in my head of my plastic waste being recirculated
and reused that was so completely false.

As I understand it, recycling is just the long road to the landfill.

~~~
bubblewrap
I am currently reading a book on recycling that disputes that narrative
(Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter). The main argument is that shipping a
container of "recycling material" across the oceans costs real money (much
more than a local landfill), that somebody paid. That somebody surely isn't
paying for the junk just to burn it.

What is true is that recycling methods can sometimes be cruel. The example is
a guy recycling Christmas lights in China. At first all they did was burn the
plastic away to get to the copper. Later, when demand for plastic in China was
also rising, they invented methods to also recycle the plastic.

Burning the plastic away was of course very dirty. And in other places (like
Africa), dirty methods might be still more common.

------
lancewiggs
I'm terrified. For example: The ice cap melts are accelerating a lot faster
than modelled. The mechanisms are not yet perfectly understood.

The major flows of sea water (e.g. Gulf Stream) are at risk of changing
completely with the temperature changes, which means dramatic changes in
climate for Europe (colder), USA (warmer) (for example) are possible. Who
knows - and the answer is nobody really.

The acidification of the oceans as they absorb more and more CO2 is making it
harder for phytoplankton to grow. Take away this basic building block of the
ocean ecosystem and the ultimate outcome is dead sea, with no ability to
generate oxygen, and toxic gases emitted. That will change our atmosphere to
be deadly.

These and so many others are not just exponential trends, but have unknown
knowns (e.g. methane released from Arctic) and unknown unknowns that will
magnify the impact. As people involved in high growth companies and the
internet we understand exponential growth - but the politicians and even
scientists are reluctant to understand and embrace the consequences.

Meanwhile we are still increasing, not decreasing CO2e emissions. Emissions
need to decrease sharply now, to zero, for us to have a chance, and even then
it's hard.

There is no political will. We are too comfortable. And then it will be too
late.

We should ask ourselves the question - what can we do that's more important
than helping to reduce global emissions? And then do something. There are lots
of ways to help, and none of us can do it all, but we all need to do
something, and take leadership roles to make the changes.

~~~
agentultra
Agreed.

I think one of the ways we could survive this is to radically reform our
philosophies and politics. We need to make amends with and reform indigenous
rights. LBGTQ+ and women's rights. Abandon capitalism. Accept immigrant and
migration. Change our perception of what it means to be happy from endless
consumerism to self-actualization and social acceptance. We may have to scale
back our modern lives: abandon international tourism, next-day delivery,
unlimited energy and clean water, built-in obsolescence, disposable culture
etc. Re-design the technology too useful to abandon to be low-impact: as
little energy as possible, reliable and interchangeable components, peer-to-
peer networks and protocols, etc. Design our lives for near-zero emissions,
near-zero waste. Re-learn lost arts like ship building, wood working,
forestry, cloth making, foraging, water management, perma-culture, and what
it's like to live without plastic, etc.

I believe we have as much capacity for making the environment better as we do
for destroying it. It's a matter of will, perception, determination and luck.

I hope we all make it.

~~~
primroot
I can't upvote this enough. The way I see it, the Holocene is over, no more
neolithic civilization, unless we keep powering the machines with lots of
energy in order to cling to the past (which is a big part of the use we have
been giving to machines, and the reason why Modernity is a sham) as mythified
by our collective amnesia. We need to integrate our lives with the ecosystem
in order to create virtuous cycles of soil restoration, reconsider ways of
living that would make us more resilient in the face of modern technology
being unavailable, and start questioning the institutions of civilization such
as marriage and private property. When collapse arrives the latter too are
just unavoidable, the Earth will ruthlessly desecrate our myths and idols, so
it's better if we ourselves do it in a more orderly fashion, waking up from
the dreams for which we have abused technology as a sort of hallucinogenic
soporific.

