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The message I"m getting is not that I have to prepare for something or change energy sources, it's that "our lifestyle is killing the planet much faster than we

The message I"m getting is not that I have to prepare for something or change energy sources, it's that "our lifestyle is killing the planet much faster than we thought". CO2 levels is just one of a myriad of indicators that are off the scale now. By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Winning, getting ahead, being number one, outcompeting, etc. All those ego-centric values that are the basis of our socio-economic systems - focused on disconnecting the `self` from `other` - are wrong on a fundamental level. Ultimately it is the lack of spirituality in people that's killing the planet. Religions, Inc are a major part of the problem, not a solution. By 'spirituality' I mean the deep realisation of the larger context in bio-space and bio-time that I as a creature exist in: My body is just a cell of a larger organism - Earth - and my life is a drop in the river of life that's been flowing for billions of years - the constant unfolding and re-merging of the DNA molecule. `I` am the privileged observer of this Process and my ultimate mission is to leave it in better shape than I found it. Well, most of us are failing at it.

specialist 9y ago
"Ultimately it is the lack of spirituality in people that's killing the planet." Bad accounting is killing our planet. Neglecting important parts of the balance sheet creates perverse incentives.
- mikelyons 9y ago
  If everyone was seeking enlightenment, there would be no incentives. Incentives are entirely constructions of the ego. Also, most of the posters seem ignorant to the fact that science and rationality are equally as dogmatic as the most fundamentalist religion. All beliefs are false, there is no argument against that.
  - specialist 9y ago
    No contest. I can't argue spirituality, enlightenment. "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." While I personally believe we'd all be better off reconnecting with awe, wonder, our place in the universe... When's the last time you watched the Milky Way? Heard the birds singing without the roar of airliners? ...Those beliefs aren't actionable.
    - mikelyons 9y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg All beliefs are false, upon discovering this you can seek enlightenment because you will not follow the desire for sex, wealth, power, or even the desire for enlightenment itself, attainment is illusion as is thought
    - mikelyons 9y ago
      In fact, you wont even seek to save the planet or to change anything that's happening because things simply are, there is nothing that you'd prefer, extinction or to thrive, pleasure and pain all simply become sensations with no judgement as to whether they hurt or benefit you because those are judgements of the ego https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg
    - breatheoften 9y ago
      How is the desire to observe the Milky Way due to a belief in its beauty not actionable? There are organizations that seek to preserve the possibility to view the night sky with minimal light pollution (http://darksky.org http://darksky.org). I went to a campsite in New Mexico that is designated as a dark sky sanctuary recently -- it was amazing.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    Some beliefs are less false than other beliefs: http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
    - mikelyons 9y ago
      While I get what you're saying, the "fact" of the matter is if you think about it long and hard with an open mind you eventually discover that all belief are false and that there is no gradient of falsehood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg
      - adrianN 9y ago
        I believe that your belief that all beliefs are false and that there is no gradient to the falsehood is false
        mirimir 9y ago
        There is no true or false, only unasking questions ;)
  - losteric 9y ago
    "Enlightenment" as a goal has always felt like a sham to me. All understanding is approximate, but comparing science to religion is a false equivalency. Dogmatic belief ends in tautology, a thing is true because it's in the book and the book is true because it says so. A scientific belief is probabilistic and ends in open research questions, the theory of General Relativity models a subset of reality to a reasonable degree of confidence based on the evidence we have collected and makes no greater claims. Science shows us there is no meaning, purpose, or grand truth. All life is a 4 billion-year old chemical reaction... born by chance in the universe's beautiful dance of physics, fueled by energy and bound by entropy. From dust to dust, the billions that came before us are as forgotten as those that live and those yet to be born. But, yet, there is meaning. We don't exist at the abstraction layer of quarks or microseconds, nor do we exist at the scale of galaxies or millennia. Questioning human existence at those levels is a philosophical divide-by-zero. We exist at the human layer, in the context of society, on the scale of under a century. Science gives us a solid foundational existential philosophy for higher order philosophy, which we can probabilistically derive from the evidence available and test as rigorously as any other aspect of our understanding.
- mirimir 9y ago
  I get that externalities are the key problem. That plus the present impossibility of coherent global action against a global problem. But as much as I think the human species will win a Darwin award, there's really zero risk of "killing our planet". I mean, one could sterilize the entire surface of the Earth, and the Archaea would hardly notice. They extend kilometers below the surface.
- gshubert17 9y ago
  Aren't the major forms of human organization -- corporations and nation-states -- effective ways to externalize costs?
uranian 9y ago
Its the "economy" and the lack of vision and vigor of politicians to change it. As long as our policies and laws are still in favor of the economy we are doomed.
- fsiefken 9y ago
  Do we have an alternative working model? What we have now, works to a certain extent, but is perhaps not sustainable. The risks, the potential cost of (radical?) changes is to high.
  - uranian 9y ago
    I doubt there is a working model, but The Venus Project by Jacque Fresco is very inspiring, moving towards a resource based economy. Our current economy is flawed to the extent that it will destroy us if we don't replace it with something better for our planet and humanity overall.
  - mycloud 9y ago
    I would say it is the best model we came up with so far, while it being a model with tremendous flaws. It works for humans to gain progress with what we consider as progress, probably mostly growth in wealth and health. The biggest problem is, that it is fully based on exploitation of nature (which includes human beings) so far. That exploitation is unfortunately exceedingly dangerous to ensuring our vision of progress can endure. Considering the article, I don't think it is useful to for example try to minimize a human footprint. If that is the goal we might as well drop dead to achieve it. The question is more around what kind of footprint it is. Does it allow us and the nature ecosystem to still evolve in a way it works towards our goals or not. The universe will not give a damn about the rearranging of atoms we do, but as we depend on how those are arranged to live, we have no choice to care or not.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  Ecologically superior altneratives are in favor of the economy though, at least from the industry - think electric cars, alternative energy sources, nuclear fusion research, etc. A lot of those need to be encouraged or paid for by the governments though. They already discourage e.g. fossil fuel usage for consumers by raising high taxes for gasoline - where I live, taxes make up three quarters, if not more, of the price of gasoline.
