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It is often, when you find yourself in a hole, a good idea to stop digging it deeper. Maybe this is one of those other times, where more digging will help? But maybe not. Wasn't it just a year ago when folks were telling us Datacenters weren't going to impact power and water demand all that much?

Agreed in the strongest terms possible. It bothers me that we’re not in a collective five-alarm fire state of panic.

Better than just recommending we all turn the AC up to 11

I agree. Australia’s Greens stalled Labor’s social housing policy. Labor’s policy is half assed sh*t on a “go slow” for max publicity with minimum progress intended to put more $$$ in landlord’s hands while we need a return to public housing. Greens wanted more. Take crumbs, shout “WE WANT BETTER”

@volts.wtf I’ve rarely understood why folks don’t do prevention spending when the marginal cost is lower. Is it the notion that maybe it will just go away?

Yet it’s real and it should motivate people.

The problem is that the "emergencies" that the nomenklatura hype up & convince people require these not-great policies to handle are rarely the actual disasters ahead, & frequently aren't real at all. (eg "national debt") Basically we can't trust them. I don't know how we get something better.

Our version of ‘Project 2028’ might just be “See if we can repair even a quarter of the damage done under Project 2025 and DOGE.” Or even 10%?

"accelerating rate toward various intersecting apocalypses". Yep! "Try not too communicate in the register all the time". yep! "I think something close to panic is warranted". Yep! Wile E. Coyote is off the cliff, but he hasn't looked down yet. Surreal being surrounded by BAU behaviour.

Can you please explain what, concretely? I'm panicking, I'm panicking, but I don't have any great ideas about what to do about it

@volts.wtf saaaaaame

~$3k is 10kw of panels, and a ~$3K inverter, mounting racks, 2 roof guys and an electrician. Feds pay 50% of hardware, outright. Batteries free, utilities pay 50%. Train, certify crews, standard prices, fed loans. Every roof, in 10 years. 30 years of electricity. Fuck it, just do them all.

I’m hoping for the “small heart attack”, the minor survivable apocalypse that’ll create the impetus for change. Absent that I don’t see any governing capacity for big bets outside of China.

Fully agree. Also, the risk in doing the same thing as before is often dramatically underestimated. “Staying the course” is very risky in rapidly changing world.

At this point I'm kinda betting on the robots to replace us before we destroy everything and I'm not super sure that's a bad thing.

More people should be communicating in this register, things are bad, real bad, and it’ll take coordinated effort to make them better

This first post sounds as if you think we need to take big risks on going for transformative policies and I agree. The rest seem to argue for any incremental improvement—don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I certainly have been part of many such policy decisions in the past. Which?

A descendants' bank could offer oversight.

Why would they offer interest free credit with a 70 year delay before repayment? It would bankrupt even the largest banks multiple times over

if countries stop climate action, the descendants' bank stops paying their loans/bondholders and they have to go back to paying interest

The root cause is game theory. Anywhere game theory can be applied will incubate corruption. The remedy is to de-gamify politics.