~~~
futureastronaut
You won't find much neolithic civilization outside of North Sentinel Island
and the deep Amazon.

~~~
primroot
Thanks, I stand corrected. I abused the term. I meant to say civilization as a
society where humans depend primarily on agriculture for their survival, as
the appearance of such a society coincides with the start of the Holocene.

------
NeedMoreTea
Not at all.

Back when ozone depletion was being discussed, _so was CO2._ Thatcher was as
keen on CO2 action as CFC action. Back then I was very optimistic.

James Burke, a famous old UK TV science personality known for Tomorrow's
World, Connections, and The Day the Universe Changed, made a programme in 1989
called "After the Warming", a view from 2050 looking back. Find it on YT,
forgive the late 80s CGI, and be surprised, and a little depressed. He gets
much right, and a little of the then new science wrong, only it turns out he
was pretty optimistic too.

Decades of inaction and international treaties (Rio-1992!!, Kyoto, Paris) that
barely scratch the surface, or require no commitment from developing nations.
Then all the disingenuous attempts at briefing against fact and science, or
claiming we can't afford to, or we'll adapt, squelched all that optimism.

Now I think IPCC will turn out to be at the wildly optimistic end of the
scale, as their projections presume we will eventually get off our ass and
try. Seems we have to hit rock bottom, and too late, but right under our noses
first.

I still have a feint hope the world will prove me wrong...

------
gtsteve
It's easy to be pessimistic but do you remember CFCs[0]? I don't have time to
re-read the article but my recollection of the timeline of events goes
somewhat like this:

1\. CFCs invented

2\. CFCs are in high use

3\. Thesis: It's bad for the environment; ozone layer is depleting

4\. Antithesis: It's problematic for some businesses to give these up

5\. Synthesis: Global effort to stop using them and find replacements

6\. Ozone layer is slowly getting better

On one hand, I'm hopeful something similar could happen again.

On the other, the aforementioned events happened in a pre-post-truth world so
it might not. You might argue that would be natural selection at work.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon)

~~~
qsymmachus
Phasing out CFCs was much easier to do because CFCs do not make up the
backbone of the global economy the way fossil fuels do.

There were some hacks in the aerosol and chemical industries who tried to deny
that it was a problem (the chairman of the board of Dupont declared that ozone
depletion theory was "a science fiction tale...a load of rubbish...utter
nonsense"), but they were small fry in relative terms.

The bottom line is that too many powerful peoples' wallets are lined with
money earned by burning fossil fuels. That's why there is no Montreal Protocol
for carbon dioxide.

------
sliken
More warming seems inevitable, oceans are going to rise, and history weather
patterns are going to change. Coastal cities will be flooded, existing farm
land will get harder to maintain, and previously infertile land has the chance
to become fertile.

However solar, grid power storage, and wind are increasing faster than anyone
seemed to be think was possible just a few years ago. Coal plants and coal
mines are increasingly price prohibitive to run. New plants are being
cancelled and existing plants decommissioned.

UAE (the last place I'd expect solar) just turned on the largest solar farm on
the planet! I walk around my city and I see huge solar arrays on parking lots,
churches, universities, and even on top of commercial buildings.

Generally it seems like instead of the slow migration that green energy is
causing a major disruption. Solar is now getting to the point (in many places)
where it's cheaper than many consumers current power bill. 5 year cost to own
is favoring electric cars over gas cars, even compared to relatively small
cheap cars like the toyota corolla or honda civic.

Tesla is of course shipping more cars than ever and fighting to get the prices
lower. Even at $40k to start with (not including federal, state, and power
company incentives) isn't too far off the price of the average new car.

So changes are accelerating, Tony Seba on youtube has a pretty good talk on
green power, electric cars, and the speed of major disruptive changes.

So terrible things will happen, but I'm growing increasingly optimistic that
the worst will be avoided.

------
agentultra
I don't believe that the next ~200 years will be anything but catastrophic for
life on this planet. I'm not hopeful that we can "solve" climate change or
avert catastrophe. As I understand it we're in the early phases of a sixth
mass extinction event caused by many factors. Most of them anthropocentric.

