alt Hacker NewsTechno optimist here who expects the following to make a big contribution to reducing human made future climate change: better batteries+solar/wind, nuclear fusion, self driving cars (we'll need to manufacture less cars for the same amount of miles humanity drives), AI helping with better resource allocation in general (hopefully).
The answer can't be, let's just consume 10x less. We have to engineer our way out of it.
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These are all helpful contributions, but ultimately we need buy-in from decision makers (i.e. rulers/heads of nations).
And at least in the US we do not have it and are actively going in the opposite direction, mostly in the name of money.
These awesome things will enable a higher human population. We are like a virus taking over the host organism and overdoing it.
Ironically what is pushing many countries to a faster adoption of renewables is not climate change but the recent Iran conflict.
Yes tech can help but implementation depends on human nature.
> The answer can't be, let's just consume 10x less. We have to engineer our way out of it.
We will have to do both I am afraid
I’d be embarrassed to call myself a techno optimist and associate with someone who thinks empathy is bad.
I love technology but optimism about it is incompatible with the current capitalist system. Tech is exploited to make capital not to further our optimism.
Edit: if you’re gonna downvote at least offer a counter. lol pathetic.
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To make energy requires not only a lot of time to be produced, but also a lot of energy to get it done. Industrial society is based on these "oil reserves" from the Mesozoic Era. All the stuff made in factories from the 19th century all the way to iPhones 17s relies on these diminishing EROI — which, instead of being underground, is now in our atmosphere. It's not like a jar on a shelf we can just take off because by the time the energy transfers through the ecosystem all the way it hits where the ecosystem the most fragile, melting the taiga and lowering the albedo.