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> Life is complicated, but in general humans have been becoming much more respectful of the environment as we become more wealthy. [...] You can't be serious..

by RGamma 8y ago

> Life is complicated, but in general humans have been becoming much more respectful of the environment as we become more wealthy. [...] You can't be serious... https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*IOUIWy_MZuECIpZRK9hy6Q.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*IOUIWy_MZuECIpZRK... ("The Great Acceleration") Also read The Anthropocene Review whenever you feel too optimistic about the future. In fact now that I read your comment again, there's virtually not a single statement I can agree with. Our current way of "householding" ("economy (from Greek οίκος – "household" and νέμoμαι – "manage")") with this planet is thrashing ecosystems left and right. This is because mankind's economy has long taken on a life of its own, serving itself, without anyone pricing in "negative externalities" (another way of saying we're turning Earth into a Wall-E-esque dystopia, except we're not going to have a big space station to live on).

traek 8y ago
None of those charts are normalized per capita, so they're essentially just plotting population growth. I agree with you that greenhouse gas emissions are disproportionately from high-income countries, along with meat consumption, food waste, air travel, and lot of other measures. But those charts aren't a great way to make that point.
joshuahedlund 8y ago
I recommend Stephen Pinker's Enlightenment Now for a data/evidence-driven case for optimism on the environmental front. Still plenty of cause for pessimism/alarm, but reason for hope as well. As societies progress beyond poverty they expand their circle of concern beyond immediate survival to their surrounding environment. In fact this entire discussion is part of that expansion.
- groby_b 8y ago
  https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/jeremy-lent/steven-pinker-s-ideas-are-fatally-flawed-these-eight-graphs-show-why https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/jeremy-lent/ste...
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
It's fair to say the wealthier society has become, the more respectful it has become of the environment. It's just that with greater capability comes greater capacity to do harm. Prehistoric humans probably had a limited concept of environmental protection, but it didn't matter--there wasn't much they could do to it. Given the unpredictability around both environmental respect and capacity for destruction, together with incentives from person to person to act or resist, it's difficult to predict much with certainty.
- njarboe 8y ago
  "there wasn't much they could do to it" This is not really true. Humans have been radically changing the environment from before they were even "Homo Sapiens". For just one example, prehistoric human hunting had devastating effects on animal populations with most large mammals killed off by humans every time we moved into their habitat. We even have a couple of data points when this happened very quickly. In Australia around 50k before present (BP) and in the Americas around 10-15k BP. From this[1] Atlantic article). "By looking at how mammals have changed in size over time, Smith and her colleagues have shown that whenever humans are around, the mammals that disappear tend to be 100 to 1000 times bigger than those that survive. This isn’t entirely new: Many scientists, Smith included, have found the same trends in Australia and the Americas. But the new analysis shows that this pattern occurred in every continent except Antarctica, and throughout at least the last 125,000 years." And the abstract of the paper this article is writing about [2] "Since the late Pleistocene, large-bodied mammals have been extirpated from much of Earth. Although all habitable continents once harbored giant mammals, the few remaining species are largely confined to Africa. This decline is coincident with the global expansion of hominins over the late Quaternary. Here, we quantify mammalian extinction selectivity, continental body size distributions, and taxonomic diversity over five time periods spanning the past 125,000 years and stretching approximately 200 years into the future. We demonstrate that size-selective extinction was already under way in the oldest interval and occurred on all continents, within all trophic modes, and across all time intervals. Moreover, the degree of selectivity was unprecedented in 65 million years of mammalian evolution. The distinctive selectivity signature implicates hominin activity as a primary driver of taxonomic losses and ecosystem homogenization. Because megafauna have a disproportionate influence on ecosystem structure and function, past and present body size downgrading is reshaping Earth’s biosphere." Human started wild fires would be another. Humans changing life on Earth is as old as humanity but the last few hundred years is the first time we have started to care at a societal/global level. National Parks were being form in the US starting in the early 1900's. Half of Alaska was preserved in the 1970's, many countries in Africa are doing the same. If those African countries can get rich enough, fast enough some of the great savanna ecosystem could be kept from extinction. As usual, a balance of going forward and preserving what we have will be the best bet for a good outcome. It does not seem that having radical groups of people holding opposing views works well to maintain this balance. Maybe each individual needs to see the value in change and stability for good things to happen more than bad. Moloch[1] is always with us but its power can be reduced from time to time. [1]https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/in-a-few-centuries-cows-could-be-the-largest-land-animals-left/558323/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/in-a-few... [2]http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6386/310 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6386/310
usaar333 8y ago
> Great acceleration chart OP's point is a bit more complex. Per capita, humans became a less respectful on initial industrialization (and initially wealthier), but become more so as they become wealthier. Probably the worse is at a middle-income point (maybe $5k/capita) This is why forested acres have gone up significantly in the US and Europe: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04/watch-how-europe-is-greener-now-than-100-years-ago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04...

