alt Hacker NewsI grew up in the 90s and there was a book in climate in my shelf that talked about thousands dying today, nearly three decades back. At some point we should stop pretending this is a new and surprising danger and start treating it as the risk we willingly steered ourselves into.
If you live next to a road and every other month a car crashed through your living room wall you'd probably fix the root cause after the first time it happened. If you are clever you fixed it even before it occurs. What you would not do is only deal with the damage caused month for month and pretend there is no need to address the root cause.
The reason why many pretend our only option is handing out band aids while the blade keeps spinning, is because it is hard to imagine anything else, if your salary depends on you not addressing the problem.
It feels more and more like watching a bus driver playing chicken against a solid, immovable concrete wall. It is obvious who wins, the only question is into which directions the scrap explodes most, while the driver eyes for the ejector seat. And all the kids pretend driving into the wall is the only reasonable option.
It is possible for humanity to create unsurvivable conditions in our earths atmosphere. Should we do that if there is enough profit in it? If not, where would you draw the line and how would you set/enforce the limits?
Replies
I would simply not sacrifice hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable (in Europe alone!) for unnecessary performative bullshit and let people install AC while massively subsidizing solar/wind/hydro/nuclear/etc.
> At some point we should stop pretending this is a new and surprising danger and start treating it as the risk we willingly steered ourselves into.
And then what?
Let me also invoke an analogy:
After a record year of traffic casualties, I suggest to remove regulation that commonly prevents installing seat belts in your car, mandate the presence of seat belts, and subsidize retrofitting older cars.
Instead, politicians talk at length about better education in primary school promoting safe driving later in life. Additionally they recommend to pay attention while driving, and they call this an "Action plan" to make driving safe. No word about seat belts.
You respond to my proposal, saying that seat belts are merely a band aid, that I pretend they are our only option, and that we better fix the root cause before an accident occurs.
When then someone talks about the thousands upon thousands needlessly dead while ignoring the existence of seat belts we could install today, it just drives me furious.