[elcritch]

See I could agree with the first part. But then you add We have broken our world for the greed of a few. After that I sort of understand why so many folks reject the former – they're rejecting the empty moralizing.

If you truly believe climate change is real then also admit that "We all have broken the world", except perhaps some uncontacted peoples in the Amazon.

Anyone who has ridden in an automobile, a train, a plane, a powered boat has contributed. Anyone who has used or purchased goods transported with any of the above has as well. Anyone who's eaten crops grown with large amounts of industrial fertilizers has contributed (e.g. most of the world).

The oil companies just produce what everyone in the world wants and wants cheap.

[probably_wrong]

Not everyone's footprint is the same, though.

If I cut down my plane flight in half that means I'll take a plane every two years, meaning I'll also see my family half as much. You'd also have to include that, since I travel economy, you'd divide my contribution by ~350.

If Taylor Swift cuts her plane travel by half she'd "only" make 51 trips a year [1] on a plane that carries 12 and would still make more money in a year than what I'll see in my lifetime.

IMO, saying that both of us are contributing equally as much to global warming is just unfair.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-swift-spent-160-hours...

[elcritch]

I didn't say we're all equally culpable. We're not. Yet en masse we're all guilty to some degree.

There's only what 10's of thousands Taylor Swifts in the world. Yet there's billions of everyone else. The majority of greenhouse gasses likely come from the aggregate of everyone.

[II2II]

It doesn't always work that way.

A personal example: I don't drive. I use public transit a couple of times a year. I am in private cars maybe once every two year. I haven't flown in about 15 years. Clearly this is a contrived example. My energy use patterns are much more typical when using other metrics. That said, it is also the flip side of being a Taylor Swift of the world. There is a point in the developed world where the millions are using much more energy than the thousands.

I said developed world because there are also parts of the world that simply don't have access to my gratuitous level of energy use. To say that they are guilty of contributing based upon the technicality that they are directly or indirectly using a disproportionately small amount of energy is beyond insulting. It is also a blatant way to paper over our responsibility.

[elcritch]

> Globally, the poorest 50% emit roughly 4.4 billion tons to 4.7 billion tons equivalent annually, accounting for about 11% to 12% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.

The “less-developed” bottom half of the world population still produces about a tenth of the annual co2 production annually.

That means instead of potential climate catastrophe in 10 years it’d take 100 years if the top half disappeared tomorrow. Obviously an overly simplistic argument but its meant to show that the problem would just be slower but not gone if we got rid of the “wealthy”.

Now I don’t believe they’re equally as culpable. Yet I also firmly believe the vast majority would choose the same as us in developed world have if they could.

Ultimately that’s more of my point. What’s happening isn’t due to some evil plot by the ultra wealthy. It’s the result of human nature.

Some unscrupulous ultra wealthy might hasten it by a few years or a decade, but the core problem is human nature and an abundance of fossil fuels.

The “wealthy” are also the most likely to prevent catastrophe by developing renewables, etc.

[ryandrake]

But OP said exactly that: "We (meaning all of us) have broken our world for the greed of a few."

[gpvos]

> I didn't say we're all equally culpable.

That didn't come quite through. You seemed to be taking a rather extreme position, while replying to someone who just pointed out the systemic issues, which of course don't absolve anyone of their own responsibility.

[0x1ceb00da]

> If Taylor Swift cuts her plane travel by half she'd "only" make 51 trips a year [1] on a plane that carries 12 and would still make more money in a year than what I'll see in my lifetime.

Taylor swift travels so much because the people want to see her in person.

[abdullahkhalids]

There are only about 1.6 billion cars in the world. Only about 20% of the world population has access to a personal car. Less than that have ever ridden a plane, and less than 10% fly with any regularity.

A super majority of greenhouse gases emitted are due to the lives of the top 20-30% of the population (of which unfortunately I am a part). The remaining people's contributions are small. 80:20 rule in full glory.

