Item — HN Reader

> can't help but wonder what is on European minds

The main thing I have in mind is that human civilization is completely fucked. What is needed to ensure things aren’t too horrible in the next century is so drastic and requires such a global coordinated effort that will never happen. There is no technology or super authority that will magically save us from a climate catastrophe this century.

Given the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity, and developed countries are ready to sacrifice pretty much everything to the AI compute gods we are truly fucked

5 comments

>the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity

I'm pretty convinced that lots of people would be willing to make sacrifices. But not while Mark Zuckerberg is allowed to feed his Angus beef Macadamia nuts on Hawaii and all the invitees fly in separate private jets to COP26 instead of making it an online event.

The message of "sacrifice for thee, but not for me!" should not be underestimated here.

You can only control your own actions. Reducing your meat consumption by like 80% is very low effort. It’s honestly ridiculous that still has to be argued about

The ridiculous is that we talk about this individual change nonsense when we should be talking about actual regulations and restrictions of industries.

Yes, hit the biggest poluters who incidentally put so much money into anti-climate agenda. Stop distracting with tiny individual crap.

> >you can only control your own actions

>tries to control others' dietary habits

Why would I reduce it? Not going to eat less meat so that Zuck can keep sailing on his mega yacht.

I mean, it's a collective action problem. Individual consumption of normal people is a huge contributor to global energy demands / pollution / etc. You don't have to change your behavior but if no one does in the coming decades then we're pretty fucked.

Not to let the 1% off the hook. Por que no los dos

You cannot solve societal problems with individual actions.

It's about time to cut the crap that each person can make a difference while governments keep subsidizing all sorts of activities that damage the environment.

I will vote for forbidding beef, but will keep eating it until it is forbidden.

I somewhat agree, and I have not stopped eating beef entirely. I think that forbidding is overkill but agree that lots of related subsidies should be eliminated (honestly, if meat were just priced w/o current subsidies, we'd be in far better shape).

But you have to have some public consensus or the government will never implement such changes due to their unpopularity. This is why I think promoting some reduction in individual meat consumption is still valuable - it is good for average people to reflect on their consumption or they will vote out anyone who attempts to change it.

I don't think that the focus should be on individual blame (even just for the reason that this is politically nonviable). But you at least need to amass some collective awareness.

I love beef. I absolutely adore cheese, and I would be unfathomably sad to never again taste a nice piece of Gorgonzola.

But I know that the meat and dairy industry are hellish for the environment. You don't need to win me in that argument, I accepted that already.

But that's the catch - either we are all in this together, or we will burn in this oven-earth of our making. There's no between. I am not becoming vegan just to die scorched anyway because meat and dairy were still subsidized and consumed.

Governments are surprisingly good to set proper incentives when they want. It could make beef and dairy economically ruinous with taxes instead of forbidding. Consumption would lower dramatically the moment a striploin beef is costing 30 bucks.

If society needs several environmental catastrophes to wake up, then I can only hope I see the other side of it.

Changing peoples culture is about as simple as changing peoples religion. Getting people who eat meat to switch to vegetarianism is like trying to get vegetarians to reduce their land usage by switching to some amount of shell fish or sea weed, the later which is vegetarian but not necessary the kind of plants that people are used to.

It should be much easier to convince people that emission free energy production is a necessity, and yet there is for all practical purpose no such political movement or any political party that actually support the simple fact that producing electricity and heat through burning carbon based fuel is completely unnecessary and should have been relegated as a something past civilizations did. We don't need to convince the world population to change their culture in order to not construct new thermal power plants, only political will and money.

> Given the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity,

If it is a necessity, it should be government policy. Make it a regulation.

No change will happen when you switch the focus of necessity from society to individual.

AI is more energy efficient and faster than we are. If there is anything thinking needed to solve the problem, it's best to lean on AI.

We don't need AI to figure it out. It's been researched to death already. Go vegetarian, abolish fossil fuels, buy less.

The problem is that way too few are willing to change their habits, and legislators have near-zero incentive to enact unpopular rules to help mitigate the problems. AI isn't going to change any of that.

Proposing that all of humanity drastically change its habits is a theoretical, not practical, solution.

well, we managed to construct a narrative where everyone could only marginally change its habits. heat pumps, electric cars, solar panels, carbon taxes. things would have remained unchanged at the high level.

but that was still way too much to ask. I'm afraid that if you insist on reducing the solution space to just 'it magically goes away and no one has to think about it', even the mighty AI might struggle. why don't fire up Claude and ask it?

Lol. Firstly, how we live now is far different to how we lived 100 years ago (people ate far less red meat than we do today for example). Secondly, how the bulk of humanity lives is inevitably going to change drastically. The choice we have is to do it voluntarily and perhaps control how it changes, or wait until core crops start failing in a big way and livestock die off due to prolonged drought and heatwaves.

AI datacenters will make it worst. And Musk and Thiel and the rest dont give a shit about planet.

Yeah, conflict is guaranteed. China will probably invade Russia and secure Lake Baikal and vast areas of Siberia. Europe might start shooting at "smugglers" earnestly (sorry to the "collateral damage").

I guess Eric or Barron will follow Project 2025 Edition 10's guideline and invade Greenland to secure their water for USA. And Canada's favorable climate?