by RGamma 8y ago

traek 8y ago

None of those charts are normalized per capita, so they're essentially just plotting population growth. I agree with you that greenhouse gas emissions are disproportionately from high-income countries, along with meat consumption, food waste, air travel, and lot of other measures. But those charts aren't a great way to make that point.

joshuahedlund 8y ago

I recommend Stephen Pinker's Enlightenment Now for a data/evidence-driven case for optimism on the environmental front. Still plenty of cause for pessimism/alarm, but reason for hope as well. As societies progress beyond poverty they expand their circle of concern beyond immediate survival to their surrounding environment. In fact this entire discussion is part of that expansion.

groby_b 8y ago
https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/jeremy-lent/steven-pinker-s-ideas-are-fatally-flawed-these-eight-graphs-show-why https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/jeremy-lent/ste...

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

It's fair to say the wealthier society has become, the more respectful it has become of the environment. It's just that with greater capability comes greater capacity to do harm. Prehistoric humans probably had a limited concept of environmental protection, but it didn't matter--there wasn't much they could do to it. Given the unpredictability around both environmental respect and capacity for destruction, together with incentives from person to person to act or resist, it's difficult to predict much with certainty.

njarboe 8y ago
"there wasn't much they could do to it" This is not really true. Humans have been radically changing the environment from before they were even "Homo Sapiens". For just one example, prehistoric human hunting had devastating effects on animal populations with most large mammals killed off by humans every time we moved into their habitat. We even have a couple of data points when this happened very quickly. In Australia around 50k before present (BP) and in the Americas around 10-15k BP. From this[1] Atlantic article). "By looking at how mammals have changed in size over time, Smith and her colleagues have shown that whenever humans are around, the mammals that disappear tend to be 100 to 1000 times bigger than those that survive. This isn’t entirely new: Many scientists, Smith included, have found the same trends in Australia and the Americas. But the new analysis shows that this pattern occurred in every continent except Antarctica, and throughout at least the last 125,000 years." And the abstract of the paper this article is writing about [2] "Since the late Pleistocene, large-bodied mammals have been extirpated from much of Earth. Although all habitable continents once harbored giant mammals, the few remaining species are largely confined to Africa. This decline is coincident with the global expansion of hominins over the late Quaternary. Here, we quantify mammalian extinction selectivity, continental body size distributions, and taxonomic diversity over five time periods spanning the past 125,000 years and stretching approximately 200 years into the future. We demonstrate that size-selective extinction was already under way in the oldest interval and occurred on all continents, within all trophic modes, and across all time intervals. Moreover, the degree of selectivity was unprecedented in 65 million years of mammalian evolution. The distinctive selectivity signature implicates hominin activity as a primary driver of taxonomic losses and ecosystem homogenization. Because megafauna have a disproportionate influence on ecosystem structure and function, past and present body size downgrading is reshaping Earth’s biosphere." Human started wild fires would be another. Humans changing life on Earth is as old as humanity but the last few hundred years is the first time we have started to care at a societal/global level. National Parks were being form in the US starting in the early 1900's. Half of Alaska was preserved in the 1970's, many countries in Africa are doing the same. If those African countries can get rich enough, fast enough some of the great savanna ecosystem could be kept from extinction. As usual, a balance of going forward and preserving what we have will be the best bet for a good outcome. It does not seem that having radical groups of people holding opposing views works well to maintain this balance. Maybe each individual needs to see the value in change and stability for good things to happen more than bad. Moloch[1] is always with us but its power can be reduced from time to time. [1]https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/in-a-few-centuries-cows-could-be-the-largest-land-animals-left/558323/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/in-a-few... [2]http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6386/310 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6386/310

usaar333 8y ago

> Great acceleration chart OP's point is a bit more complex. Per capita, humans became a less respectful on initial industrialization (and initially wealthier), but become more so as they become wealthier. Probably the worse is at a middle-income point (maybe $5k/capita) This is why forested acres have gone up significantly in the US and Europe: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04/watch-how-europe-is-greener-now-than-100-years-ago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04...