
Ask HN: It's 2035, climate crisis is almost averted. How has the world changed? - _Microft
We can sometimes use a bit of inspiration and a vision of a great future instead of only the daily grind and bad news. So for a few minutes, let us teleport ourselves to the future, observe it and look back on how we made a better future actually come true. Let&#x27;s embark on this journey:<p><i>One and a half decades after the bleak outlook at the beginning of the 2020s, it is becoming increasingly clear that the worst effects of the climate crisis can either be avoided or at least be mitigated. The world has changed a lot in the time between 2020 and 2035 - and mostly for the better. How has the world been changed and what does it look like now?</i><p>(This is admittedly an unusual application of the AskHN format. It is deliberately vague, has no clear answers and is mostly intended to inspire people to imagine a positive future. If you find it inappropriate, flag it - I&#x27;ll get the message)
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_Microft
Respiratory problems are greatly decreased by further adoption of electric
transportation, especially in chinese megacities where the situation was dire.

Autonomous bus and taxi services led to less casualties on the streets because
less people are still driving themselves (less DUI, being distracted, tired or
otherwise not fit to drive).

Taxi services got a lot cheaper because there are no longer drivers who need
to be paid which in turn accelerated the transition away from car ownership.

Traffic flow also improved because having a small fraction of autonomous
vehicles on the road already prevents traffic jams out of nowhere by
cushioning the density waves that can appear in traffic by human drivers
(that's really a thing!).

Overall look of cities improved since less parking spots are required. Rules
that regulated required parking spaces for customers were lifted which gave
the opportunity to open more shops in closer proximity.

I will add it later if I can think of more.

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FiatLuxDave
The introduction of a new form of renewable energy which taps into the thermal
difference between the sky and the ground broke the rancorous fossil-vs-
renewables debate by providing an affordable source of power which ran
directly off the temperature increase caused by CO2.

Because this energy source only requires access to the sky, poor nations were
able to develop their own renewable power grids. Economies based upon the sale
of oil are reforming to be based more upon the output of their workers,
reducing the power of the elites and making for more equitable societies. The
change in the balance of power has created new fault lines in international
diplomacy, but because these changes did not require force, the changes have
been largely peaceful.

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downrightmike
It wasn't. We thought we could do it by 2030, but it was the end of 2019 when
the world's scientists figured out that all targets weren't going to be
enough, but no one ever listens to them. The alternative was switching to
renewables with a vengeance, but we had to prop up coal, oil and fracking. So
instead we have to pour more money in air conditioning and border defense.
Remember it is them against us and they had the bad luck of being born near
the boiling equator. And it isn't like we have room. We don't have any more
aid to give them. So the border walls are even more critical. Dow is at 700k
though, so we have that going for us. Your government rations will be delayed
another 3 weeks. That is all.

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PaulHoule
I am "all in" on geoengineering now. We've seen that elites will get in the
way of efforts to lower emissions, and that the masses will too (the #1 way to
start a riot in most countries is raise the price of fuel.)

Bloomberg gets humiliated in the 2020 election, he really comes to understand
Mancur Olson and realizes that for what he spent on his failed presidential
bid he could seed the ocean with iron oxide to capture a significant amount of
carbon. Some people complain about it, but because the U.S. is not a signatory
to the U.N. law of the sea, nobody can stop him.

In 2022 a group of people based in Miami do a kickstarter to buy a used A330
and modify it to spray sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere.

Elon Musk gets his "Starship" working by 2024 and a consortium of several
governments and private industry start a moonbase to produce oxygen and iron
on the moon, then to move an asteroid to the Sun-Earth L1 point and fabricate
a sunshade which deflects enough sunlight to reliably cool the earth by 2035.

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty is scrapped by 2028 after violations by
North Korea, Iran, Brazil, South Korea, Japan and other countries. Thus the
political barriers to nuclear fuel recycling are eliminated. By 2035 we are
seeing the first demonstration-scale dry nuclear power plants that use gas
turbines and higher temperatures to greatly reduce capital costs. There is a
fierce competition between fast breeder (sodium cooled), molten salt, and
high-temperature graphite reactors with prismatic fuel. It isn't until 2045
that this starts to have a major impact, however.

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perfunctory
> What’s changed most of all is the mood. The defiant notion that we would
> forever overcome nature has given way to pride of a different kind:
> increasingly we celebrate our ability to bend without breaking, to adapt as
> gracefully as possible to a natural world whose temper we’ve come to
> respect.

[https://time.com/5669022/climate-
change-2050/](https://time.com/5669022/climate-change-2050/)

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rajacombinator
The sun’s output blipped a little bit in the other direction. Wall Street
started selling “reverse carbon” derivatives. Politicians and other scammers
were very very concerned. Most people didn’t notice a difference.