The only thing we have power over now is determining how severe the building
catastrophes will be. If we can mobilize radical efforts in the next ~4 years
we may avoid the worst case scenarios. But that doesn't mean we'll be hotly
anticipating the next smart phone and enjoying next-day delivery in thirty
years. There will still be mass extinctions, large swathes of the surface of
Earth will be inhospitable to humans, we will live with constant wildfires and
super storms... regardless of what we do now.

I'm not a gambling sort of person so I don't plan on getting lucky. It sure
would be nice if some genius out there invents a technology that magically
reverses everything. However that's not a likely outcome.

I think we need to look forward to surviving. It's not going to be pleasant
but I do remain hopeful that it will be possible.

~~~
primroot
I am now remembering that book by W. Heisenberg "Das Naturbild der heutigen
Physik," which talks about how Physics and Mathematics overcame the Cartesian
mindset. I think that Cartesian mindset needs to be questioned more than ever
now that we need to come up with unprecedented measures against all odds. For
example, I see modernity as being predicated on this platonic notion that we
humans have our minds separate from the material world, and from these minds
ideas emerge, including the ideas about what we should aspire to. There is
little regard for the way in which technology tends to be a tool for us to
indulge in our more basic impulses (unless, I think, one works in PR). I
refuse to say primitive because the impulses I am thinking of are more of the
nature mentioned by Veblen when he talks about conspicuous waste. So as a
result of this tendency, we are in this paradox, in which technology actually
seems to be shrinking our possibilities (I think David Graeber mentions this
in another context), and the world is turning into a monoculture both
literally and metaphorically. The result is less resilience in the face
catastrophe and less capacity to adapt in the face of energy shortages,
because the complexities that allowed for adaptation (different ways of
living, biodiversity, crop diversity) have been steadily eliminated. There are
also economic impulses behind this, related to the process of commoditization,
and the reliance on debt. The first is seen as good because allows creating
economies of scale. The latter makes scarcity be a good thing, because if
things are not scarce enough then they cannot be converted into enough money
to pay debts. Hence, people worry about employment and growth. Environmental
degradation never subtracts from growth, and neither do chronic diseases.

------
state_less
I believe we'll eventually get our act together and survive with some pretty
serious damage to the environment. When people are sufficiently desperate,
you'll see more change.

You can get ahead of the eventualities and help by learning how to survive
without the use of fossil fuels which is difficult but more or less achievable
today. Use electric bikes, cars and motorcycles. Work remotely. Try to find an
efficient home. Live in a climate that doesn't require too much heating or
cooling. Eat vegetables more and so on.

I know you didn't ask for it, but there is a political factor too. Vote for
politicians who take the environment seriously. There are industries that need
regulation. No matter how much you're trying, if they aren't, progress on the
solution will be slowed or stopped.

~~~
iso1337
I think that there needs to be an equivalent of a climate 9/11 event. Maybe
Miami getting wiped off the map by a category 9 hurricane (and call me a
pessimist but the loss of a city in a developing country to climate change
just won't register in the minds of the developed world).

We as a species are very emotionally driven and slow trends and statistics
just aren't as compelling as a big event. I don't know how bad the environment
will have to get for that to happen though.

Otherwise, the people creating the most carbon emissions will just view this
as an inconvenience and crank their AC higher. The numbers involved in the
reporting (2C, 3C etc) just sound small and insignificant when in reality of
course that's just an average.

~~~
slg
It is worth remembering that less than 2 years ago thousands of Americans were
killed and 3 million plus Americans spent months without electricity due to a
hurricane. It is impossible to link that single event to climate change since
climate is about trends and not single events, but that event came and went
and generally speaking the country barely seemed to care.

~~~
iso1337
Are you referring to the one that hit Puerto Rico? Cynically I think that's
because many people don't consider that truly part of America. (Note that's
not my personal views, but just trying to make sense of why there was such a
lackluster response).

