This comment makes me so, so angry. Like, shouting angry. It's a person who hasn't engaged with a topic AT ALL except to find one headline that downplays the concerns of others. It's the quintessential bad faith comment, created of willful malice or ignorance (and I don't mean that be aggressive, but descriptive).
Which is more true: are you trying to comfort yourself with this comment, or do you find those who work in the name on conservation so loathsome that you'll grasp onto anything to dismissively roll your eyes at them?
Another bad-faith contribution, a snarky comment befitting of a default subreddit. Doesn't even logically build from what I posted, nowhere have I committed the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy, but you have made the leap.
And for what? Why? Ideological reasons? A sincerely held belief that the extinction probability of polar bears is dramatically overstated based on some insight that doesn't seem to broadly available?
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EDIT: this was a poor response to a misunderstood comment
I interpreted your comment as a snarky response to me, not actually imploring others to trust those dedicated their lives to understanding the issue. Perhaps I'm too primed on this subject to assume bad-faith engagement because that's so often what I get. That's more about me than you.
I want to ignore these articles as it is so painful to watch the beautiful clockwork of the natural world unravel. I hate facing the suffering, diminishment, and extinction of so much in the name of profiteering and ever-increasing growth.
But this is the world now, there will only be more stories like this, and so I'm not turning away from it any further. The world becomes less beautiful, less rich, less full every year.
I do volunteer, donate, and advocate and I won't use my extreme pessimism as an excuse not to engage. But in private, I mourn what is coming with little hope for substantial reduction in harm. If anything, those with power seem upset that we're not doing more to fasttrack catastrophe - if it's going to happen, may as well be the one to profit from it as much as possible before you're dead, the thinking seems to go.
It's hard when your job and even hobbies are intertwined with this destruction. I enjoy working with computers and industrial machinery - two giant sources of pollution and social disruption. I sometimes feel this existential crisis where I am part of the problem yet I have no way to escape and become filled with guilt. Yet without this technology our lives would be more difficult.
I sometimes think about a post-industrial fantasy world where technology still exists, though minimally, and carefully applied to solve real problems humanity faces instead of selling FOMO or millions of "shiny things" that wind up in land fills so you can sell the new FOMO/shinything so some numbers on a spread sheet goes up.
Computers are not the problem, even the big data centers. The issue is carbon in the air. Fossil fuels. And it isnt really even about driving combustion cars. It is about industrial energy production. We need to stop burning tankers of oil to create bulk electricity. Replace all the coal/oil power plants with solar/wind/nuclear and the IC cars wont matter.
I agree. Like many here, my job is now in the service of an AI-first business and people are incentivized to make AI as central and routine a part of our operations as possible. AI usage is not included in corporate commitments to social responsibility or environmental stewardship are not.
All that said: you might enjoy the book Robot & Monk by Becky Chambers, if you're one to read fiction. It kind of depicts what you're describing as your fantasy.
This may upset some people, but I think you have to come up with mental demarcation for responsibility, or you’ll go nuts.
I simply cannot decide to avoid all the technology of my field because whoever designed the electrical infrastructure didn’t do it responsibly. Or because the handling of ewaste hasn’t been dealt with. Or because everyone sourced materials in unethical ways.
My responsibility for most of that kinda ends at my voting behavior or trying to make reasonable personal decisions that are well within my small sphere of influence. A problem domain that I can handle.
Anyone who watched The Good Place knows what I mean. It’s not absolution for my own behavior, it’s just not holding myself accountable for everything that everyone else does… badly.
Otherwise there’s just no sword to fall on that’s big enough to feel at peace with the world. (Think of the snails!)
You are responsible for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your own actions.
I'm not going to point to a TV show about alcoholism to substantiate that. You don't need me to. It is also why manslaughter, though a lesser crime than murder, remains a crime.
You seem to have reduced the very thesis of what I was saying to the point where you excised it entirely.
“Don’t get shitty drunk and then drive” fits just fine.
