[vinceguidry]

We need easy solutions because hard solutions won't scale. We can't create modern economies in places that don't have the infrastructure. We tried doing that once, it's called colonialism and it generally sucked. Your "sustainable food system" is something we can't give to people.

[schiffern]

>Your "sustainable food system" is something we can't give to people.

No argument there. They need their own sustainable food system.

We all do, if humanity is to continue (which is all "sustainable" means — able to continue).

How could humanity possibly continue without a sustainable food system? Am I missing something? This seems pretty uncontroversial.

[vinceguidry]

I'm having trouble understanding what you're hoping to bring to the conversation. The basic problem is this. There are a great deal of resources that can be brought to bear on solving problems in the world. There are lots of philanthropists in the world, with lots of money.

The problem is picking the right problem. There are big problems, like hunger. No matter how many resources you have, you're never going to make a dent in world hunger.

There are smaller problems, like dam building. One could, conceivably, build all the dams in the world that need to be built. But just like the big problems, there's never going to be any shortage of these smaller problems to solve, and each effort needs to be managed and championed.

So you can't just solve all of them. You have to pick one at a time and throw everything you have at it. The problem is not resources, but ideas. We need really good ideas for how best to go about making the world a better place. A good idea needs to be simple, because it has to be scaled.

HN is a forum where one good idea could inspire someone to make a Kickstarter campaign, that could attract the attention of someone like Bill Gates, and could improve the lives of potentially millions of people. I wish more people took that seriously.

Malaria nets have their problems. But they've also helped eradicate malaria in many places. People look at stories like this and they think, "aww that was a stupid idea anyway! Silly billionaires." It's not a stupid idea. It's a great one that we need more of.

[schiffern]

Sorry if I was unclear. I'm not blaming the billionaires or the users of the nets.

You seem to be viewing the less-industrialized world as a philanthropic playground for the rich. Naomi Klein's comments about Richard Branson's climate prize seem especially pertinent here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdaxehd0cF0#t=2m44s

[vinceguidry]

> viewing the less-industrialized world as a philanthropic playground for the rich

So, you have nothing to bring to the discussion other than some silly moralizing.

If Richard Branson could fix global warming while keeping a silly grin on his face, tossing around a beach ball, would you pat him on the back like he's expecting you to do and tell him how great he is, or would you rather he just sit down and shut his stupid face because obviously global warming won't respond to such a simplistic approach? Even if it does?

[schiffern]

Morality does play a part here, but what you took for "moralizing" is me pointing out how the framing of the question constrains the answer. Specifically this passage:

>>>The basic problem is this. There are a great deal of resources that can be brought to bear on solving problems in the world. There are lots of philanthropists in the world, with lots of money.

Yes, those things are true. There are also people over there, and their participation matters at least as much as (and I would argue much more than) that of the wealthy elite.

In the case of the "carbon-sucking gizmo", the cure is worse than the disease. Even Branson-level cash can't change thermodynamics and evolution.

The Virgin Challenge finalists are conspicuously absent in their energy and land use analyses. I expect they suffer from the same problems as previous CCS "solutions" — energetically they can't compete with simply shutting down a coal plant, and in land use they can't compete with reseeding farmland to forest. So when you understand why those simpler methods aren't done, you'll understand the finalist's actual scaling problem.

It all washes out in the lifecycle analysis. Anything else is feel-good.