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That’s what happens when you have this many people. For the kind of population growth, it’s either we stop having so many people, or the animals die. It’s us or

That’s what happens when you have this many people. For the kind of population growth, it’s either we stop having so many people, or the animals die. It’s us or them. Why is this so hard to understand? No amount of talking points and musing on environmentalism will take away those facts of human existence. How could the industrial boom in China or the USA in the late 1800s and early 1900s have happened without emvironmental destruction? How can growth happen in China now without it? Get real about human development and the necessities of human development.

nothrabannosir 8y ago
> Why is this so hard to understand? Who said anything about hard to understand? Are you explaining the observation or justifying it? Because the former might be a fool’s errand; everyone understands, as you so eloquently put it. In other words: just because I know why something happens, doesn’t mean that I think it’s a good thing, or that it shouldn’t change.
- corporateslaver 8y ago
  I’m saying enough with these lamentations about the environment, would these people rather be living in the woods? It’s complete nonsense. Destroying the environment has been a necessary step to human evolution.
  - rosser 8y ago
    We are not separate from our environment. We wreck it at our own peril. Rapacious destruction may have been an expedient shortcut to our development, but unchecked, it will also end us.
    - lopmotr 8y ago
      What's your evidence or reasoning for the claim that unchecked destruction of the environment will destroy us? I understand that it _might_ and that that would be a pretty bad thing. So there is a risk, but why do you think it's so certain?
      - rosser 8y ago
        Are you legit saying, "I don't know if extinct-ing most of the species on the planet will wipe us out. It might. That seems like a worthwhile hypothesis to test empirically!"? When the dice are that loaded, you throw them at your own peril. When they're that loaded, you keep throwing them because it's more profitable at everyone's peril.
        lopmotr 8y ago
        Sounds like you agree it's not certain but you're exaggerating the risk to scare people who don't understand risks. It might be appropriate to yell during a Greenpeace march but I would rather have intelligent discussions than just yell slogans at each other. It's like a parent telling their teen "If you don't wear a seat belt, you'll die in a car crash." It's obviously not true but dying in a car crash is so bad that it's worth telling a lie to increase the chance of saving their life. That's what the parent would desperately yell at them as they run off with the car keys, but not if they want to develop an independent person who can make complex decisions for themselves.
        rosser 8y ago
        There's a very good reason we don't run experiments to test, e.g., the hypothesis that a certain chemical might cause birth defects: the consequences of the hypothesis being accurate are morally abhorrent. You don't do something that might kill or maim people to test whether or not doing the thing does kill or maim people — unless you're Mengele or something. Is it really that hard to extrapolate from the specific case to the general? If we get this one wrong, we're dead. Even the possibility makes it incumbent upon us to tread exceptionally carefully. EDIT: This, "Hey, now. Let's have a rational, skeptical discussion about this" is a disingenuous tactic, in the first place. If we played that game, we'd still be debating whether or not rising CO₂ levels are dangerous, as they crossed the 500ppm threshold. We know, for practical purposes, that this is coming, unless we change course. We know the consequences of its happening. But we're still somehow dithering, apparently in order to convince trenchant outliers who have identity-level investments in being trenchant outliers, that they're wrong. That ship will never sail. "Oops. Yeah, I guess that was a bad idea after all," is not an reasonable response to an existential threat.
  - nothrabannosir 8y ago
    This feels brittle. Does that include lamentations about global warming? If so: I’m afraid I disagree. If not: that’s a bit arbitrary. I understand the sentiment, but sometimes, a complaint is valid. And making it over and over and over again is also valid. It is the first step towards fixing it. If we stop acknowledging this problem we lose all hope for ever finding a way out. I would say the litany of woeful clamouring is already driving SOME people to consciously consume , buy electric cars, (or we can focus on conscientious vegetarians, if you don’t like the global warming analogy) etc. Sure , it could be a lot better, but it could also be a lot worse. If nobody ever complained , I bet there would be a lot fewer vegetarians.
  - outworlder 8y ago
    Good luck continuing your "evolution" when you have no food, no clean air and abundant diseases.
windows_tips 8y ago
>How could the industrial boom in China or the USA in the late 1800s and early 1900s have happened without emvironmental destruction? How can growth happen in China now without it? Possibly if they had used solar-thermal power generation and focused on battery tech instead of exploiting petroleum so heavily.
- corporateslaver 8y ago
  Sarcasm?
  - windows_tips 8y ago
    There was already heavy investment in steam technology. Using the sun the boil water instead of coal or wood is much less resource intensive and completely eliminates external supply chains.
    - codeisawesome 8y ago
      Did they have enough tech by that point to even begin to figure out mass manufacturing of solar cells to focus enough energy into water to make steam? Burning something that burns well is a much more intuitive and scalable process... Also, mining the easy stocks (at that point) is a low tech affair too. Which was powered by... combustion of fuel and human labor. We still can’t make solar panels with 100% efficiency, what hope did they have?