“Be a technology person who doesn’t use technology because our power isn’t green.” potentially falls on the far side of that line of personal responsibility.
I hear a whole lot of "what I can't" and next to none of "what I can." Not where I'd want to be, but it's no skin off my nose, either. Good luck holding on to your soul - good luck, and I hope you end up not needing it.
what's to guilt? None of us asked to be born into this. Most of us are only on part of a bell curve and often nowhere near the top. I lived for a while with friends and their commendable eco-mindedness included ideas like not flushing the toilet when it was just piss. Meanwhile the neighbour down the street leaves their hose running while washing their car out back, while popping inside to answer their front door.
While Europe cycles, the US builds bigger and bigger cars requiring more and more fuel to push just to prop up its unimaginative auto industry. While an American drives, Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu or Donald Trump level cities of concrete that will need to be repoured one day, combined with all the wasted energy put into making the people who die in those attacks.
One cannot be responsible for this, for all these other people. There's no guilt, just existential angst as we watch ourselves doomspiral. Whenever climate change is discussed internationally the developed world point at current carbon emissions while the developing world points at historic carbon emissions which means no agreement can be made. Those that are made are just torn up at the earliest opportunity by political opponents seeking short term gains. Who could possibly be responsible for all of this?
The only hope is that this investments made through energy use will propel humanity to the point where it can survive the world it has ruined.
You will live to regret your moral cowardice. Specifically, you'll regret the wrong choices it leads you to make. The guilt you feel now is a warning. Don't stay lazy, or that guilt will eventually be augmented by shame.
All we can do is aim to be better, to aim to be perfect is putting obstacles in your own path for your own smug sense of satisfaction, while the world still burns the same.
Unless you can change the many, including those most intransigent, you have to respect that just changing yourself, is something you only do for yourself. I don't see how its "moral cowardice" for me to own a car so I can ferry around my 84 year old father, so he doesn't have to drive, or to flush my toilet after every time I piss.
I mean I don't use that car for any other purpose. My carbon footprint is probably around or below average for someone in Europe. I eat meat maybe with half of my meals and rarely eat beef or pork. The last time I got on a plane was in 2018 for work. Last holiday via a flight was I think in 2012 and was about 3 hours each way.
I think the average American or even maybe Chinese citizen has a much higher footprint than me these days. I could do better, but to do so would impact my life negatively, win me nothing but smug self-indulgence and change nothing in terms of the long term outcomes of this planet.
So yea, what guilt, what "moral cowardice"? I wouldn't sneer at someone with a higher footprint than me (outside of maybe SUV owners because srsly wtf is that shit) because its collectively where we're culpable, not individually.
Its 2026 and like 30% or more of the citizens of the global super power don't believe in global warming. We're fucked and nothing I do or you do is going to stop that outcome. We probably should start seriously thinking about geo-engineering instead of worrying about moral cowardice.
Moral odium inheres, if nowhere else, in that you insist upon the seductive counsel of despair. The more convincing you make that, the less our fellows will feel themselves able in any meaningful way to act at all. What should I call such encouragement to cowardice, if not culpable?
You have articulated my feelings, behavior, and outlook almost exactly. I feel so hopeless every time I read an article like this. I've joined climate activist groups and meetups, and I've donated to orgs and political candidates. But I just feel like there's so much more damage to be done before we get to substantial improvements, it's so disheartening
First off, I'm vegetarian and generally climate-conscious. I think we humans should do what we can in order to protect our planet. I think we can do a lot to keep the planet a good place for all living beings.
But to also say something unpopular, humans are part of the natural world. So these human driven changes to nature are just 'nature changing nature'. I understand that we are potentially causing mass extinctions, but this needs to be seen as natural unless you take for granted that humans are inherently 'special' which leads to speciesism. So, this might just be the way planets with intelligent species evolve, they outcompete the others and exploit natural resources to their benefit. It might just be a biological/evolutionary law.
Also, to be fair, _most_ of life on earth will survive this. Bacteria outnumber all other class of organisms IIRC, and they are shown to survive in truly challenging conditions.
