this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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We waste intelligent minds on this rubbish when we are facing an existential crisis in climate change.
A few decades ago I gave a manager 2 options to solve a problem for the company.
1st was to take a simple engineered approach with a dash of automation to keep our lives simple but I would have to push out previously set deadlines
2nd was to just ignore it until it gets so bad that his managers finally give in to hire someone else to do it and hope that it gets done right after I leave the project
He chose the 2nd. It never got solved. They ended up hiring a vendor who screwed it up and it took a volunteer using unpaid hours on threat of being fired to resolve it.
It was only a few years later he became CIO for a major tech company and I lost all hope in humanity.
Because our economic system is broken. It simply does not allow us to do what is best for humanity in the long run. It's completely absurd the more you think about it.
Is it though? I mean yeah the incentives aren't perfectly aligned but to me it looks like we're heading to the right direction anyways. It's just the slow pace that's the issue. In Finland we're setting up so many wind turbines that the price of electricity drops to negative from time to time.
Because the whole problem essentially boils down to "if it is individually cheaper for everyone to dump their waste into the river, instead of properly processing it, then that is what is the individually rational thing to do, even if in the end everyone loses far more on it". It's washing time and effort on competition, resulting in worse long term results, instead of cooperating together for a better final output.
That's because you're well off in the international context. If you lived in an exploited country where life has been getting worse by many metrics for generations, you probably wouldn't feel like we're "moving in the right direction." Most of Europe and America has benefited from the imperialism of global capitalism.
Africa has benefited from it aswell. They skipped landlines and went straight to mobile phones and they're for the most part going to skip burning coal aswell and just put up solar panels and wind turbines.
Wow you can't be serious. Africa benefited from capitalism? The same capitalism that destroyed their countries and enslaved millions of people? The same capitalism that intentionally keeps African countries unstable and dependent on international aid?
No fucking way you just tried to just that by saying they have cell phones. That's some epic meme level shit dude.
Africa haven't benefited from capitalism in any way?
Just when I thought the idea of DRM internet couldn't be any more depressing...
Climate change is not an existential crisis. Not to the entire humanity atleast. This kind of extremist thinking and extraggerating just makes me want to check out completely because it feels like there's no one reasonable in the room.
Climate change will kill billions, and there's a decent chance that each one of us might be in those billions. Even if it won't kill 100% of humanity, it will probably kill a number of governments, our current way of life, and there's no guarantee it won't kill me. It's an existential threat in the same way that Russian roulette is.
That's a bold claim to say it's going to kill billions of people. What are you basing this on?
EDIT:
"Don't worry guys your kids will only live in a dystopian hellhole, it's not that bad"
Not what I said
If you're not at least mildly concerned by scientists (people who've spent years if not decades building up their reputation amongst many many peers) grabbing their hair and shouting about the incoming, slowly accelerating danger, then... Please. Checkout and get out of humanity's way.
Is that what I said?
We're all sorry you weren't privileged enough to be equipped with the ability to read between lines or understand gists. Good luck to you.