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447 points Brajeshwar | 5 comments | 03 Sep 23 14:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.835s | source
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palata ◴[04 Sep 23 10:21 UTC] No.37379036[source]▶
There are two french persons who have really had a big impact on how I see the energy crisis (climate is a consequence of fossil fuels, hence energy).

One is Aurelien Barrau, astrophysicist and philosopher, who made me realize that CO2 is not the problem. If we changed fossil fuels with fusion, we would still be living a mass extinction. We are destroying biodiversity because of our way of life.

The other one is Jean-Marc Jancovici, who explains that the root cause is fossil fuels. Climate is just a consequence (a very bad one, hence we need to solve the energy problem even faster).

I strongly recommend his book, which explains his ideas really well. Probably works better if you know Europe a bit, but I think that the English edition is modified a bit for US citizen: https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-End-Blain-Christophe-eb...

replies(1): >>37380029 #
1. nojvek ◴[04 Sep 23 12:54 UTC] No.37380029[source]▶
When you say extinction because of loss of biodiversity what do you mean?
replies(1): >>37387056 #
2. palata ◴[05 Sep 23 02:02 UTC] No.37387056[source]▶
Sorry, I mean that the biodiversity loss is a mass extinction. We have lost 2/3 of trees, 2/3 of mammals and 2/3 of insects, that's a fact. It will continue (because we are not changing anything) and that is not a consequence of climate change. Climate change will just make it worse.

It is a consequence of how we live, including habitat loss, pollution, etc. Nuclear fusion (which almost surely won't happen in a useful timeline) is not a solution to our biodiversity problem, only to our climate problem. But if we could today do nuclear fusion in our smartphones, we would still be in a mass extinction. So we need to change more than just CO2 emissions (unless we don't care about biodiversity, but I do).

replies(2): >>37406237 #>>37416572 #
3. panarchy ◴[06 Sep 23 15:05 UTC] No.37406237[source]▶
Not that I disagree with much of this, but is there a hypothesis as to what exactly we're doing that's causing the biodiversity collapse if not for the altered atmosphere, climate chaos, and heating (which seems to be implied)? Do they suspect that it primarily from the land/chemical/pesticide (ab)use or something else?
replies(1): >>37415909 #
4. palata ◴[07 Sep 23 07:48 UTC] No.37415909{3}[source]▶
Not an expert, but I think it's a mix of pollution, pesticides, habitat loss, intensive fishing, etc.

When we have energy, we just transform the world to optimize some metric (profit, comfort, etc), and transforming wild places just breaks balance and makes species disappear.

5. xjm ◴[07 Sep 23 09:29 UTC] No.37416572[source]▶
In addition, even selfish people should care about loss of biodiversity if only because it facilitates disease transmission, and so is a threat to food security and public health.