> unless you take for granted that humans are inherently 'special' which leads to speciesism
It is true humans are part of nature, but we are unique in our capacity for causal understanding and foresight. We are the only species that can understand the long-term consequences of our actions and actively choose to change course. If our ability to exploit is natural, our ability to act with foresight and restraint is equally natural. Framing the present-day destruction as a natural consequence of some "evolutionary law" to me is an "appeal to nature" fallacy that can be used to absolve both individual and collective responsibility.
Yes, this is perhaps a way (it seems far too presumptive to say "the way") planets with intelligent species evolve. We are perhaps entering the Great Filter, or one of them.
> Also, to be fair, _most_ of life on earth will survive this
Literally true, but I'd argue a semantic deflection. It doesn't engage with the core idea of the destruction of complex ecosystems that we are witnessing and commenting on.
That said and to the point: I have tried to really focus on and take comfort in the idea "deep time", and the sincere belief that for as much destruction as we create, there will be more and different beauty in the far, far future. Yet where the Louvre to burn, how much comfort would it be to me that over the next 1000 years other artists will create yet more great works?
Blaming "profiteering and ever-increasing growth" is way too easy.
Can any legislature get away with dramatically increasing taxes on meat, fish, gas, and plane tickets, just at a level high enough to account for environmental externalities? Even dictatorships couldn't get away with it because it would cause too much unrest.
Why do you think that is? Hint: taxing people buying food, which is getting worse and worse, while the top 0.01% gets more and more rich and keeps making it worse, is maybe not the solution people should embrace that you think it is...
An easier path would be to stop subsidizing the core of what is making junk foods to begin with. For that matter, at least in the US, having individual states require limitations of importing pre-processed goods could help too.
I've thought that it might be an idea for more states to require at least half of all beef and chicken to be imported into the state in at least half-carcass form. This would incentivize local farming, and local processing, reducing the more centralized processing and the environmental impacts could be further reduced in a lot of ways. That's just for meat.
Forcing insurance company accounting to average to single-payer modals and limit coverage combinations to no more than 3 choices across the nation could help with another part. Refactoring all federally funded insurance (medicare/medicaid/va/federal-employees) into a non-profit insurance corp that does likewise and any private company can also buy policies from would help to. Finally, establish "part time" work as no more than 10 hours a week averaged per 4 week window. Then require all employers to provide medical insurance for all workers that meets what the npo insurance provides.
The recent changes to USDA food guidelines are a step in the right direction, mostly... but there's still room to improve. Education in and of itself should improve dramatically. For that matter, actually having schools "make" most of their food instead of relying on premade/packaged goods would be a massive step in a right direction. Have every student participate in meal preparation at least a few hours a week as part of school work would help a lot.
I'd like to see some incentivization for more companies returning to a dividends model that includes employee profit sharing as part of said formula. I think this would do a LOT to shore up the middle class again.
Sorry, just went off on a total tangent... hitting reply anyway, but don't take anything too serious/deep... these thoughts are kind of always lingering in the back of my mind... I've just never been in a position to actually act on any of them politically.
Thanks for a thoughtful and longer-form reply. All of these ideas absolutely make sense - and their challenges and compromises could be worked on, of course.
But, even starting to think about each of them, I can't escape the frame of the current socio-economic structure, where short-term profits currently trump all, and influence of the aforementioned "0.01%" (or whatever we call it) is direct, heavy and effective, and all of that brought us here to a large extent in the first place.
In such a reality of ours, these kinds of initiatives don't go far - and even if surfaced in the media, there is a significant portion of population who would be very strongly against them, due to how opinions have been shaped and polarised over past decades.
It does seem almost impossible from current perspective.
Cool, you can fix the wealth inequality. But you also need to fix the excessive consumption of beef, fuel, and every other CO2-emitting good, whether consumed by you or by the "top 0.001%". You can't use "wealth inequality" as an excuse to delay action on climate change. Those goods' consumption needs to go down.