My original comment was really trying to get at the human factors involved as
to why we don't care. We just seem to be bad at responding to trends but
better at responding to single events. Just like how the US generally don't
care about the 40k+ USians killed every year in traffic accidents, but the US
responded strongly to the singular event that was 9/11.

Edit: care about on an emotional, popular media level. Deaths per vehicle mile
traveled have been going down over time in the US, due to increased safety
regulations imposed on the manufacturers.

~~~
state_less
As far as human factor go, do you think political groups would do well to take
more 'extremist' positions like outlawing gas burning cars and outlaw
kerosene-based air travel, etc? It seems extreme, but isn't that what we are
going to need to do anyway?

The environmental political base would stomach it, the opposition would think
you're crazy, but they weren't going to help anyway. The tuned-out folks might
take notice, "You want to do what?"

Talking about an abstract fossil fuel tax is not visceral enough. Threaten to
take away something tangible and you might have their attention. Once you have
their attention, explain why you're (we're) in this bind, then ask them to
help. Ask them what they want to do if not your plan? Don't settle for
anything less than serious fossil fuel withdrawal.

It feels heavy handed, but not too far off the mark from what's needed.

------
nrf1
I am hopeful. We're in for a rough ride, but we will survive.

1\. Rate of progress and market adoption of key technologies (ICE alternatives
and renewables) is much higher than I would have anticipated even 10 years
ago, let alone 15 years. I am hopeful that, even with only market forces, by
the end of my lifetime developed economies will have more-or-less righted the
ship on GHG production with a corresponding blueprint for the rest of the
world.

2\. I think we still have a _long_ time before some of the worst-case feedback
loops are triggered.

3\. The realities of climate change are becoming difficult to ignore. This is,
paradoxically, good news because it makes denial a less tenable barrier to
action in the mid-term future.

All that said, I'm hedging my bets with real estate investments in regions
that are most likely to benefit from mid-term impacts of warming.

------
larkeith
Absolutely not.

Even as we start to see major changes to weather patterns globally, most
people put up little more than nominal effort to avoid CO2 emissions and other
damaging activities - for example, air traffic continues to grow [1].

We're likely to hit the point of no return on CO2 emissions within two decades
[2]. Those with the resources to work towards reversing the damage at that
point will also be the ones who can afford to comfortably adjust to changes in
climate - which do you think will take priority? Meanwhile, those who are
going to be hit hardest overwhelmingly cannot afford to avoid contributing to
global warming, let alone actively combat it.

I'm sure civilization will survive - it's more a question of whether we'll
ever do anything significant to stop climate change, or if we'll have to
adjust to whatever new equilibrium the environment enters - and how much
biodiversity and population loss will we sustain on the way there?

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/564769/airline-
industry-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/564769/airline-industry-
number-of-flights/)

[2] [https://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/9/1085/2018/](https://www.earth-syst-
dynam.net/9/1085/2018/)

~~~
mariushn
I found it ironic how 4 photos of the Europe heat wave had asian people who
traveled half the globe: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-48766481](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48766481)

In no way I'm blaming Asians. Photos in Asia would show lots of non-Asians.
It's just an example of how we as humans always put our experiences first.

------
maxbendick
No, not at all. Incentives aren't alligned in politics, industry, or in the
home for real change to happen. It's a tradgedy of the commons.

------
loons2
Records are set every year. A record just means no observation was previously
recorded.

There's a catastrophe every generation that turns out to have been a false
alarm by the time the next generation's catastrophe is fabricated.

For instance, my wife was told "no homework tonight since we'll all be dead
tomorrow anyway." (Cuban Missile Crisis)

Around the time of the first Earth Day, the predictions of environmental
apocalypse were legion, yet societies somehow seem to find ways to fix things
that societies broke. They also seem to find ways to fix things that tyrants
broke.

