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This is the correct way of thinking to move forward. Humanity will have a large effect on our environment. Period. A static ecosystem didn't exist without us a

This is the correct way of thinking to move forward. Humanity will have a large effect on our environment. Period. A static ecosystem didn't exist without us and it certainly doesn't exist with us. Embracing that we have an effect and choosing to improve our environment rather than to get it back to some idealized past is the only way we can have a future. It's too bad, then, that most of ecological thinking, as you've described, is so pervasive. Interestingly, this thinking is really embedded in our fiction. Garden of Eden type stuff is very common. Tolkien's world also follows the idealized past trope. It might be part of a sort of jungian collective unconscious. I wonder what works exist that tell a different story trope - one aligned more with the economical way of thinking.

L_226 7y ago
> A static ecosystem didn't exist without us and it certainly doesn't exist with us. It is possible that our species is creating a static ecosystem - one without biodiversity and blandly homogenous in its design to sustain our current way of life, with no room for "inefficiencies" (i.e. everything else on the planet that competes for resources).
sametmax 7y ago
If you run in a straight line, toward a cliff, you can hope that when you get there, a bridge will have been built. And it may work quite often. It has for us in the past (although we are kin to forget the cost we paid for it). But it's not a bad answer to suggest to slow down to give time for the bridge to be built, or just change course. You can also assume some of us will not die in the fall even if the bridge is not there, and part of the group will survive. But it's not bad to suggest we could choose another way. The thing is, even if the universe is not a closed system, our Earth system can be approximated as such, once we consider social/logistical/scientific bottlenecks, education, time available, speed of consumption and reaction, inertia, and our desire to avoid a genocide. I keep posting this video (in 8 parts): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_other&playnext=1&list=SP6A1FD147A45EF50D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_othe... Because I wish more people would watch it. It's a very good mathematical and political explanation of why we can't continue just thinking "growth". It addresses the usual rebukes such as "we are not in a finite system", "this is not a zero sum game", "innovation/adaptation will save us" or "we can make it sustainable/reasonable". I particularly like the part where Albert Allen Bartlett explains how our growth affects democracy, comfort, health, and peace, not just resource consumption.
- ratel 7y ago
  The analogy of the cliff seems nice, until you give it some thought. a) We are not actually running. What does stop and think about it actually mean? If there is a cliff and if we can stop or change direction. why not on the edge of the cliff, why way before that? b) Nobody is excepting a bridge to miraculously appear, but we might be thinking about how to cross that cliff when we get there and prepare. Humans are actually quite good at that. Will it costs us more than we were expecting when we could not yet see that 'cliff' yet. Definitely, but we were not born with foresight and have a limited time-frame of reference even if we can predict with some certainty. The later is why we are not investing everything for the time our sun will turn off its light. Call it the human condition. As for your insistence that 'growth' cannot be sustained. I suspect you mean population growth, although nobody is actually "thinking" as in wishing for that. I for one cannot have a meaningful conversation on that. People who really belief that is our biggest problem are no longer here to have that conversation with and all others tend to mean: There are too many _other_ people. That discussion has been taking place under many different guises, none of them remotely interesting.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    > a) We are not actually running. What does stop and think about it actually mean? To me, "running" refers approximately to "going about business on our current trajectory; the status quo". "Stop and think" means just that: stop and think, but think deeply. Thinking shallowly is effortless, thinking deeply is a different story (perhaps especially for those of higher intelligence, whose shallow thinking can often be equivalent to the layman's deep thinking). For any given problem, is the situation more complex than it appears on the surface? Have I overlooked anything? Are there non-obvious second order effects that are invisible when thinking about the situation in isolation, but manifest themselves in the real world of integrated systems? Are there any examples in history where shallow thinking got humanity into trouble? For this, the speaker gives the example of the Aswan Dam, on the Nile river; many other things could be added to that list, such as war. > If there is a cliff and if we can stop or change direction. why not on the edge of the cliff, why way before that? Momentum, and lack of support from an often selfish, non-unified, and shallow thinking public (see how quickly China can execute on disruptive projects vs the glacial speed in democracies that require consensus). > b) Nobody is excepting a bridge to miraculously appear, but we might be thinking about how to cross that cliff when we get there and prepare. Humans are actually quite good at that. Good, but not perfect, especially when the problem is not purely technical, but involves (even in part) relationships with other humans (see: seemingly minor actions that lead to major interpersonal, tribal (political polarism, culture wars), or international conflicts). I like this part from the 8th segment of the playlist (emphasis and [additions] mine): > ...now except for the petroleum graphs the things I tell you are not predictions of the future, I'm only reporting facts and the results of some very simple arithmetic, but I do this with confidence that these facts, this arithmetic, and more importantly our level of understanding of them will play a major role in shaping our future. Now don't