Fuel is trickier and requires investments and a transition period, but a beef tax would be trivial, and there are infinite substitute goods available.
They’re blaming entities with power. E.g. 90% of the US have no impact on policy evidenced by there being no correlation between their policy preferences and real policy (2011 Princeton study).
> Can any legislature get away with dramatically increasing taxes on meat, fish, gas, and plane tickets, just at a level high enough to account for environmental externalities? Even dictatorships couldn't get away with it because it would cause too much unrest.
Is the idea to increase the VAT or something? The taxes on consumption?
Okay, so how would this work? You increase these taxes so that the bad consumers don’t travel for pleasure (just companies for business). Eventually people just buy what they need, like food which is presumably decently locally sourced, enough clothes to not freeze or be indecent. You’re still left with gas for commuting to job because people live an hour from work not out of choice but because of real estate prices. And what are in the stores are Made in China or Vietnam because that’s how the global market works; cheap shipping from cheap countries.
But these taxes would organically change all of that?
The usual narrative conveniently focuses on how Joe Beergut is causing problems by driving to work. And that this is how taxation should work; individual income, individual consumption, individual taxes. The more and more “libertarian”, the more the narrative slide towards taxes on income, taxes on consumption, and eventually just a flat tax because that is “fair”. But that seems to leave the big blindspot of corporations and individuals that might own fleets of trucks that of course tax the road infrastructure—no taxes for them?
But what headway could be made if the externalities were all caused by Joe Beergut. Libertarians and the environmental narrative might agree.
Sometimes those stories try too much to impress. I recorded a documentary series "How to kill a puppy and get rich" about street dogs in Romania and the business around them, and I had to stop it after 10 seconds, not exaggerating. Folks, I want to know the mafia and story, but I can't stand to see and hear that torture...
We've always consumed and extracted until we run out, but only very recently started actually tracking it and taking any preventative measures at all. Will take yet more time to gain momentum in that direction. The consequences will be too obvious and unavoidable for the next few generations to stagnate like we have.
There was a Norwegian TV series called Catastrophe or something to educate the whole family about how insecure and bad the future is. What to do if a Russian van keeps driving through your neighorhood. What to do in a natural catastrophe.
How nice. Us adults who have ruined the planet[1][2] and now we are lecturing the youngins about how to deal with this suckage.
With a bizarrely cherry narration. Did you know things are about to suck for you? Just your usual shameless state TV programming.
But we, with our particular national programming, are just supposed to act like we were just spoiled brats that now have to live without dessert post-dinner. The “dessert generation” indeed.
[1] Um akshually, we haven’t ruined the planet—the planet is just minerals! It doesn’t care. We are just ruining the foundation for our own comfortable exi— yeah no kidding.
No, we're very resilient bastards, we're going to let the huge majority of species go extinct before we go ourselves. We're already in a mass extinction event and we're just getting started.
Serious questions, how is this destruction and not just "change?" It seems throughout time the world has experienced acute shifts, dying offs and other events. In those transition periods many animals that you know and love today finally got a shot at main character roles. Heck the reduction of o2 in the air that killed/shrunk a lot of dinosaurs is basically the opening slave for you to be able to write this Hacker News comment.
None of this is to say don't mourn or long for any of this, but the show doesnt end, the charecters just change.
Well, it is change, but that doesn't mean it's not destruction. While the world has experienced mass die-offs before, the hallmark of the planet's current situation is distinguished by its unprecedented speed and the fact that it is being driven by a single species' behavior rather than geological cycles or cosmic externalities.
To repeat myself in another comment: I have tried to really focus on and take comfort in the idea "deep time", and the sincere belief that for as much destruction as we create, there will be more and different beauty in the far, far future. Yet where the Louvre to burn, how much comfort would it be to me that over the next 1000 years other artists will create yet more great works? In the same way, how long will it take the earth to return to such complexity and diversity of life? Many, many millenia.
> I do volunteer, donate, and advocate and I won't use my extreme pessimism as an excuse not to engage.
