There's thousands of humanitarian discussions that we could discuss - human trafficking, politics, wars, global warming etc. Speaking for myself, it's not that I don't want to discuss these issues - it's just that I come to HN for tech-specific topics. I don't think the community should be judged as having no compassion or care of the environment just because they want to keep the HN topics focused on tech.

But regardless, the story made it to the front page so obviously enough people felt it was relevant.