Worst of all, the 80% are the most impacted by climate change as TFA illustrates.

[dheera]

The biggest hope at this point honestly is that fewer people are having kids and we're on track to halve the world population in another couple generations. Greenhouse emissions cut by half.

[abdullahkhalids]

The per capita emissions of USA/Canada/Gulf countries have to be cut by a factor of 8-10 to reach sustainable levels. The per capita emissions of EU/China/SEA have to cut by 4 to reach sustainable levels. All within the next 25 years if we want to avoid crossing tipping points.

Halving the population in 50 years is not a realistic plan.

[_carbyau_]

> Halving the population in 50 years is not a realistic plan.

Here are some projections to support that statement. Supposedly 2084 is peak population.

https://population.gov.au/sites/population.gov.au/files/2025...

I haven't read up on all the assumptions made for those projections. If something unassumed pops up that makes things substantially worse then the population peak would come earlier I guess. But that's a gamble.

[genxy]

Not all participants are equal.

You are conflating participation from equality, yes everyone participates in the system, it takes a lot of privileged to be able to disassociate ones self from the system itself. The power dynamic within the system favors the wealthy, whom have decided that this is the path we are going down.

[ncruces]

Writing about "the wealthy" on a site like HN is always interesting.

Who do you mean?

The vast majority of HN commenters are 10%ers and very many are 1%ers.

But there's always someone richer to complain about.

[brewdad]

In a global context, pretty much anyone on this site is a 10%er. Most of us are 1%ers.

[ryandrake]

HN loves to nit-pick about what "the wealthy" actually means, but in most contexts, when someone complains "the wealthy" did this or "the wealthy" did that, what they mean are a very, very tiny number of people who are not on HN, not in anyone on HN's family, and not intimately known by anyone on HN.

When someone says "the wealthy" are getting rich to everyone's detriment, they are almost never talking about the doctor who lives three doors down the street from you who drives a nice new 911 or the guy who owns 20 laundromats in your city. I think we all know who we're talking about.

[JumpCrisscross]

Broadly speaking, when anyone says the rich or the wealthy, they mean people richer than themselves. I’ve seen everyone from line workers to multimillionaires do it.

[otherme123]

Reminds me of a casual conversation with a 1%, maybe a 0.1%: "we [meaning he and his wife] are not wealthy. All of our friends own a yatch, but we don't".

[JumpCrisscross]

Yup. The actual rich have this or that cabin in their private jets–my neighbour just rents his privatet jets, et cetera.

[littlexsparkee]

Are they guiding policy and making decisions at corporations or just living within the existing framework? He's talking about the people shaping the world and future.

[tracerbulletx]

Not all people have equal culpability. It's absurd to be like, well you havent successfully waged an eco-terroristic war to overturn the system so you're just as bad as someone actively leading a lobby group to cast doubt on the science, or bribing politicians not to act on it, or even just as someone who votes in favor of people who resist action. In fact it's just another tactic of denialism to say "if you can't personally solve this problem just give up and caring is ineffective so you shouldn't care"

[jyounker]

Fossil fuel companies have spent the the last forty years in an organized campaign to prevent the US (and by extension, the world) from taking action against global warming.

There's a great book on the subject called "Merchants of Doubt" by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.

[gpvos]

It's moralizing, yes, but far from empty. The rich and powerful companies, near-forced to be amoral by our economic system, and run by the greedy by natural selection, have resources to influence policy, public opinion and information availability that others don't have.

[Kiterman]

If it weren't for oil companies going out of their way to sabotage alternative fuels through politicians, misinformation, and a myriad of other abuses I'd be more inclined to believe you. Not everyone is equally culpable in this, there are many who have been trying to get rid of oil as the main fuel source for a long time.

[stavros]

Hell, even Greenpeace had a huge campaign against nuclear, ensuring we burn coal for decades more than we should have.

[andai]

I worked at a warehouse last year. Managers always breathing down my neck to work faster. Constant stress for 9 hours straight. (Okay, we got a lunch break at least. There are worse jobs!)