spangry 9y ago
CO2 levels is just one of a myriad of indicators that are off the scale now. By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Scale relative to what, or when? I mean, yeah, we are certainly 'off the scale' for supermarkets, iPhones and planes compared to, say, the ancient Romans. But in fairness, they've got us well and truly beat on the ignorance, slavery and infant mortality scales. How do we rank in 'spiritual' terms relative to the Romans? But taking your assertion as a given, what specifically do you suggest we do about this problem? My concern is that, in the near future, we may find ourselves climbing down a few rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, leaving 'self-actualisation' / spirituality way out of reach.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Yet the reality is self-actualisation / spirituality are as out of reach for many now as they were years ago when we were 'poorer'.
  - virmundi 9y ago
    Self-actualization and spirituality seldom go hand in hand with wealth. Poor people have improved spirituality than wealthier people. Wealth draws your focus away from those things onto pleasures like sleeping around, or owning the latest i-device because it's the latest. Hence Jesus saying it's easier to thread a fishing line through a needle than for a wealthy person to find the Kingdom of Heaven.
    - openasocket 9y ago
      > Hence Jesus saying it's easier to thread a fishing line through a needle Nit: it's thread a camel through the eye of the needle, not fishing line
      - virmundi 9y ago
        Nope. That's just a shitty English translation. The Jews at the time were familiar with different types of ropes/threads. It is most likely that Jesus referred to the type of rope used in fishing which is much larger than a thread. http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm
demonshalo 9y ago
> By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Winning, getting ahead, being number one, outcompeting, etc. All those ego-centric values that are the basis of our socio-economic systems - focused on disconnecting the `self` from `other` - are wrong on a fundamental level. By 'spirituality' I mean the deep realisation of the larger context in bio-space and bio-time that I as a creature exist in Man this pseudo spiritual hippie bullshit annoys me to no end. This philosophical shift toward absurdism is infuriating and every time I read something like this my blood boils. I have nothing against you personally but lets be honest here; the ONLY reason you can say this crap is simply because people competed, lost, got ahead and in process elevated your living standard so much that you can now sit behind a computer screen today and be pretentious and ungrateful about what society have achieved so far. You being an observer of what is does not lead to anything meaningful. And if you find meaning in that, then great. More power to you! But to claim that iPhones, planes and supermarkets are not things to be proud of is a sign of nothing other than ignorance. You clearly can't see the level of pain and suffering that had to be endured for us as a species to get to this point. That's why you can make such claims. You simply lack perspective. If overcoming your own biological limitations (flying) is not enough of a miracle for you, then... I dunno wtf is. Edit: Just take a look at the replies below to see what I mean. People lack perspective. Most haven't read enough history to understand that we are making one of the BEST trade-offs humanity has ever seen. The question never was IF environmental degradation is okay, which they think it is. Instead, the question has always been HOW MUCH is okay and what do we get back in return? In these people's minds, virtue signaling far outweighs the alleviation of human suffering. They do not understand that the trade-offs we are making is what allows them the freedom to speak their mind and gives them the ability to effectively communicate using the medium they are currently utilizing. Rather than focusing on solving a problem, they instead praise mushroom eating as the way forward. The problem with the green movement as a whole is that they do not understand economics or trade-offs. If they could communicate and argue from a reasonable and realistic position, there is no doubt in my mind that the green movement would have been embraced by all.
- UweSchmidt 9y ago
  The assertion is that, as cool as iPhones and flying are, this lifestyle may or may not be sustainable, e.g. regarding the CO2 levels. Leaving aside your silly anger about "hippie bullshit" (really?) and regardless of our history of "competing, losing, getting ahead", what would you propose? Are we just going to brace for pain, and then compete over diminishing ressources? Consider: all of environment protection legislation that we take for granted now was once "hippie bullshit".
7952 9y ago
More simplistically we have to care about things beyond our most immediate surroundings. The extent of that concern has always been something that people argue about, just look at how the left and right view "community" differently. But it is essentially a moral question more than a practical or scientific one. Making people aware of the ethical dimension of their actions is worthwile. It is just difficult to do that without being annoying and preachy!
- spangry 9y ago
  Or you can internalise costs that normally get externalised. For instance, the government could make people pay a fixed-fee (i.e. a tax) for every tonne of co2 they emit. You then just set the fee at a level commensurate with the total damage caused by emitting a tonne of co2 and then sit back and let people's natural self-interest do the rest of the work. I think it's noble and commendable to act ethically, and promote ethical behaviour. However, I don't think "people acting ethically" is the thing we want to be relying on when we're trying to avoid self-extinction. By a large margin, people are usually selfish and will act in a self-interested manner, so it's probably safer to harness this particular aspect of humanity. I'm not saying it's pretty, but it sure beats self-extinction.
  - 7952 9y ago
    I think social pressure is hugely powerful in defining peoples behaviour. That is why we act "ethically" out of a sense of peer pressure; it has little to do with the rightness of the underlying act. You see this with how smoking is viewed. People don't really care about the health effects to bystanders, they care about what others will think about them. That is human nature. The trouble with this kind of tax/fee is that it trivialises the issue. You are allowed to do something wrong as long as you pay a small fee. This sends a mix message, and even leeds to a sense of entitlement.
    - spangry 9y ago