When you see dozens of such dire predictions over a lifetime, you start to get
skeptical. Skepticism is a good thing, btw. Without it, there wouldn't be any
science.

~~~
mikeash
Lots of catastrophes came true. Your example of the Cuban Missile Crisis is
particularly odd: there was nothing at all overblown about the worry, and
there’s a pretty good case to be made that the fate of the world came down to
a single tired, sweaty guy in a submarine making the right decision.

~~~
loons2
For a couple weeks, there was almost nothing else in the news. JFK was a
single tired guy in a submarine? We might be thinking of different Cuban
Missile Crises.

[https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-
crisis](https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis)

~~~
mikeash
Vasily Arkhipov was a single tired guy in a submarine. The Soviet submarine
B-59 was being depth charged and its captain wanted to launch a nuclear
torpedo at the US Navy fleet that was pursuing it. Two other officers had to
agree to launch the torpedo. One agreed, and Arkhipov was the other. They
argued but he refused and convinced the captain to surface.

JFK's role was pretty important too. The military tried quite hard to convince
him to go to war. Good thing he wasn't stuck in a broken-down, overheating
submarine with explosions going off all around it, or he might not have been
so steadfast.

The world was on the brink of a war that would make WWII look like a fun walk
in the woods. Am I supposed to think that a couple of weeks of non-stop news
coverage was excessive?

------
walrus01
No, not really. I think the unfortunate dystopian cyberpunk future we're going
to see is that wealthy developed nations will be able to afford technological
Band-aids, like increasing use of air conditioners everywhere fed from big
grid connected photovoltaic plants. People with much less economic means will
suffer and be displaced.

I predict massive refugee crises with mass-migration caused by climate change
within my own lifetime.

It recently hit 54C in Rajasthan.

------
Aeolun
Do I think the environment and humans will survive? Yes.

Do I think that we’ll enjoy living in whatever this new environment ends up
being? No, not at all.

------
gremlinsinc
Yes and no...on the current course of denying global warming -- we're screwed.
If we could somehow end poverty, and move a large swath of
unemployed/undereducated people into science industry so they can focus on
solving problems, maybe we can build a mega structure to block out sunlight,
capture existing carbon in the atmosphere and figure ways to bring back arctic
ice, --then maybe we can reverse things...we also need to backup species of
plants, animals, etc via dna harvesting so things that are destroyed by global
warming can come back if we do fix it. A lot of my hope lies in science
fictiony future tech that is yet to be created, but I hope for my kid's sake
we figure it out.

I think it'd be funny if we figure out immortality tech first and live long
enough to see the world end in 150 years because of our own mistakes and lack
of foresight... The rich want to live forever, but then they'll regret it when
they destroyed everything.

~~~
crimsonalucard
We have the ability to solve the problem now.

We just don't have the business incentive to do so. It's not about adding
people, It's about adding incentive.

------
lcall
(Copying a comment I just made on a related discussion).

I am in that I try to (within reason) minimize waste, pollution, energy
consumption, meat use, etc: all for the Golden Rule and a clear conscience.
And I am all for reducing pollution via laws as it makes the best sense using
an open process and honesty. And I am active in an organization that goes to
great lengths to try to help people in need, whether due to climate change or
otherwise.

But having said that, I don't think climate change is a problem humanity is
currently competent to solve, nor our biggest problem. I wrote more, here (a
lightweight, hopefully skimmable, no-JS/no-ads site):

[http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html)

------
qsymmachus
So long as economic growth remains the primary goal of most societies, and so
long as that economic growth is tied to the use of fossil fuels, then climate
change will not be stopped.