It got me wondering. Alright, what's his problem. Well, his manager is breathing down his neck too. It's literally his job to make my day as stressful as possible. Okay, why? You trace that chain and where does it end up? Fat capitalist?

Well, something something mutual funds. Okay, that's beyond me.

But what else? Well, where's that pressure coming from? It's the customer. If the company stopped whipping us, and let us work at a normal pace, they'd need 40% more employees to cover the work. Delivery costs would increase proportionally, and suddenly grandma would stop buying from us. She'd go to the company that whips their employees. The whole place would go under.

Something something, Moloch is my nan?

[xg15]

No profit margins or shareholders at all of course...

[andai]

Well, it's just a slice of the picture. It's just the one nobody likes to talk about.

A different slice: went to the supermarket the other day, late on a Sunday. There were two workers in the whole supermarket, both elderly women in their 70s.

Economy sucks here so pensions are bad, they chose to keep working.

But obviously they didn't chose to work on Sunday night. They didn't have a choice there.

If they owned the place, they would have closed at a normal hour.

One of them let out an exasperated sigh when I walked in. More work for her, but not more profit.

I overheard one say to the other, "and then at the end of the month you go to the bank and collect 800 Euros."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH2pFTx_8VE

[baq]

two things can be true at the same time. oil and coal before it pulled billions of people out of extreme poverty, but the debt taken on in terms of CO2 will come due. if the gulf stream stops, we're all in for a ride - or worse, our grandchildren.

I'm personally in the 'drill and burn as fast as possible in a mad rush to fusion power' camp so we get a way to fix this shit rather than the 'stop civilization from doing its thing overnight' camp. alas, neither is happening.

[actionfromafar]

But then why not "mad rush to build battery banks everywhere" instead of "mad rush to fusion power"?

It can't very well be any more expensive.

Batteries give returns right now, fusion only in the future. Maybe.

[baq]

Oh we definitely need batteries, too, regardless of fusion ever coming online or not.

[conception]

There’s a popular comic for this take - https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

[sltkr]

That comic is popular only because it absolves people of personal responsibility, not because it makes a great point.

[gpvos]

In what way does it do that? It in fact strongly urges people to take responsibility and stop being hypocritical.

[sltkr]

You're not taking the comic at face value are you? The orange shirt guy is supposed to be the loser who is just trying to "gotcha" the people in the other panels.

The comic isn't even _always_ wrong; sometimes people are using gotchas or accusations of hypocrisy to dismiss otherwise valid concerns. Importantly, just because someone is a hypocrite, that doesn't mean they're wrong.

But in practice, the comic is often used by as a get-out-of-hypocrisy-free card by people who never want to to take any personal action to practice what they preach. Example:

Alice: I loooove my new iPhone 2026 Supermax XXL, it's at least 0.163% shinier than last years model! Oh but I heard that seven Chinese workers died in the Apple factory and that is soooo sad! I wish that could be avoided somehow. Oh well!

Bob: I agree, working conditions in Apple factories are deplorable. If you want to do something about it, you can consider buying a Fairphone instead, or simply delaying upgrading as long as possible. You don't really need to buy a new phone every year, you know!

Alice: What? You expect me to walk around with last year's model like a poor person? I would literally die of embarrassment. And of course I _would_ totally buy the Fairphone if only it came in rose gold with sequin bedazzling which is an absolute necessity to match my purse.

Bob: Okay but these seem like really petty reasons to keep buying Apple products. I find it difficult to take your complaints about working conditions in Apple factories seriously when you're not willing to make any sacrifices or lifestyle changes yourself to improve the situation.

Alice: Oh, I see. You're one of those "gotcha" guys. [Link to comic] Here, this tells me you're just a smartass, and I can do whatever I like while complaining about whatever I want. After all, I'm _just_ like the medieval peasant who wants to improve society somewhat.

[gpvos]

The number of straw men in your post is dazzling.