      Even if this were true, that levying something like a $50 tax per tonne would result in greater incentive to pollute (because we've replaced a powerful social disincentive with a less powerful financial one), it would still very likely reduce co2 emissions. Cost of energy is a significant cost in most mass-production processes (particularly in manufacturing). So, prior to the imposition of a carbon tax, when faced with the choice of purchasing one of two identical widgets, a 'co2 indifferent' consumer would choose the cheaper one. All other things equal, if widget manufacturer A can externalise some of their production costs (by polluting for free) and widget manufacturer B can't (or won't), widget B will likely have a higher price, even though their total social cost of production is lower. So there is more incentive to be a polluter. The situation is reversed if a tax is levied on co2 pollution, with the rate set to internalise the cost of all external harm. Now the 'co2 indifferent' consumer will purchase co2 free widget B, because it now has the relatively lower price (prices are now more reflective of total social costs of production because the global cost of polluting has now been internalised). I guess the other approach, that sidesteps this whole argument, would be to implement a 'cap and trade' scheme (my personal preference). The government auctions or allocates, say, 100,000 one-tonne permits: each permit allows a business to legally emit 1 tonne of co2. If a business needs to emit more co2, and what they produce is more valuable relative to what some other permit holder produces, then they can buy additional permits from this other 'less productive' business (and all businesses like it). Under this latter scheme there's a hard cap on emissions. So people can feel as entitled to pollute as they like; they'll still be breaking the law if they do so without owning sufficient 'pollution permits'. Might the latter sort of approach (cap and trade) address your concerns?
ucontrol 9y ago
On one hand, I wouldn't completely dismiss the sociocultural norm of prizing competition and pursuit of individual power and status, since even though these motivators seem superficial and lowly to some, they have historically shown to be powerful facilitators of progress and development of humanity, and completely antagonizing them is unwise. We wouldn't be where we are without socioeconomic competition. The iPhones and the planes and the supermarkets are not the problem - they are fruits of civilization and represent our progress as an intelligent species, at least in one regard. Also, I don't think "ego-centric values" will be going anywhere, they seem to be rooted in our biology, from which dominant societal values are ultimately derived. Of course, biology and basic societal expectations are not the only drivers of human behavior. Intellectual ideas, abstract thought, understanding of nature (in the broad sense), coupled with our faculties of emotion together act as essential motivators, and are often incorporated by society as general expectations and norm. Obviously, taking a simplistic, power-driven, ego-centric behavioral paradigm to an extreme without incorporating the bigger picture into our perspective is a major mistake. We become short-sighted, basic and ignorant, leading to both practical problems as well as a philosophically undesirable state of humanity. The concept you distinguished as one of the potential solutions - spirituality - and particularly your example of a physicalist/pantheistic spiritual outlook on the Universe that is not constructed dogma but rather a mental interpretation of scientific fact - is precisely the sort of thing that needs to be more common place. I have a hunch that a philosophy of that exact nature will be embraced in the not-so-distant future. We are intelligent agents, isn't it common sense that we take as much knowledge as we can into consideration before we act, rather than being exclusively animated by immediate, manifest but somewhat animalistic motivators?
- btschaegg 9y ago
  In this light, I guess our curse might be that although we were able to part somewhat from the more prevalent "way of nature" (and strive to do so), we won't be able to completely let go of its inherent mechanisms. Douglas Adams talks about a theory by Mark Carwadine in Last Chance To See[1] in which he tries to explain why the Kakapo has a terribly slow and inefficient mating habit. The idea is that basically, without mechanisms (like predators) to keep them in check, any population that reproduces too fast will trigger a chaos theory-like strongly oscillating population count (coinciding with the resources available per capita at any previous sample point) and thus, most likely, flatline at zero at some point. Maybe that's our problem: We were able to remove many constraining factors limiting us as a species, but can't let go of the habits that made us succeed so far. Of course, that doesn't only apply to reproduction, but also to resource consumption as a whole. On top of that, our ability to exploit fossil resources only amplifies this effect, because we were able to continue without more immediate consequences so far. In that sense, one might argue that even without climate change, we would have to change our ways in order for our lifes to remain sustainable. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See
finchisko 9y ago
well said. feeling it exactly same. i'm convicted that next generations will despise today's lifestyle.
eru 9y ago
Why? We can just keep solving problems. If we really wanted to, we could be carbon neutral in a few years and even pay for carbon sequestration. (Basically, just run the whole global economy on nuclear for example.) Not gonna happen, of course, because it's a huge and expensive undertaking---and there's no(t enough) political will nor even any consensus. But the problem is not our lifestyle per se, nor is competition.
- gnode 9y ago
  I disagree that it isn't happening. Solar PV capacity is growing rapidly. Vehicles are increasingly powered by electric batteries. These things were all prohibitively expensive for most people in Western countries, but their declining cost has made them more affordable and more used.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Vehicles are increasingly powered by coal plants. Electric batteries don't power anything, they're best compared to empty buckets.
    - Reason077 9y ago
      Vehicles are increasingly being powered by renewables and efficient combined-cycle gas turbines. Coal's share of electricity production is declining or being phased out almost everywhere.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        Worldwide the share of coal in energy production is at 40% and the United States it has dropped from 56% to 40%. Coal still produces 40% of every KWh consumed with Nuclear making up a fair portion of the remainder. Renewables are at 20% and (fortunately) rising sharply but for the moment fossil energy sources are by far the bulk of the energy consumed by electric vehicles. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.COAL.ZS http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.COAL.ZS
mikelyons 9y ago
For anyone who responds like the top response to this comment: What he means is that if people were seeking enlightenment and were aware of the dogmatism inherent in religion and equally in rationality and science, they would be practicing extreme lifestyle minimalism, and would not respond to the economic/emotional/sexual incentives to support the systems that destroy the planet, the money would simply evaporate. Now how do you convert 100% of the global population to this? It's likely impossible in the required timeframe :(
mirimir 9y ago
