Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by julienb_sea 1815 days ago
If the choice is reducing emissions or saving lives from dehydration, I wonder which is the appropriate course of action.
3 comments

Probably something else.

Gas burns and makes CO2 which increases temperature which increases the likelihood of more dehydration events in future. This is the wrong choice. Actually the long term right choice is not to burn gas anymore.

Letting people die is obviously the wrong choice too.

When all choices are wrong we must find another choice that can be right. Somebody wrote solar energy, somebody wrote nuclear energy, somebody argued that both are wrong. I don't suggest a solution but I point out that limiting ourselves to binary choices is the wrong way to think.

Problem is, carbon emissions make the dehydration worse by heating up the planet. It's counterproductive.
Which could completely destroy modern civilization over time. Once certain tipping points are crossed most of the earth could become uninhabitable for large parts of the year.