[treebot]

I don't think the climate problem can be solved without some form of authoritarianism.

For most people, climate change does not affect their everyday lives. It primarily affects future generations, and non-humans. Caring about future generations is a form of long term thinking that most humans don't care for or are not capable of. Most people's long term thinking stops at their five year plan, or their kids' future. Very few people think about hundreds of years into the future, let alone thousands. Will this planet be habitable two thousand years from now? Very, very few people think that far ahead. Even less people care about the fate of non-humans.

Then when you throw in the fact that a lot of people have an incentive today to fight back against measures to combat climate change, because it would reduce their profits or threaten their job, the outlook is even more hopeless.

We are never going to get a majority of people on board with fighting climate change, at least not until it's affecting a majority of people's everyday lives. And by then, it will be far too late.

I think the only way is for the minority, who do think long term, to seize power and impose their will on the majority. And, I have to add, because most people think authoritarianism in any form is bad, that in this situation, the authoritarianism would be good, just, appropriate and the best course of action.

[jandrewrogers]

This assumes that humans understand the far future so well today that they can make decisions that will be effective and constructive in that context. Optionality has enormous value precisely because a lot can happen between now and then that no one can anticipate such that any decision made today will be ineffective or be actively damaging to good outcomes.

Imagine giving someone in 1920 authoritarian power to solve the problems of today, with virtually no information about the today.

[mrfusion]

Yikes. So scary that this is the top comment. Climate change can definitely be addressed at the corporate level with carbon taxes and even caps. No need to throw away our free and open society.

The fact that your go-to is to attack human rights is terrifying.

[treebot]

It is not a human right to make the planet uninhabitable for future generations

[mrfusion]

Of course not but restricting fundamental rights should be the last thing we try. Not the first.