Look, we're not "killing the planet". Humans are organisms like any other. Sure, human populations have spiked from millions to billions in recent millennia, and mean per capita resource utilization has increased dramatically. But that's just what organisms do. So anyway, the planet will be fine. Human civilization may collapse, given the risk of crop failure and war. But even humanity will survive. Edit: Many other species won't be so lucky. Maybe there are moral implications there. And certainly there will be practical implications. That will be part of crop failures.
- joelthelion 9y ago
  That's true, but it's also not very relevant. Many asteroids and barren planets are also going to be fine, but I don't think anyone cares about that. People care about the future of human civilization, which is very much at risk.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Yes, but that's very different from "killing the planet". If what you care about is the future of human civilization, then that's what you ought to be talking about. Bringing up "killing the planet" just invites eye rolls. Personally, I care more about the future of consciousness than about the future of humanity, per se.
    - tombone12 9y ago
      There is probably intelligent conscious life out there in the universe, and considering the mass extinction we are setting up right now it might be best to leave it alone. So keep consuming, burn that coal and save the aliens (from us)!
    - splawn 9y ago
      People pointing out the distinction between "killing the planet" and "killing off our species" is what causes my eyes to roll. Seems to me like a moot point. edit: /mute/moot/g
PeterisP 9y ago
The planet is going to be just fine, the only thing that we can screw up is our ability to live on it in large numbers - which matters a lot to me for obvious reasons. Unless we're speaking about things that literally are extinction events for us, the larger organism doesn't really care about extremely short term fluctuations; in the scale of a few hundred million years the current climate change (or the temporary existence of homo sapiens) doesn't make a meaningful impact.
- everyone 9y ago
  The sun is hotter now than it was at the PT event. There are serious climate scientists saying that, its possible that a greenhouse effect similar to the PT event happening now, could push earth into a Venus like state.
  - nonbel 9y ago
    >"There are serious climate scientists saying that, its possible that a greenhouse effect similar to the PT event happening now, could push earth into a Venus like state." The Venus atmosphere is 50x thicker than Earth's, Venus is also ~1.4x closer to the sun. Where will all this extra atmospheric mass and incoming radiation come from?
    - drjesusphd 9y ago
      Water is one of the strongest greenhouse gases around, and there's plenty of it in the oceans that can evaporate in a runaway process. Once that happens, we're the next Venus. Reaching that tipping point is quite difficult though, and would require additional warming besides fossil fuels. Methane-based runaway warming maybe? Or even basic thermodynamic heat sink effects (which we'll reach in about 200 years at the current rate of growth in energy supply).
      - nonbel 9y ago
        Can you find a "serious climate scientist" who is claiming this "oceans boiling away" scenario is plausible? Alternatively, can you put some basic numbers on that? What will the surface temp need to be to initiate the boiling away? It looks like currently the TSI at Earth varies between 1315 and 1405 w/m^2 (a range of 90 w/m^2), which apparently has less effect on the temperature than the tilt of the earth. http://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/sorce/sorce_tsi/index.html http://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/sorce/sorce_tsi/index.html
jnewkirk 9y ago
This, indeed, hits the nail on the head. It is not an anti-technological rant, but a proper rant against technology as an end in itself. Big-picture thinking -- on the scale of the Earth and a timespan longer than one life -- inevitably overlaps with the spiritual; which is to say, how we live our lives; and the manner of our living is exactly what is having dramatic effect on the ecosystem now.
api 9y ago
That has been the rhetoric since the 1960s. That is the rhetoric that is obviously not working. I call this the "abstinence based" approach to solving environmental problems. Guilt and shame and preach people into denying their "sinful nature." It works about as well as telling teenagers not to have sex. We have made a near idol out of technology because the benefits of modern technology and all its associated energy consumption are massive. Due to the diminishing marginal utility of wealth, these benefits are the most massive for the poor. The major driving force of consumption and pollution growth is not the relatively small number of super-rich buying more jets, but the rise of billions of people from hand-to-mouth poverty into something beginning to resemble at least a first world lower-middle class lifestyle. Sitting in a rich Western country and telling them they're sinners for wanting these things is not going to work. It's going to get you ignored. It's getting you ignored. The way to save the planet is to stop the feel-good moralism and start treating this problem as what it is: a technical problem that can be solved by scientists and engineers. Replace fossil fuels with solar, wind, and nuclear power and give out free condoms to teenagers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_... If you pay attention to the large scale developed economies on that list, you'll notice a large difference between the CO2 emissions of, say, France or Switzerland vs. the United States or China. All of these nations are full of mobile phones and computers and high speed transit systems, but all are not equal in terms of their environmental impact. Clearly some are doing what they are doing in ways that cause less environmental harm than others. It is possible to maintain and even continue to develop our "sinful" lifestyle while reducing its footprint. Not only is this possible, but it's the only option. There are still billions of people living in poverty, and those people are going to ignore your rhetoric. It's their desire not for opulence but for basic health and dignity that is going to push the planet past 600-800ppm CO2 in this century... unless we find ways to satisfy that desire without trashing out atmosphere. We will solve these problems by innovating, or we will sit around and pray and moralize all the way to hell.
- demonshalo 9y ago
  A fucking MEN!
- Eridrus 9y ago
alvern 9y ago
[E]very man ought to say to himself, "Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?” ― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2376452-l-existentialisme-est-un-humanisme https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2376452-l-existentiali...
abandonliberty 9y ago
We are the universe attaining self awareness. Unlike most other chemical and physical processes, we can contemplate its mortality. Heat death is all too imminent. The forces that created us no longer drive us. Shackled by our biology we apply obsolete instincts to a novel problem. Unchecked, they will lead to our ruin. Time is running out.
compton_effect 9y ago
This is a really good summary of part of the point Harari was making in Homo Deus. Awesome book, Harari does a great job of explaining complex ideas for a wide audience.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
briceb8e 9y ago
I wish more people would understand the deep but simple meaning and truth behind those words. At least it gives me a glimmer of hope when I see someone else thinking that way.