      - windows_tips 8y ago
        You don't need solar cells to heat water to boiling, just glass or a metal like aluminum or silver. With glass you can build a lens to concentrate light. With a metal you can build a concentrating mirror.
        codeisawesome 8y ago
        Good points. But lens building is a complex endeavour that requires tooling at the manufacturing level (especially computing power!) - no matter the choice of available material, yes? Doing it with high precision at a civilisation-powering scale seems like an impossible ask of a species that was still considering much of their Home planet to be “new” (Americas).
dwaltrip 8y ago
It's a function of lingering ingorance and misaligned incentives. We have the technology and the institutions that can prevent the majority of this damage, despite our large numbers.
- codeisawesome 8y ago
  I am genuinely curious. Clean energy systems exist, but they are either expensive, restricted and dangerous to proliferate or expensive, inefficient and inconvenient. What institutions exist that can make clean energy palatable to all the human societies that require it for their survival—at-scale, that they are all ignoring? Leaving energy aside, what other powerful means of doing good to ecosystems as a whole, are they simply ignoring? Is there any quantification of the damage? I am most certainly not trying to attack your position. I pretty much believe the same things you said. But we should have these answers documented. Is there a single source for these things on the web?
  - carapace 8y ago
    Toby Hemenway - "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nLKHYHmPbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nLKHYHmPbo Notes: He reframes "sustainable" as the midpoint of a spectrum with "degenerative" on one side and "regenerative" on the other and emphasizes regenerative systems. He talks about the length of time we (humans) have been doing "culture" (group activities, pottery, art, singing and music, etc.) and points out that it's roughly a million (1,000,000) years-- and that agriculture has only been happening for about ten thousand years, about 1% of that time. Five culture types based on food getting technology: 1 Foraging; 2 Hunter-gatherer; 3 Agricultural (cities); 5 Pastoral (Animal herding); 5 Industrial Then follows a great deal of the "dirt" on agriculture. Old hat to those who know it, horrifying and challenging to those who don't. Hemenway sums it up, "Agriculture... ...converts ecosystems into people." (Oil => Food => People) x (Peak Oil) = Hoshit! i.e. we made people out of oil for the last few generations and now we are running out of oil. Could be trouble... Holmgrin's scenarios: 1 Techno-fantasy (technology saves the day and we pack ourselves in like sardines until something else gives, or spew forth and colonize the galaxy until we reach the expansion limits of our space-drives... Technology doesn't solve the problem, only postpones it.) 2 Green-tech stable - stabilize population (match growth and death rates) and live within the Solar energy budget while regenerating the Earth. 3 Graceful decline - (growth rate less than death rate for awhile...) "Earth Stewardship" "Permaculture" I don't know where the people are supposed to have gone. 4 "Atlantis" - i.e. doom. Personally I think this is the most likely, but I'm okay with being proven wrong on that. "Peak Wood" - no kidding. Peak Oil seems to have happened before with wood instead of oil, and could be responsible for bringing the Bronze Age to a close. Wow. Last but not least, Horticulture to the rescue! All the great things about Permaculture and a Neo-Horticultural society. The video is excellent and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in these subjects.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
I was nodding along with you--yes, the population explosion is destroying the environment--until I realized, with mixed bemusement and horror, that you were in favor of this. Just for starters: Why is "the Industrial Revolution happened" an argument against trying to do better in the future?
- corporateslaver 8y ago
  It points to a hard fact about what kind of things cause environmental destruction but are also massive improvements for humanity. The picture painted where environmental destruction is superfluous is completely wrong and disingenuous.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    It may be that the Industrial Revolution couldn't have happened without massive pollution, sure. The Industrial Revolution is long over. Why should we recapitulate the past when we have radically more advanced technology and a far better understanding of its effects? If you're in favor of progress, it should be obvious that we can do better than the Industrial Revolution.
vkou 8y ago
> How could the industrial boom in China or the USA in the late 1800s and early 1900s have happened without emvironmental destruction? How can growth happen in China now without it? Get real about human development and the necessities of human development. Not all of that environmental and human damage was necessary. Much of it was out of ignorance, and more was out greed, combined with a callous disregard for human life.
viggity 8y ago
Nobody give corporateslaver the infinity stones.
telchar 8y ago
Don't forget the plants! They're dying as well through the effects of agriculture, draining swamps for new subdivisions, and such. And from the few invasive species that thrive to the detriment of many native species. Although I suppose the animals are getting the worst of it since we actively go after many of them.
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
> either we stop having so many people, or the animals die. It’s us or them. This assumes there can be an 'us' without a 'them'.

