Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by refurb 1509 days ago
So if let's say, Myanmar doesn't stop using CFCs. What's your solution? Send in some Blue Helmets to enforce global law? And what if they start shooting back? You want to send your son or daughter there?

And not to mention the politics of rich countries sending soldiers into poor countries to enforce rules. Colonialism 2.0. "It's the developed world's obligations to drag the uncivilized nations into the the 21st century"?

Sounds familiar.

5 comments

A country emitting enough HCFCs to wipe the ozone layer within a decade is a threat to the security of every other nation on earth (due to increasing ionizing radiation). So yes. Economic sanctions and military intervention.

I don't have kids, but i am in military age ("Wehrfähiges Alter") myself.

Ok and do what? Destroy the countries economy? Station troops at factories? Seize all vehicles and remove CFCs? Take all their air conditioners?

The idea is ridiculous.

Occupy the country and enforce CFC-prohibiting legislature.
You mean like when the US occupied Vietnam and prohibited a revolution? Like that?
More like the occupation of Germany.
I would posit another opinion. Say the ozone opened up above your country. Crops are dying in mass. Heat has increased exponentially. It's unsafe for children to be outside.

You're god damn right I'd go to war.

> You want to send your son or daughter there?

That is why unmanned platforms are really important military development.

> So if let's say, Myanmar doesn't stop using CFCs. What's your solution? Send in some Blue Helmets to enforce global law?

But this is exactly why UN conspiracy theories are such a joke. The UN hardly ever enforces anything, because they can't. And the few times it does, it's typically US soldiers operating only nominally under the UN.

The UN is a bogeyman for ultranationalists, but it's mostly just issuing advisory guidelines with very little force behind them. It's not a global tyranny.

> Sounds familiar

Yeah, it sounds like the faulty science & religious justifications of Colonialism - but only matters if the current science is also faulty.

Is modern climate the same as Colonial race science? Or do we only act on what things superficially appear to be / sound like?

Residential schools in Canada were an effort to make sure the youth were formally educated as per Western standards (versus not even knowing how to read or write). That's not a faulty assumption, but it was terrible to use violence to force it on people using who never asked for it.

But it is pretty amazing how easily we can convince ourselves the oppression of others is for their own good, huh?

ok, premise: youth should be educated per Western standards

let's say that's a good premise.

Does that mean all implementations, whatever their details, are also good?

I don't think so. I don't think the logic follows.

> convince ourselves the oppression of others is for their own good, huh?

I' not sure I just did. You seem to have equated education to oppression by ignoring that not all education requires oppression. In fact, I think it's pretty telling that the crux of these matters (the oppression) is often a secret.