specialist 9y ago

"Ultimately it is the lack of spirituality in people that's killing the planet." Bad accounting is killing our planet. Neglecting important parts of the balance sheet creates perverse incentives.

mikelyons 9y ago
If everyone was seeking enlightenment, there would be no incentives. Incentives are entirely constructions of the ego. Also, most of the posters seem ignorant to the fact that science and rationality are equally as dogmatic as the most fundamentalist religion. All beliefs are false, there is no argument against that.
- specialist 9y ago
  No contest. I can't argue spirituality, enlightenment. "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." While I personally believe we'd all be better off reconnecting with awe, wonder, our place in the universe... When's the last time you watched the Milky Way? Heard the birds singing without the roar of airliners? ...Those beliefs aren't actionable.
  - mikelyons 9y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg All beliefs are false, upon discovering this you can seek enlightenment because you will not follow the desire for sex, wealth, power, or even the desire for enlightenment itself, attainment is illusion as is thought
  - mikelyons 9y ago
    In fact, you wont even seek to save the planet or to change anything that's happening because things simply are, there is nothing that you'd prefer, extinction or to thrive, pleasure and pain all simply become sensations with no judgement as to whether they hurt or benefit you because those are judgements of the ego https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg
  - breatheoften 9y ago
    How is the desire to observe the Milky Way due to a belief in its beauty not actionable? There are organizations that seek to preserve the possibility to view the night sky with minimal light pollution (http://darksky.org http://darksky.org). I went to a campsite in New Mexico that is designated as a dark sky sanctuary recently -- it was amazing.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Some beliefs are less false than other beliefs: http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
  - mikelyons 9y ago
    While I get what you're saying, the "fact" of the matter is if you think about it long and hard with an open mind you eventually discover that all belief are false and that there is no gradient of falsehood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVLnmuJzg
    - adrianN 9y ago
      I believe that your belief that all beliefs are false and that there is no gradient to the falsehood is false
      - mirimir 9y ago
        There is no true or false, only unasking questions ;)
- losteric 9y ago
  "Enlightenment" as a goal has always felt like a sham to me. All understanding is approximate, but comparing science to religion is a false equivalency. Dogmatic belief ends in tautology, a thing is true because it's in the book and the book is true because it says so. A scientific belief is probabilistic and ends in open research questions, the theory of General Relativity models a subset of reality to a reasonable degree of confidence based on the evidence we have collected and makes no greater claims. Science shows us there is no meaning, purpose, or grand truth. All life is a 4 billion-year old chemical reaction... born by chance in the universe's beautiful dance of physics, fueled by energy and bound by entropy. From dust to dust, the billions that came before us are as forgotten as those that live and those yet to be born. But, yet, there is meaning. We don't exist at the abstraction layer of quarks or microseconds, nor do we exist at the scale of galaxies or millennia. Questioning human existence at those levels is a philosophical divide-by-zero. We exist at the human layer, in the context of society, on the scale of under a century. Science gives us a solid foundational existential philosophy for higher order philosophy, which we can probabilistically derive from the evidence available and test as rigorously as any other aspect of our understanding.
mirimir 9y ago
I get that externalities are the key problem. That plus the present impossibility of coherent global action against a global problem. But as much as I think the human species will win a Darwin award, there's really zero risk of "killing our planet". I mean, one could sterilize the entire surface of the Earth, and the Archaea would hardly notice. They extend kilometers below the surface.
gshubert17 9y ago
Aren't the major forms of human organization -- corporations and nation-states -- effective ways to externalize costs?

uranian 9y ago

Its the "economy" and the lack of vision and vigor of politicians to change it. As long as our policies and laws are still in favor of the economy we are doomed.

fsiefken 9y ago
Do we have an alternative working model? What we have now, works to a certain extent, but is perhaps not sustainable. The risks, the potential cost of (radical?) changes is to high.
- uranian 9y ago
  I doubt there is a working model, but The Venus Project by Jacque Fresco is very inspiring, moving towards a resource based economy. Our current economy is flawed to the extent that it will destroy us if we don't replace it with something better for our planet and humanity overall.
- mycloud 9y ago
  I would say it is the best model we came up with so far, while it being a model with tremendous flaws. It works for humans to gain progress with what we consider as progress, probably mostly growth in wealth and health. The biggest problem is, that it is fully based on exploitation of nature (which includes human beings) so far. That exploitation is unfortunately exceedingly dangerous to ensuring our vision of progress can endure. Considering the article, I don't think it is useful to for example try to minimize a human footprint. If that is the goal we might as well drop dead to achieve it. The question is more around what kind of footprint it is. Does it allow us and the nature ecosystem to still evolve in a way it works towards our goals or not. The universe will not give a damn about the rearranging of atoms we do, but as we depend on how those are arranged to live, we have no choice to care or not.
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
Ecologically superior altneratives are in favor of the economy though, at least from the industry - think electric cars, alternative energy sources, nuclear fusion research, etc. A lot of those need to be encouraged or paid for by the governments though. They already discourage e.g. fossil fuel usage for consumers by raising high taxes for gasoline - where I live, taxes make up three quarters, if not more, of the price of gasoline.