nothrabannosir 8y ago

> Why is this so hard to understand? Who said anything about hard to understand? Are you explaining the observation or justifying it? Because the former might be a fool’s errand; everyone understands, as you so eloquently put it. In other words: just because I know why something happens, doesn’t mean that I think it’s a good thing, or that it shouldn’t change.

corporateslaver 8y ago
I’m saying enough with these lamentations about the environment, would these people rather be living in the woods? It’s complete nonsense. Destroying the environment has been a necessary step to human evolution.
- rosser 8y ago
  We are not separate from our environment. We wreck it at our own peril. Rapacious destruction may have been an expedient shortcut to our development, but unchecked, it will also end us.
  - lopmotr 8y ago
    What's your evidence or reasoning for the claim that unchecked destruction of the environment will destroy us? I understand that it _might_ and that that would be a pretty bad thing. So there is a risk, but why do you think it's so certain?
    - rosser 8y ago
      Are you legit saying, "I don't know if extinct-ing most of the species on the planet will wipe us out. It might. That seems like a worthwhile hypothesis to test empirically!"? When the dice are that loaded, you throw them at your own peril. When they're that loaded, you keep throwing them because it's more profitable at everyone's peril.
      - lopmotr 8y ago
        Sounds like you agree it's not certain but you're exaggerating the risk to scare people who don't understand risks. It might be appropriate to yell during a Greenpeace march but I would rather have intelligent discussions than just yell slogans at each other. It's like a parent telling their teen "If you don't wear a seat belt, you'll die in a car crash." It's obviously not true but dying in a car crash is so bad that it's worth telling a lie to increase the chance of saving their life. That's what the parent would desperately yell at them as they run off with the car keys, but not if they want to develop an independent person who can make complex decisions for themselves.
        rosser 8y ago
        There's a very good reason we don't run experiments to test, e.g., the hypothesis that a certain chemical might cause birth defects: the consequences of the hypothesis being accurate are morally abhorrent. You don't do something that might kill or maim people to test whether or not doing the thing does kill or maim people — unless you're Mengele or something. Is it really that hard to extrapolate from the specific case to the general? If we get this one wrong, we're dead. Even the possibility makes it incumbent upon us to tread exceptionally carefully. EDIT: This, "Hey, now. Let's have a rational, skeptical discussion about this" is a disingenuous tactic, in the first place. If we played that game, we'd still be debating whether or not rising CO₂ levels are dangerous, as they crossed the 500ppm threshold. We know, for practical purposes, that this is coming, unless we change course. We know the consequences of its happening. But we're still somehow dithering, apparently in order to convince trenchant outliers who have identity-level investments in being trenchant outliers, that they're wrong. That ship will never sail. "Oops. Yeah, I guess that was a bad idea after all," is not an reasonable response to an existential threat.
- nothrabannosir 8y ago
  This feels brittle. Does that include lamentations about global warming? If so: I’m afraid I disagree. If not: that’s a bit arbitrary. I understand the sentiment, but sometimes, a complaint is valid. And making it over and over and over again is also valid. It is the first step towards fixing it. If we stop acknowledging this problem we lose all hope for ever finding a way out. I would say the litany of woeful clamouring is already driving SOME people to consciously consume , buy electric cars, (or we can focus on conscientious vegetarians, if you don’t like the global warming analogy) etc. Sure , it could be a lot better, but it could also be a lot worse. If nobody ever complained , I bet there would be a lot fewer vegetarians.
- outworlder 8y ago
  Good luck continuing your "evolution" when you have no food, no clean air and abundant diseases.

windows_tips 8y ago

>How could the industrial boom in China or the USA in the late 1800s and early 1900s have happened without emvironmental destruction? How can growth happen in China now without it? Possibly if they had used solar-thermal power generation and focused on battery tech instead of exploiting petroleum so heavily.

corporateslaver 8y ago
Sarcasm?
- windows_tips 8y ago
  There was already heavy investment in steam technology. Using the sun the boil water instead of coal or wood is much less resource intensive and completely eliminates external supply chains.
  - codeisawesome 8y ago
    Did they have enough tech by that point to even begin to figure out mass manufacturing of solar cells to focus enough energy into water to make steam? Burning something that burns well is a much more intuitive and scalable process... Also, mining the easy stocks (at that point) is a low tech affair too. Which was powered by... combustion of fuel and human labor. We still can’t make solar panels with 100% efficiency, what hope did they have?
    - windows_tips 8y ago
      You don't need solar cells to heat water to boiling, just glass or a metal like aluminum or silver. With glass you can build a lens to concentrate light. With a metal you can build a concentrating mirror.
      - codeisawesome 8y ago
        Good points. But lens building is a complex endeavour that requires tooling at the manufacturing level (especially computing power!) - no matter the choice of available material, yes? Doing it with high precision at a civilisation-powering scale seems like an impossible ask of a species that was still considering much of their Home planet to be “new” (Americas).