I think it is ok to not engage. The idea that you can impact the world is largely an artifact of modernity. In reality, capital is more than happy to let you take the blame for its own suicidal tendencies.
I understand what you're saying. I appreciate the thought behind it. But in the end, I do not agree. I cannot be certain where my actions will and won't ultimately help accrue to impact; the pebble knows not the impact that its ripples will have. If you care about something, I think you should be involved.
Certainty that your involvement is inconsequential requires too much intellectual hubris, it precludes the possibility that you may be wrong in your forecasts so you can let yourself off the hook for any effort. I get it, I do, but I think that's mind poison. Surprises to happen, the world is chaotic, yesterday's longshot becomes tomorrow's surprise.
And, if nothing else, many of the efforts you can contribute to can have a clear and demonstrable impact at a more local level, or for a more limited time, even if it doesn't solve or mitigate the larger issue in the long run. Is it a waste of time for me to get involved in river clean-ups, or to work with a crew to re-wild an abandoned golf course, or remove asur honeysuckle from nearby native forests? Maybe you'd say "yes" because we'll have to keep doing it again, but that's the work with most things that matter.
But on the plus side a few companies increased shareholder value. Can you imagine if we had fewer products, or didn't push the human population its theoretical maximum?
Who is we? Which we opted to push the planet to carrying capacity? Is it? What is the capacity? Are the decreasing birthrates across the world really the Earth's theoretical maximum? What does it mean to have fewer products, which things precisely should we not have? Who should be in charge of setting this?
> That is this improves a marker for good health without improving health
There is a substantial body of existing research to peruse about the impact of regular sauna use on health outcomes, much of it from Finland given the prevalence of sauna usage there allowing for larger sample sizes. It's a body of evidence rather than one knock-out experimental design.
Much of that body of evidence relies on self-reported and self-assigned sauna usage rather than actual randomized trials, and also the papers show massive risk reductions that do not really fit with the country-level data (e.g., if saunas are that good for cardiovascular health and finns use them that much, why do they have similar rates of CV disease as neighboring countries that don't use that much sauna?)
Much of it is, sure, but certainly not all of it! On your comparison to Sweden, be cautious! Finns generally have a higher risk and incidence of cardiovascular disease compared to native Swedes - in fact, they have some of the highest risk in the world!
Research from Earric Lee and/or Jari Laukkanen from this past decade will have clinical trials with controlled groups rather than just long-term population tracking. There are within-Finland studies comparing high-risk Finns who use the sauna 4 to 7 times a week against high-risk Finns who use it only once a week, showing a clear effect (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25705824/). Here is a non-randomized experiment showing a dose-response (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29048215/).
Those are just indications of information available. I would also argue that while of course randomized experiments are ideal, it is a mistake to dismiss all other forms of evidence so readily, especially with such preponderance of it.
The first study shows a 0.37 hazard ratio for frequent sauna use. That’s better than a lot of the HRs reported for physical activity. It’s even better than not smoking. It just doesn’t really fit.
Also, the fact that there are practically no sauna related studies outside of Nordic populations is suspicious too. I bet that with those hazards ratios a lot of people have tried to study the effects more, it’s suspicious there’s practically nothing out there.
There's more research for you to explore if you're interested, but you sound more closed than curious if I'm honest. Maybe looking more into it will change your mind, maybe not!
I explored quite a bit because I was curious to see how it was possible that sauna had these great effects and why no one used it outside of Finland. But to this point I haven’t seen anything that really supports the idea that sauna is such a massive health protector as claimed. It’s probably beneficial, yes, but the real benefits are probably far lower than claimed.
"On the other hand, Perrault noted that 'Epoch AI independently estimates Grok 4’s emissions to be significantly higher at approximately 140,000 tons of CO₂.'"
I realize these are still estimates, but when the other independent analysis nearly doubles the outcome I'm not left feeling optimistic. One could argue some numbers from others are underestimates... which of course just bums me out all the more!