spangry 9y ago

CO2 levels is just one of a myriad of indicators that are off the scale now. By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Scale relative to what, or when? I mean, yeah, we are certainly 'off the scale' for supermarkets, iPhones and planes compared to, say, the ancient Romans. But in fairness, they've got us well and truly beat on the ignorance, slavery and infant mortality scales. How do we rank in 'spiritual' terms relative to the Romans? But taking your assertion as a given, what specifically do you suggest we do about this problem? My concern is that, in the near future, we may find ourselves climbing down a few rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, leaving 'self-actualisation' / spirituality way out of reach.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
Yet the reality is self-actualisation / spirituality are as out of reach for many now as they were years ago when we were 'poorer'.
- virmundi 9y ago
  Self-actualization and spirituality seldom go hand in hand with wealth. Poor people have improved spirituality than wealthier people. Wealth draws your focus away from those things onto pleasures like sleeping around, or owning the latest i-device because it's the latest. Hence Jesus saying it's easier to thread a fishing line through a needle than for a wealthy person to find the Kingdom of Heaven.
  - openasocket 9y ago
    > Hence Jesus saying it's easier to thread a fishing line through a needle Nit: it's thread a camel through the eye of the needle, not fishing line
    - virmundi 9y ago
      Nope. That's just a shitty English translation. The Jews at the time were familiar with different types of ropes/threads. It is most likely that Jesus referred to the type of rope used in fishing which is much larger than a thread. http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm

demonshalo 9y ago

> By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Winning, getting ahead, being number one, outcompeting, etc. All those ego-centric values that are the basis of our socio-economic systems - focused on disconnecting the `self` from `other` - are wrong on a fundamental level. By 'spirituality' I mean the deep realisation of the larger context in bio-space and bio-time that I as a creature exist in Man this pseudo spiritual hippie bullshit annoys me to no end. This philosophical shift toward absurdism is infuriating and every time I read something like this my blood boils. I have nothing against you personally but lets be honest here; the ONLY reason you can say this crap is simply because people competed, lost, got ahead and in process elevated your living standard so much that you can now sit behind a computer screen today and be pretentious and ungrateful about what society have achieved so far. You being an observer of what is does not lead to anything meaningful. And if you find meaning in that, then great. More power to you! But to claim that iPhones, planes and supermarkets are not things to be proud of is a sign of nothing other than ignorance. You clearly can't see the level of pain and suffering that had to be endured for us as a species to get to this point. That's why you can make such claims. You simply lack perspective. If overcoming your own biological limitations (flying) is not enough of a miracle for you, then... I dunno wtf is. Edit: Just take a look at the replies below to see what I mean. People lack perspective. Most haven't read enough history to understand that we are making one of the BEST trade-offs humanity has ever seen. The question never was IF environmental degradation is okay, which they think it is. Instead, the question has always been HOW MUCH is okay and what do we get back in return? In these people's minds, virtue signaling far outweighs the alleviation of human suffering. They do not understand that the trade-offs we are making is what allows them the freedom to speak their mind and gives them the ability to effectively communicate using the medium they are currently utilizing. Rather than focusing on solving a problem, they instead praise mushroom eating as the way forward. The problem with the green movement as a whole is that they do not understand economics or trade-offs. If they could communicate and argue from a reasonable and realistic position, there is no doubt in my mind that the green movement would have been embraced by all.

UweSchmidt 9y ago
The assertion is that, as cool as iPhones and flying are, this lifestyle may or may not be sustainable, e.g. regarding the CO2 levels. Leaving aside your silly anger about "hippie bullshit" (really?) and regardless of our history of "competing, losing, getting ahead", what would you propose? Are we just going to brace for pain, and then compete over diminishing ressources? Consider: all of environment protection legislation that we take for granted now was once "hippie bullshit".

7952 9y ago

More simplistically we have to care about things beyond our most immediate surroundings. The extent of that concern has always been something that people argue about, just look at how the left and right view "community" differently. But it is essentially a moral question more than a practical or scientific one. Making people aware of the ethical dimension of their actions is worthwile. It is just difficult to do that without being annoying and preachy!

spangry 9y ago
Or you can internalise costs that normally get externalised. For instance, the government could make people pay a fixed-fee (i.e. a tax) for every tonne of co2 they emit. You then just set the fee at a level commensurate with the total damage caused by emitting a tonne of co2 and then sit back and let people's natural self-interest do the rest of the work. I think it's noble and commendable to act ethically, and promote ethical behaviour. However, I don't think "people acting ethically" is the thing we want to be relying on when we're trying to avoid self-extinction. By a large margin, people are usually selfish and will act in a self-interested manner, so it's probably safer to harness this particular aspect of humanity. I'm not saying it's pretty, but it sure beats self-extinction.
- 7952 9y ago
  I think social pressure is hugely powerful in defining peoples behaviour. That is why we act "ethically" out of a sense of peer pressure; it has little to do with the rightness of the underlying act. You see this with how smoking is viewed. People don't really care about the health effects to bystanders, they care about what others will think about them. That is human nature. The trouble with this kind of tax/fee is that it trivialises the issue. You are allowed to do something wrong as long as you pay a small fee. This sends a mix message, and even leeds to a sense of entitlement.
  - spangry 9y ago
    Even if this were true, that levying something like a $50 tax per tonne would result in greater incentive to pollute (because we've replaced a powerful social disincentive with a less powerful financial one), it would still very likely reduce co2 emissions. Cost of energy is a significant cost in most mass-production processes (particularly in manufacturing). So, prior to the imposition of a carbon tax, when faced with the choice of purchasing one of two identical widgets, a 'co2 indifferent' consumer would choose the cheaper one. All other things equal, if widget manufacturer A can externalise some of their production costs (by polluting for free) and widget manufacturer B can't (or won't), widget B will likely have a higher price, even though their total social cost of production is lower. So there is more incentive to be a polluter. The situation is reversed if a tax is levied on co2 pollution, with the rate set to internalise the cost of all external harm. Now the 'co2 indifferent' consumer will purchase co2 free widget B, because it now has the relatively lower price (prices are now more reflective of total social costs of production because the global cost of polluting has now been internalised). I guess the other approach, that sidesteps this whole argument, would be to implement a 'cap and trade' scheme (my personal preference). The government auctions or allocates, say, 100,000 one-tonne permits: each permit allows a business to legally emit 1 tonne of co2. If a business needs to emit more co2, and what they produce is more valuable relative to what some other permit holder produces, then they can buy additional permits from this other 'less productive' business (and all businesses like it). Under this latter scheme there's a hard cap on emissions. So people can feel as entitled to pollute as they like; they'll still be breaking the law if they do so without owning sufficient 'pollution permits'. Might the latter sort of approach (cap and trade) address your concerns?

