I don't think this is good advice. Sure humans create more GHGs than non existent humans but nothing will make you more future oriented than having kids (assuming you want them of course) also the kinds of people that help solve climate change are likely to come from the kinds of people who frequent hacker news. If you look at who is most successful in tech, it's often people who come from upper middle class backgrounds, at least in my experience. There are a few outliers of course but they're the exception. Most people don't have the luxury of thinking about climate change
But trust me, there are plenty of rich HN readers who are going to ignore me. There’s going to be plenty of new rich kids out there to found the next Facebook and then wonder how they can help with climate change before they have a couple more kids.
And from what I’ve seen, people don’t mind being fucked tomorrow as long as they’re OK today. Even better if they can be OK-ish tomorrow as long as somebody else gets fucked worse.
Do you really truly believe that there’s going to be a magic climate change solution that allows the developed world to continue living the way it has?
Obviously there are questions as to how well, as a human race, we are organized ... but we can 100% do it, right now. We just have to get a long and act responsibly.
This is the magic climate change solution. You're yada-yada'ing over the part that is going to be all but impossible.
We already have huge networks of Nuclear reactors.
France is 85% Nuclear.
The entire Western world could be within a decade.
Do you think we've retrograded and lost our ability to 'do stuff'?
Maybe politically, but not materially.
We know exactly what to do and there are no material barriers to fairly widespread Nuclear Adoption, it just takes a bit of political will.
It could be, but it's unlikely to be. People in Germany and Japan are quite opposed. In the US, it doesn't make economic sense. Not going to make it to 85% of the western world without those countries on board, even if you don't consider Japan to be in the west.
Regardless of the merits, people don't want these generators near them, and there's not a lot of site options that are close to transmission lines and other important needs, but not close to people.
The political capital and will to accomplish what you're describing is absolutely enormous. That's the hard part.
Yes, it’s called nuclear power
Not going to happen. We need solutions rolled out at global scale by 2030. Nuclear power projects don't have a good track record for speed.
We need solutions that no-one is going to object to and for which the whole supply chain is already huge. Nuclear's cooling water demand alone makes it vulnerable to protest.
I'm hoping that Form's iron-air grid-scale battery is manufacturable, scalable and economical. Shouldn't be too hard to commit a few percent of the world's iron refining capacity to making grid-scale batteries to complement solar and wind power.
If not Form's, then one or more of their competitors' batteries. I sure hope someone cracks it. Last resort, we could use Lithium chemistries, but that wouldn't be so environmentally benign and would take a bit longer to scale out.
We could literally build those identical, 1960's style designs if we absolutely had to.
Of course, we'd build something a little more modern, even just a little more modern Canadian CANDU reactors would work.
We take forever to build them for organizational reasons, not because there's something that's inherently difficult that takes 30 years to do.
I wish.
> You do remember when France is 85% Nuclear and they built out their entire national infrastructure very quickly.
No, I don't remember it; I was a long way away and young. I still don't speak French.
Yes, it's a bit sad that we can no longer do what a bunch of French bureaucrats with their 30-hour work weeks and 8-week vacances could do in the 1970s--even when we're desperate.
We could literally copy their not-very-good designs if we had to.
Those plants are still effective and operational and provide a major economy with 85% (!!!) of their electricity.
They build them quickly and it's worked out fine.
Well, unless you’re talking about fusion, which, at this point, truly is a “magical” solution.
Direct matter to energy conversion or nothing!
And don’t waste electricity virtue signaling online.
Other than the political action thing (honestly think it’s pointless) and the fact that I buy too much crap online, that’s how I live my life.
I just don’t see a way where humans “beat” climate change without an incredible (and incredibly unlikely) shift in how we live our lives.
Climate change represents a civilization-wide threat that we can only address through intense collective action, and even then it may be too late. Since we seem incapable of collective action with anything serious at stake there’s probably nothing any of us can do individually that will matter.
Next, as an individual who’s likely richer than average (as a programmer on HN) and has the ability to do these things:
1. Don’t have biological children.
2. Don’t eat meat.
3. Don’t drive a car.
4. Don’t fly in planes.
5. Don’t buy things you don’t really need.
6. Live in small/dense housing.