------
oneepic
Yes, absolutely. Put enough money into it and scientists/startups will figure
it out. I'd like to see someone prove that we _can 't_ reverse most of what
we've done (besides extinction of different species which is obviously bad).

~~~
Skunkleton
The scary thing isn't the current state of the climate. The scary thing is
passing a point of no return where climate change becomes non-linear and self-
feeding. According to many reports, we are not far off from that point. Still,
we are in a world where a non-negligible portion of the population believes
that climate change is fabricated, or at least overstated. Scientists won't be
able to really do anything other than measure the problem until public
sentiment gets behind them. Startups won't do anything until VCs see an
opportunity to make exponential returns on their investments. The best case is
the linear portion of climate change hits us hard, corrects public sentiment,
and we have enough time to fix the planet before true catastrophe.

~~~
gremlinsinc
I wonder even at that point, could we refreeze the earth via megastructure in
space, make it miserable for most of us during winters and even summer for a
time to 'reboot' the polar caps/antarctica? Or maybe we could make the mega
structure only affect specific locales so the rest of the world doesn't suffer
as much from extremely cold spells.

I don't think that's the only fix we need though, we'd also need a way to
clone and rebuild lost species like penguins and polar bears, and micro
organisms, fauna, ocean creatures, etc...

Reforestation on a grand scale and global outlawing of Amazon Forest depletion
would be a wise thing as well... I think there are science-based solutions but
I'm at a loss of how we begin researching and implementing anything esp. w/
our polarized politics of late that could give a shit.

I guess when it hurts bad enough we'll stop putting bandaids on things and
really try to fix stuff, especially when the entire fate of mankind lies in
the balance, until we get to that point sadly it'll probably keep going the
way it has been.

------
docker_up
I believe in cycles. Things get worse, things get better. You never hear about
when things get better.

For the last several years, people were saying that CA was in drought and that
this was the "new normal". I didn't believe it, and I was right. This year is
particularly colder than last year, even though we had 2 extremely hot days.
This is how weather works, it's always changing. I think the next few years
will continue to be wet in CA and then we'll hit another cycle of droughts and
back and forth. It's also safe to note that the drought we experienced wasn't
worse than the 1930s due to weather, it was worse because more water was being
consumed by humans, which is a different sort of environmental disaster.

I do believe that the Earth is getting hotter, but I also believe we will get
cooler over the next several years. But no one will talk about that because it
doesn't get clicks.

We need to plant new trees and we need to incentivize countries to not cut
down their forests. Places like Indonesia and Brazil, etc, need to be
incentivized to keep their forests instead of cutting it down for cash crops.

I think the bigger crisis is plastic, pollution and chemicals in our water. We
need to stop creating so much plastic and make extremely draconian laws
controlling this. We need to stamp down on pollution from factories. Companies
that spill into our lakes and rivers and oceans need to be fined with extreme
prejudice. If they go out of business I simply don't care, I would rather see
them out of business than have our water and environment polluted.

~~~
primroot
I think a new normal, in the sense of a new steady (less favorable) state of
the climate, is not something that is being suggested by the science. Just to
point out one relevant fact, consider that the current CO2 levels were present
at least going as far back to Pliocene geological epoch
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate).
I think it is reasonable to expect at least plenty of instability as the Earth
gets closer to the temperature and sea level of that time.

------
jamesb93
To anyone reading this and thinking - well what can I do? Become vegetarian.
TODAY. I eat 95% vegetarian now and I don't notice the difference whatsoever,
if anything, I don't crave meaty foods anymore. The 5% is once a month kind of
things such as pizza that have some ham on them. Changing to vegetarian is one
of the best things you can do to help.

~~~
0lpbm
How about telling people to stop having kids? That's going to have a greater
impact[1] in the long run than not eating meat.

Well, if you can't bring yourself to tell people that, what makes it all right
to tell them to go vegetarian (TODAY)?