ucontrol 9y ago

On one hand, I wouldn't completely dismiss the sociocultural norm of prizing competition and pursuit of individual power and status, since even though these motivators seem superficial and lowly to some, they have historically shown to be powerful facilitators of progress and development of humanity, and completely antagonizing them is unwise. We wouldn't be where we are without socioeconomic competition. The iPhones and the planes and the supermarkets are not the problem - they are fruits of civilization and represent our progress as an intelligent species, at least in one regard. Also, I don't think "ego-centric values" will be going anywhere, they seem to be rooted in our biology, from which dominant societal values are ultimately derived. Of course, biology and basic societal expectations are not the only drivers of human behavior. Intellectual ideas, abstract thought, understanding of nature (in the broad sense), coupled with our faculties of emotion together act as essential motivators, and are often incorporated by society as general expectations and norm. Obviously, taking a simplistic, power-driven, ego-centric behavioral paradigm to an extreme without incorporating the bigger picture into our perspective is a major mistake. We become short-sighted, basic and ignorant, leading to both practical problems as well as a philosophically undesirable state of humanity. The concept you distinguished as one of the potential solutions - spirituality - and particularly your example of a physicalist/pantheistic spiritual outlook on the Universe that is not constructed dogma but rather a mental interpretation of scientific fact - is precisely the sort of thing that needs to be more common place. I have a hunch that a philosophy of that exact nature will be embraced in the not-so-distant future. We are intelligent agents, isn't it common sense that we take as much knowledge as we can into consideration before we act, rather than being exclusively animated by immediate, manifest but somewhat animalistic motivators?

btschaegg 9y ago
In this light, I guess our curse might be that although we were able to part somewhat from the more prevalent "way of nature" (and strive to do so), we won't be able to completely let go of its inherent mechanisms. Douglas Adams talks about a theory by Mark Carwadine in Last Chance To See[1] in which he tries to explain why the Kakapo has a terribly slow and inefficient mating habit. The idea is that basically, without mechanisms (like predators) to keep them in check, any population that reproduces too fast will trigger a chaos theory-like strongly oscillating population count (coinciding with the resources available per capita at any previous sample point) and thus, most likely, flatline at zero at some point. Maybe that's our problem: We were able to remove many constraining factors limiting us as a species, but can't let go of the habits that made us succeed so far. Of course, that doesn't only apply to reproduction, but also to resource consumption as a whole. On top of that, our ability to exploit fossil resources only amplifies this effect, because we were able to continue without more immediate consequences so far. In that sense, one might argue that even without climate change, we would have to change our ways in order for our lifes to remain sustainable. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See

finchisko 9y ago

well said. feeling it exactly same. i'm convicted that next generations will despise today's lifestyle.

eru 9y ago

Why? We can just keep solving problems. If we really wanted to, we could be carbon neutral in a few years and even pay for carbon sequestration. (Basically, just run the whole global economy on nuclear for example.) Not gonna happen, of course, because it's a huge and expensive undertaking---and there's no(t enough) political will nor even any consensus. But the problem is not our lifestyle per se, nor is competition.

gnode 9y ago
I disagree that it isn't happening. Solar PV capacity is growing rapidly. Vehicles are increasingly powered by electric batteries. These things were all prohibitively expensive for most people in Western countries, but their declining cost has made them more affordable and more used.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Vehicles are increasingly powered by coal plants. Electric batteries don't power anything, they're best compared to empty buckets.
  - Reason077 9y ago
    Vehicles are increasingly being powered by renewables and efficient combined-cycle gas turbines. Coal's share of electricity production is declining or being phased out almost everywhere.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Worldwide the share of coal in energy production is at 40% and the United States it has dropped from 56% to 40%. Coal still produces 40% of every KWh consumed with Nuclear making up a fair portion of the remainder. Renewables are at 20% and (fortunately) rising sharply but for the moment fossil energy sources are by far the bulk of the energy consumed by electric vehicles. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.COAL.ZS http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.COAL.ZS

mikelyons 9y ago

For anyone who responds like the top response to this comment: What he means is that if people were seeking enlightenment and were aware of the dogmatism inherent in religion and equally in rationality and science, they would be practicing extreme lifestyle minimalism, and would not respond to the economic/emotional/sexual incentives to support the systems that destroy the planet, the money would simply evaporate. Now how do you convert 100% of the global population to this? It's likely impossible in the required timeframe :(

mirimir 9y ago

Look, we're not "killing the planet". Humans are organisms like any other. Sure, human populations have spiked from millions to billions in recent millennia, and mean per capita resource utilization has increased dramatically. But that's just what organisms do. So anyway, the planet will be fine. Human civilization may collapse, given the risk of crop failure and war. But even humanity will survive. Edit: Many other species won't be so lucky. Maybe there are moral implications there. And certainly there will be practical implications. That will be part of crop failures.

