> My guess is you and I see very different things despite consuming the very same article. I lean conservative/libertarian (generally speaking),

HN specifically avoids politics. In context to the in-scope article, when you say "conservative/libertarian" do you mean: fiscally conservative (haven't seen a deficit hawk in decades other than "Read my lips. No new taxes" followed by responsibly raising taxes), socially libertarian (Liberty as a fundamental right; if you're not violating the rights of others the government is not obligated or even granted the right to intervene at all), or conservative as in imposing your particular traditional standard of moral values which you believe are particular to a particular side of the aisle?

Or, do you mean that you're libertarian in regards to the need and the right to regulate business and industry in the interest of consumers ("laissez faire")? I'm certainly not the only person to observe that lack of regulation results in smog-filled cities due to un-costed 'externalities' in a blind pursuit of optimization for short-term profit.

At issue here, I think, is whether we think we can avert future escalations of costs by banding together to address climate change now; and how best to achieve the Paris Agreement targets that we set for ourselves (despite partisan denial, delusion, and indifference to increasing YoY costs [1]) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement

I'm personally and financially far more concerned about the long-term costs of climate change than a limited number of special interests who can very easily diversify and/or divest to take advantage of the exact same opportunities.

> and I am deeply distrustful of government (for extremely good reasons I believe), so I know for a fact that my interpretation of the article is going to be heavily distorted by that. Any logical inconsistency, ambiguousness, disingenuousness, technical dishonesty, or anything else along those lines is going to get red flagged in my mind, whereas others will read it in a much more forgiving fashion. And in an article on a different political hot topic, we will switch our behaviors.

While governments (and militaries (TODO)) do contribute substantially to emissions and resultant climate change, I think it unnecessary to qualify that unregulated decisions by industry should be the primary focus here. Industry has done far more to cause climate change than governments (which can more efficiently provide certain services useful to all citizens)

> In such threads, I think it would be extremely interesting for people with opposing views to post excerpts of the parts that "catch your attention", with an explanation of why. This is kind of what happens anyway, but I'm thinking with a completely different motive: rather than quoting excerpts with commentary to argue your ~political side of the issue with the goal of "winning the argument", take an unemotional, more abstract view of your personal cognitive processing of the article,

These people aren't doing jack about the problem because they haven't reviewed this chart:
"Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Time Series" (1980-2019) https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/time-series

Maybe they want insurance payouts, which result in higher premiums. Maybe the people who built in those locations should be paying the costs.

> and post commentary on ~why/how you believe you feel you consider that important on a psychological level. Psychological self-analysis is famously difficult, but even with moderate success I suspect some very interesting things would rise to the surface.*

They don't even care because they refuse to accept that it's a problem.

The article was ineffectual at addressing the very real problem.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20925127 :

> ( I had hoped that the other top-level post I posted here would develop into a discussion, but these excerpts seem to have bubbled up. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20919368 )

In this observational study of perceptions, college education was less predictive than party affiliation.

Maybe reframing this as a short-term money problem [1] would result in compassion for people who are suffering billions of dollars of loss every year.