Prozelytizing your style of life is not how you get others to be more friendly
to the environment.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-
to-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-
climate-change-have-fewer-children)

~~~
jamesb93
I personally don't want to have kids and don't see that changing. Although I
don't see how your suggestion isn't 'prozelytizing' as well, it is much easier
to change your diet (even partially) than to possibly de-rail massive life
plans which may already be in motion. There are tonnes of great foods you can
eat which are just vegetables and as a previously MASSIVE meat eater, I no
longer miss it. Just to be clear I don't disagree with you, but one choice is
not interchangeable with the other.

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dpflan
This Wordsworth poem has stuck with me for years. It's from ~1807 and still
rings true about humanity and nature:

 _The World Is Too Much with Us_

    
    
      The world is too much with us; late and soon,
      Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
      Little we see in Nature that is ours;
      We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
      This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
      The winds that will be howling at all hours,
      And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
      For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
      It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be
      A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
      So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
      Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
      Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
      Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
    

>
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Too_Much_with_Us](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Too_Much_with_Us)

------
tjansen
I like the Adams Rule of Slow Moving Disasters: whenever humanity can see a
slow-moving disaster coming, we find a way to avoid it. I don't doubt that we
will continue to emit CO2 for a while, and the temperature will keep climbing,
but when things get unbearable, people will act swiftly.

I expect that the hotter earth becomes, and the more we try to replace fossil
fuels, the more electricity is needed. A hotter earth means air conditioning
almost everywhere, huge desalination plants to provide water and so on. So the
most important thing in the world is to create energy cheaply without
emissions. I guess that there will be a much higher focus on nuclear fusion
research to have a clean source for those energy needs, and in the meantime
conventional nuclear plants will be used.

If we reach a point where temperatures become too bad, geo-engineering will
also be a huge topic.

------
bubblewrap
When I was a teenager, I thought I would never see my 30ieth birthday because
of the hole in the ozone layer, or nuclear war, or something like it.

It was not a nice feeling.

Now I am a bit wary of doomsday scenarios. I am not convinced we have seen any
real impact of global warming yet (higher temperatures perhaps, but no land
has been flooded, for example. Nothing catastrophic has occurred).

I am pessimistic about human expansion, though. I think we are in the middle
of a population explosion that started with the invention of agriculture and
has not ended yet. Humans will consume everything that get's in their way.

That is the same as with all other species, though (like the classical fox and
rabbits scenario - fox population growing until there are only few rabbits
left, foxes starving, and so on). Once we hit a natural limit, things will
balance out somehow. That doesn't imply that it will be pleasant.

I'm less worried about global warming. There are too many doomsday scenarios.
I think if it was that easy to break the balance, it would have happened
before. So I think there may be regulating mechanisms that we haven't really
taken into account. "Hottest June ever recorded" may not mean that much. There
can be smaller cycles (like some news now predict a coming mini ice age
because of sun activity), measuring stations can have changed (cities are
warmer), all sorts of things.

I think classical damage will probably be worse - agriculture, depleting water
reservoirs, destroying top soil, depleting fish populations, deforestation,
destruction of animals natural habitats... That's depressing for sure. Maybe
the only hope is for capitalism to come up with better means of production.
After all, the environment is actually doing better in some places than a
couple of decades ago.

Ultimately I think it may also be an illusion that it would be normal for
things to remain the same.

------
mariushn
Lost hope.

The 3 big issues that I think prevents us solving it are

1\. Tragedy of the commons

When a country/company wants to make money by damaging the environment in the
process, the money come to the country/company now, but the damage is spread
world-wide. If the pollution would stay only in that country/city, it would be
different. So, the choice is natural, especially thinking about government
4-year terms.

2\. We always put ourselves first, rest of the city/country much further, and
rest of the world... doesn't matter. What people want, by human nature, is to
satisfy their own needs & comfort.

Examples:

* Why wait for a bus or use an electric bike when one can just drive a 2 tonnes car to move oneself? It's comfortable and cheap.

* Norway refuses to drill for billions of barrels of oil in Arctic, leaving ‘whole industry surprised and disappointed’. Government made the right choice, but a few (prosperous already) affected by making less money complain: [https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/norway-oil-drillin...](https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/norway-oil-drilling-arctic-ban-labor-party-unions-a8861171.html)

* France introduces a diesel tax, to reduce pollution, which affects everybody's health. But, wait, some need to pay a little more? Let's protest! Tax was cancelled: [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/11/french-protes...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/11/french-protests-gilets-jaunes-emmanuel-macron-gas-diesel-tax/576196/)

* The Bełchatów Coal mine & Power station in Poland. Hundreds of people employed there, they are happy with it. Should the plant be closed to stop pollution? What about our jobs? No way! And no, getting only 20% of salary for free (basic income) and having to learn stuff to maybe find a new job in renewables is not acceptable.

3\. The environment effects of what a one person/community/country does, bad
or good, are hard to see in the short term. Only the downsides are clearly
visible in the present. So, taking the correct action is quite hard.

Unfortunately, I don't see how to overcome these. Would be glad to be proved
wrong!

------
tunesmith
I wonder how much we've improved trends already. I mean, I realize that we are
in a worse situation now than has been previously projected, but with
hindsight knowledge, I wonder how much worse off (in tenths or hundredths of
degrees or whatever) we'd be if we hadn't globally taken the environment
actions we've already taken. The amount of solar we have now has made a dent,
hasn't it?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
This[1] Wikipedia entry claims global solar electricity production is 12.9TWh
per year.

Compared to 13,675TWh total annual electricity production from coal, oil, and
gas combined.

So we're talking about a 0.09% dent.

------
billconan
I am pessimistic about the future. I guess I will not raise any child, given I
don’t think humanity will last long.