joelthelion 9y ago
That's true, but it's also not very relevant. Many asteroids and barren planets are also going to be fine, but I don't think anyone cares about that. People care about the future of human civilization, which is very much at risk.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Yes, but that's very different from "killing the planet". If what you care about is the future of human civilization, then that's what you ought to be talking about. Bringing up "killing the planet" just invites eye rolls. Personally, I care more about the future of consciousness than about the future of humanity, per se.
  - tombone12 9y ago
    There is probably intelligent conscious life out there in the universe, and considering the mass extinction we are setting up right now it might be best to leave it alone. So keep consuming, burn that coal and save the aliens (from us)!
  - splawn 9y ago
    People pointing out the distinction between "killing the planet" and "killing off our species" is what causes my eyes to roll. Seems to me like a moot point. edit: /mute/moot/g

PeterisP 9y ago

The planet is going to be just fine, the only thing that we can screw up is our ability to live on it in large numbers - which matters a lot to me for obvious reasons. Unless we're speaking about things that literally are extinction events for us, the larger organism doesn't really care about extremely short term fluctuations; in the scale of a few hundred million years the current climate change (or the temporary existence of homo sapiens) doesn't make a meaningful impact.

everyone 9y ago
The sun is hotter now than it was at the PT event. There are serious climate scientists saying that, its possible that a greenhouse effect similar to the PT event happening now, could push earth into a Venus like state.
- nonbel 9y ago
  >"There are serious climate scientists saying that, its possible that a greenhouse effect similar to the PT event happening now, could push earth into a Venus like state." The Venus atmosphere is 50x thicker than Earth's, Venus is also ~1.4x closer to the sun. Where will all this extra atmospheric mass and incoming radiation come from?
  - drjesusphd 9y ago
    Water is one of the strongest greenhouse gases around, and there's plenty of it in the oceans that can evaporate in a runaway process. Once that happens, we're the next Venus. Reaching that tipping point is quite difficult though, and would require additional warming besides fossil fuels. Methane-based runaway warming maybe? Or even basic thermodynamic heat sink effects (which we'll reach in about 200 years at the current rate of growth in energy supply).
    - nonbel 9y ago
      Can you find a "serious climate scientist" who is claiming this "oceans boiling away" scenario is plausible? Alternatively, can you put some basic numbers on that? What will the surface temp need to be to initiate the boiling away? It looks like currently the TSI at Earth varies between 1315 and 1405 w/m^2 (a range of 90 w/m^2), which apparently has less effect on the temperature than the tilt of the earth. http://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/sorce/sorce_tsi/index.html http://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/sorce/sorce_tsi/index.html

jnewkirk 9y ago

This, indeed, hits the nail on the head. It is not an anti-technological rant, but a proper rant against technology as an end in itself. Big-picture thinking -- on the scale of the Earth and a timespan longer than one life -- inevitably overlaps with the spiritual; which is to say, how we live our lives; and the manner of our living is exactly what is having dramatic effect on the ecosystem now.

api 9y ago

That has been the rhetoric since the 1960s. That is the rhetoric that is obviously not working. I call this the "abstinence based" approach to solving environmental problems. Guilt and shame and preach people into denying their "sinful nature." It works about as well as telling teenagers not to have sex. We have made a near idol out of technology because the benefits of modern technology and all its associated energy consumption are massive. Due to the diminishing marginal utility of wealth, these benefits are the most massive for the poor. The major driving force of consumption and pollution growth is not the relatively small number of super-rich buying more jets, but the rise of billions of people from hand-to-mouth poverty into something beginning to resemble at least a first world lower-middle class lifestyle. Sitting in a rich Western country and telling them they're sinners for wanting these things is not going to work. It's going to get you ignored. It's getting you ignored. The way to save the planet is to stop the feel-good moralism and start treating this problem as what it is: a technical problem that can be solved by scientists and engineers. Replace fossil fuels with solar, wind, and nuclear power and give out free condoms to teenagers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_... If you pay attention to the large scale developed economies on that list, you'll notice a large difference between the CO2 emissions of, say, France or Switzerland vs. the United States or China. All of these nations are full of mobile phones and computers and high speed transit systems, but all are not equal in terms of their environmental impact. Clearly some are doing what they are doing in ways that cause less environmental harm than others. It is possible to maintain and even continue to develop our "sinful" lifestyle while reducing its footprint. Not only is this possible, but it's the only option. There are still billions of people living in poverty, and those people are going to ignore your rhetoric. It's their desire not for opulence but for basic health and dignity that is going to push the planet past 600-800ppm CO2 in this century... unless we find ways to satisfy that desire without trashing out atmosphere. We will solve these problems by innovating, or we will sit around and pray and moralize all the way to hell.

demonshalo 9y ago
A fucking MEN!
Eridrus 9y ago

alvern 9y ago

[E]very man ought to say to himself, "Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?” ― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2376452-l-existentialisme-est-un-humanisme https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2376452-l-existentiali...

abandonliberty 9y ago

We are the universe attaining self awareness. Unlike most other chemical and physical processes, we can contemplate its mortality. Heat death is all too imminent. The forces that created us no longer drive us. Shackled by our biology we apply obsolete instincts to a novel problem. Unchecked, they will lead to our ruin. Time is running out.

compton_effect 9y ago

This is a really good summary of part of the point Harari was making in Homo Deus. Awesome book, Harari does a great job of explaining complex ideas for a wide audience.

deleted 9y ago

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briceb8e 9y ago

I wish more people would understand the deep but simple meaning and truth behind those words. At least it gives me a glimmer of hope when I see someone else thinking that way.