I agree 100% if those are the only two options. I guess my point is that it's fair to assume that Elon's crew is doing the bare minimum in terms of efficiency and pollutant mitigation-- at least when compared to other data centers who do legally compliant business with real power companies.
I worked as a part-time bank teller from age 1999-2007 (not continuously). Over that time the volume of silver certificates and other special currency coming in dropped DRAMATICALLY. From 1999-2003 I'd say I would see those bills come in about every other month; I don't think I saw a single one in the final two years I worked the job.
I "purchased" (i.e., exchanged my own money for) every bill and coin that came in. And before anyone makes any assumptions, I had permission from the bank manager.
The Windows app doesn't always (or even usually, in my experience) stay synced with the webapp, so I only use webapp now. Wondering if the same will be true for the Mac app.
> It's quite solid: most of these places are oversold, overcrowded, not that interesting, or a combination of the above.
I would disagree with almost everything this person has written. I think you have to be completely incurious or cynical to derive no wonder from the Grand Canyon or to dismiss Zion so completely.
Even Congaree National Park - an easy target - is to me a wonderful spot due to its east coast old growth forests (not many of those!) and the truly marvelous bald cypress trees which are very unique. You know what else it has? A magical, truly magical display of synchronized fireflies. This is a rare wonder in the world!
If you've no interest in the natural world or only very select elements of it, then sure, I guess the author's point is something worth reading. And I did recognize the humor in it, but to me that humor was a filter on top of a toxic way to experience the magic of the natural world, preserved in our National Parks.
The point I will agree with the author on: the petrified forest will be a total disappointment if you are visiting based on the name and have no idea what it actually is.
Agreed. I've been to many canyons, and the Grand Canyon is truly a marvel - it's stunning, it took my breath away and still does. Just go and look at it for 15 minutes? That's all you can muster? "Featureless" steep inclines? No mention of the biodiversity? What?!
The Grand Canyon is in the rare club of places I've been that surpassed my high expectations.
I say to anyone who asks me about the GC "it will completely surpass any expectations you have of it, even if you take this into account". Nothing can prepare you for the scale of it, even if you've been there before and/or been in the Utah canyon parks. No photo, no video can capture the experience of being on the edge of it nor being down in it.
> The answer to that is the only one that matters.
This statement rests on the belief that absolute crime rate is the only thing that matters, and is a cousin to the "I have nothing to hide!" response from people who care little for intrusions to their privacy. Are you in favor of giving law enforcement authorities a way to unlock all private electronic devices?
I'm willing to tolerate the presence of some crime in the name of personal liberty. I do not think my whereabouts should be known on demand by government actors just because I drive a car.
You’re going to be so shocked to find out the tracking device the government tricked you to put in your pocket is even worse. Police can run geofenced dragnets whenever they want, and all you got was the ability to shitpost on the Internet.
You’ll be even more shocked when biometric login isn’t protected by the 5th amendment. Possibly, even more shocked when you find out about XKEYSCORE.
ALPR is bad, of course, but in terms of actual invasion of privacy there are far bigger kraken sized fish to fry that we have accepted as just… completely normal and even necessary to function in our society. It’s only natural that they continue to push the boundaries. Almost like giving up rights for security has consequences we were warned about 250 years ago.
I won't be shocked (I don't have biometric logins enabled, thankyouverymuch), but does that mean I just celebrate it, or give up in all circumstances? I'm not yet a kicked dog, in either behavior or attitude.
Unless something has changed (or I'm simply clueless), it's not quite so trivial to ask where my phone was on January 30th. Camera surveillance is not time-limited.
It’s quite common for cell phone carriers to provide law enforcement with historical records of which towers a phone was connected to at specific times. Also the phone itself stores detailed location history, including which wifi networks it connected to, allowing police to get someone’s movements if their phone is seized as evidence. Police can even use battery temperature history to get an idea of whether the phone was on someone’s body, outside in the heat/cold, etc.
Which is more true: are you trying to comfort yourself with this comment, or do you find those who work in the name on conservation so loathsome that you'll grasp onto anything to dismissively roll your eyes at them?
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