dwaltrip 8y ago

It's a function of lingering ingorance and misaligned incentives. We have the technology and the institutions that can prevent the majority of this damage, despite our large numbers.

codeisawesome 8y ago
I am genuinely curious. Clean energy systems exist, but they are either expensive, restricted and dangerous to proliferate or expensive, inefficient and inconvenient. What institutions exist that can make clean energy palatable to all the human societies that require it for their survival—at-scale, that they are all ignoring? Leaving energy aside, what other powerful means of doing good to ecosystems as a whole, are they simply ignoring? Is there any quantification of the damage? I am most certainly not trying to attack your position. I pretty much believe the same things you said. But we should have these answers documented. Is there a single source for these things on the web?
- carapace 8y ago
  Toby Hemenway - "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nLKHYHmPbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nLKHYHmPbo Notes: He reframes "sustainable" as the midpoint of a spectrum with "degenerative" on one side and "regenerative" on the other and emphasizes regenerative systems. He talks about the length of time we (humans) have been doing "culture" (group activities, pottery, art, singing and music, etc.) and points out that it's roughly a million (1,000,000) years-- and that agriculture has only been happening for about ten thousand years, about 1% of that time. Five culture types based on food getting technology: 1 Foraging; 2 Hunter-gatherer; 3 Agricultural (cities); 5 Pastoral (Animal herding); 5 Industrial Then follows a great deal of the "dirt" on agriculture. Old hat to those who know it, horrifying and challenging to those who don't. Hemenway sums it up, "Agriculture... ...converts ecosystems into people." (Oil => Food => People) x (Peak Oil) = Hoshit! i.e. we made people out of oil for the last few generations and now we are running out of oil. Could be trouble... Holmgrin's scenarios: 1 Techno-fantasy (technology saves the day and we pack ourselves in like sardines until something else gives, or spew forth and colonize the galaxy until we reach the expansion limits of our space-drives... Technology doesn't solve the problem, only postpones it.) 2 Green-tech stable - stabilize population (match growth and death rates) and live within the Solar energy budget while regenerating the Earth. 3 Graceful decline - (growth rate less than death rate for awhile...) "Earth Stewardship" "Permaculture" I don't know where the people are supposed to have gone. 4 "Atlantis" - i.e. doom. Personally I think this is the most likely, but I'm okay with being proven wrong on that. "Peak Wood" - no kidding. Peak Oil seems to have happened before with wood instead of oil, and could be responsible for bringing the Bronze Age to a close. Wow. Last but not least, Horticulture to the rescue! All the great things about Permaculture and a Neo-Horticultural society. The video is excellent and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in these subjects.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago

I was nodding along with you--yes, the population explosion is destroying the environment--until I realized, with mixed bemusement and horror, that you were in favor of this. Just for starters: Why is "the Industrial Revolution happened" an argument against trying to do better in the future?

corporateslaver 8y ago
It points to a hard fact about what kind of things cause environmental destruction but are also massive improvements for humanity. The picture painted where environmental destruction is superfluous is completely wrong and disingenuous.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  It may be that the Industrial Revolution couldn't have happened without massive pollution, sure. The Industrial Revolution is long over. Why should we recapitulate the past when we have radically more advanced technology and a far better understanding of its effects? If you're in favor of progress, it should be obvious that we can do better than the Industrial Revolution.

vkou 8y ago

> How could the industrial boom in China or the USA in the late 1800s and early 1900s have happened without emvironmental destruction? How can growth happen in China now without it? Get real about human development and the necessities of human development. Not all of that environmental and human damage was necessary. Much of it was out of ignorance, and more was out greed, combined with a callous disregard for human life.

viggity 8y ago

Nobody give corporateslaver the infinity stones.

telchar 8y ago

Don't forget the plants! They're dying as well through the effects of agriculture, draining swamps for new subdivisions, and such. And from the few invasive species that thrive to the detriment of many native species. Although I suppose the animals are getting the worst of it since we actively go after many of them.

MaxBarraclough 8y ago

> either we stop having so many people, or the animals die. It’s us or them. This assumes there can be an 'us' without a 'them'.