Humans have caused 1.5 °C of long-term global warming according to new estimates

Since this is the most important and urgent topic humanity should be working on: why isn’t this the case? Idiocracy is here. Don’t look up.

We have to throw everything into the race. But how to do this with the current inner workings of our societies? How to overcome greed? What about the power of (social) media? Why do we have Netflix and so on? How can we make people spend their time solving climate crisis, saving our planet earth?

Pro tip: reducing a gas that occupies 0.04% (aka 400ppm) of our atmosphere isn’t going to fix this. The warming of our home has much more to do with astrophysics than puny humans. Do you think The Boring Company is about solving traffic problems?

Saving the planet doesn't make the stock prices go up, so no one will care.

Private companies are now getting their own nuclear power stations to power AI. We can't get new nuclear power for public use, but private for profit initiatives? Absolutely.

> Saving the planet doesn't make the stock prices go up, so no one will care.

I mean, it _could_, if you set up a market structure to incentivize it. CAISO (California) has done this, and now solar and storage costs are plummeting and associated industries are booming as the solar+storage solution starts outcompeting other forms of energy production.

Heck, solar+storage is even booming in ERCOT (Texas), which has no specific market incentives for it. Their spot market swings so wildly that storage makes money on power arbitrage and transmission easing.

No, humanity doesn't need to work on it at all, instead, humanity should be working on a peaceful painless extinction, because that will happen anyway, but not necessarily in a painless way.

It's classic game theory. The benefits are public and delayed, and the losses are private and immediate. This dramatically incentivizes defection.

Few people are going to give up their modern convinces so their great grandchildren will have better lives. This behavior is everywhere. Few people give up, say, their excess capital to reduce suffering in developing countries, or eating meat for the benefits of the animals that suffer to produce it.

I've gone to enough city council meetings in the last two decades advocating for exactly the things that would incentivize GHG reductions while increasing some quality of life (everything from urbanism, to walkability, to dutch-style cycle infrastructure, to expanded train systems, to general electrification). The number of people who won't even try an induction range because they view a gas range as important to their identity is astounding. Most people are against repurposing any public streets for transportation alternatives, even in the most left-wing cities, much less the absurdity of actually proposing anyone should actually give up their car.

Any nuclear power plants being built decreases the marginal cost of building another. If private companies are willing to front the cost of building the first one in recent times, it may help.

Since certain political parties seem to feel it justified to throw their antediluvian morals about life in my face, I am responding in kind. I believe global warming is the central moral issue of our time. I hold each person who has voted for a political party that supports the continued carbon pollution personally responsible for the lives and welfare of my children and my childen's children. They are morally bankrupt and care nothing for the Earth and Humanity at large. As a technically-minded person, I believe we can definitely science our way out of this. But hope is not a plan. Most of these deluded voters have no clue how to solve this, they are hoping that we technophiles will pull a rabbit our of our collective hats and save them. But clearly there are no simple answers here, no miracle feats of engineering or unobtanium that will save us, just legal and regulatory changes necessary to hold capitalism and greed accountable for the changes it has wrought on the pale blue dot we all depend upon. We have done little to none of the tasks necessary to stop this train. I am angry and filled with sadness for my children, as the greedy few and ignorant many are destroying the little hope we have left.

It's also a coordination problem. You won't help your children (the timeline is not that long) by personally giving up your "modern [conveniences]". You need a substantial portion of the population to do that to have any hope of moving the needle. So the choice is between getting the benefits or not, your children will suffer anyway.

Stock prices cannot go up without if the planet is destroyed

> humanity should be working on a peaceful painless extinction

We're already way ahead of you. Check out developed country birth rates.

They don't seem to care about that part.

Wealthly west is dying, fertility rate per woman is way below 2.1.

United States: 1.67 live births per woman (2022)

European Union: 1.46 live births per woman (2022)

It's even worse after covid.

However, Niger has 6.4 per woman.

Yep, the primary problem is Africa.. but if the earth becomes inhabitable (this will happen sooner or later) this problem will be solved. But it'll most likely be brutal and preventing that brutality is precisely what I think humanity should focus on..

Yep, it's getting better in developed countries, but this will not lead to anything good unless we deal with those countries with very high fertility rates (like in Africa)..

Coordination problems aren’t typically too difficult. The USB C switch, or the python 3 switch all had serious frictional costs, but are generally doable in aggregate.

I think asserting it is a coordination problem is just a self-serving excuse for defection. It’s not as if we can’t switch if not everyone switches all at once. We just don’t want to go through the frictional costs of switching if others defect.

As a wise man once said: „nature decays! But latinum is forever.“

Why is an Africa a problem?

Read the last sentence of my comment again.. and again, until you understand what I'm talking about. LLMs won't help as they're brainwashed to avoid this topic.

You make some alarmist claims that cloud or could not happen. Climate change constantly and we as humans have ability to adapt as history shows.

How AI could be brainwashed?

Extinction on earth will happen and that's an undeniable fact.

AI is made by humans, humans are biased towards existence, and if AI came to conclusion that humans should stop reproducing that would be seen as "oh, that's a dangerous AI that wants to kill human race".

It sounds more like your opinion, or wish.

Technically speaking, AI cannot be brainwashed if it does not have a brain.