~~~
jonathankoren
I’ve got two young kids, sometimes I think they might be okay. I don’t have
any hope for my unborn grandchildren. At my most pessimistic, I wonder if I
should investigate some sort redoubt to help them prepare. But who know what
you really need to prepare for. It just feels so hopeless sometimes.

------
waste_monk
I think we're already past the point of no return and the collapse of human
civilisation as we know it is inevitable.

Between resource shortages and famine, and the inevitable resource wars
associated with that, I doubt there will be more than ~500m humans alive
globally by 2100.

------
andrewtbham
I am optimistic about the future because the costs of renewable energy (wind
and solar) and energy storage (batteries) are plummeting. These trends are
likely to continue.

------
RickJWagner
Yes, I am hopeful.

I don't deny the climate is changing. I just think the earth (and it's
inhabitants) are tremendously resilient. Life will go on.

------
q845712
I come back a lot to the parable of "who's to say what's good or bad?" (one
telling of which can be found here: [https://thepowerofthrift.com/whos-to-say-
whats-good-or-bad/](https://thepowerofthrift.com/whos-to-say-whats-good-or-
bad/) )

My more specific take: As a human of generally European-ish descent born in
the United States, the wave of extinctions that gave land-dominance to
mammals, the likely genocide of closely related hominids by the homo-sapiens,
the ecological changes putatively caused by the first wave of human occupants
including all the extinctions of large land animals on this continent, the
subsequent genocide of the first human occupants, the conflicts and wars that
caused my ancestors to emigrate, ... those were all necessary conditions for
the exact experiences I've had in my life.

I'm not saying I support genocide! (my ancestors are mostly all Jewish.) I'm
just saying that the farther something is in the past, the more it just seems
like a fact of history, no matter how miserable and wrenching it was for all
the organisms that lived through it.

We have no way of knowing what we're really creating, and it may well be that
we're creating a hundred thousand years of extinctions and inhospitable
weather which will be more difficult to live through for our descendants than
the conditions we were born into. We may be radically shrinking our own
natural habitat. We may be paving the way for a different dominant organism.
We may be living in an era that future humans will give as much thought to as
we give to the years 1000-1100 C.E. Who knows! and in the long game, the
thousands and millions of years perspective, who's to say what's good or bad?

------
andy-x
I'm optimistic that Earth (our environment) will survive, but I'm also sure
that it will be less hospitable for human life. If catastrophe is going to
happen it is more likely that it will be human-induced catastrophe (wars,
genocide, famine) rather than environmental one.