take what I've said blindly or uncritically because of the rhetoric or for any other reason. Please, you check the facts, please check my arithmetic, if you find errors please let me know. But if you don't find errors then, I hope you'll take this very very seriously. > You are important people, you can think, and if there was ever a time when the human race needs people who will think, it's right now. It's our responsibility as citizens in a democracy to think, and so to be successful with this experiment of human life on earth we have to understand the laws of nature as we encounter them in the study of science and mathematics [and psychology and sociology]. We have to remember the message of this cartoon: thinking is very upsetting it tells us things we'd rather not know. We should remember the words of Galileo, he said I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. We should remember the words of Aldous Huxley, he observed that facts do not cease to exist because they're ignored. And we should remember HL Mencken social philosophy, he believed that it was in the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant [or unpleasant, in some psychologically counter-intuitive situations], and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting, and we should remember Eric Sevareide's, law he was a newscaster who made the transition from radio to television back in the 1950s he observed that the chief source of problems is solutions. Now let's just look at an example the Nile River for
perfunctory 7y ago
> This is the correct way of thinking to move forward. I guess it depends. In case of rare earth elements supply problems we will just skip the next iPhone upgrade cycle, wait until supply chain readjusts and buy the next iPhone version a couple of years later. No big deal. This cannot be said about all (eco)systems. Just to take a random example - Aral Sea [0]. "The Aral Sea is considered an example of ecosystem collapse." "...As a result, the land around the Aral Sea is heavily polluted, and the people living in the area are suffering from a lack of fresh water and health problems, including high rates of certain forms of cancer and lung diseases. Respiratory illnesses, including tuberculosis (most of which is drug resistant) and cancer, digestive disorders, anaemia, and infectious diseases are common ailments in the region. Liver, kidney, and eye problems can also be attributed to the toxic dust storms. All of this has resulted in an unusually high fatality rate among vulnerable parts of the population: the child mortality rate is 75 in every 1,000 newborns, and maternity death is 12 in every 1,000 women." And these people cannot just "adapt to changes" and move to new territories, because somebody is standing on the border with a gun. Tell them that "economic" thinking is the way "to move forward". All I am trying to say it's not so black and white. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
- imustbeevil 7y ago
  > Tell them that "economic" thinking is the way "to move forward". What would the "ecological" solution be for those people? As in, what can they do ecologically? Economics is just the study of scarcity. Water in that location became scarce. Any action anyone takes as a result of that scarcity is economical thinking.
  - perfunctory 7y ago
    The point is that water didn't just become scarce all by itself. It was the result of the economic activity upstream. To be honest I don't know what those people can do now, after the ecosystem collapse. But the situation could have been avoided in the first place I suppose. "economic" and "ecological" thinking need to work together to begin with imho. Or maybe "economic" vs "ecological" is the wrong dichotomy and misleading terminology. Maybe ecology should be just part of the economy. Who knows.
Sharlin 7y ago
You cannot just let the economy to find a way, not in general. The negative externalities incurred in the process are simply way too high. Or, rather, if you want economy to find a way, you have to make sure those externalities are fully paid for by those who cause them.
- rfrey 7y ago
  I think it’s useful to distinguish between ‘economic thinking’ as described by your parent, and the current western economic leaning toward market economies. As I understand the comment, economic thinking is a story about adaptive systems, not necessarily a story about unfettered markets.
  - clarkmoody 7y ago
    An unfettered market is the most adaptive system possible: land, minerals, goods, money and labor not restricted in their movement, allocation, or prices. The system responds quickly to changing conditions and reallocates resources accordingly. Prices communicate the scarcity of goods and money (interest rates) and send signals to consumers and producers alike to ration those things with higher prices or to seek alternatives. Check out the Depression of 1920-21[1] for an example of the economy bouncing back without government intervention. As soon as you introduce price controls, permitting, licensing, interest rate controls, labor restrictions (age, wage), quotas, or any of the other government interventions in the economy, you introduce inefficiency compared to the "unfettered market." The primary criticism of markets is externalities not accounted for in prices. This is where free-market environmentalism[2] steps in to argue that that the failure is due to the fact that there is no property in air and water, so you have a tragedy of the commons. Increasing property rights to include previously unowned resources could capture the externalities and begin to correct market failure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_of_1920%E2%80%9321 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_of_1920%E2%80%9321 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-market_environmentalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-market_environmentalism
    - jbay808 7y ago
est31 7y ago
We got to this ecological thinking not by random chance. Think of DDT or of nuclear tests that polluted the biosphere until a degree that traces were found in children's milk teeth close to the test areas. Will climate change be the end of humanity? Likely it won't. Probably some areas will even become usable for farming that previously weren't. But the homes of significant populations will become inhospitable, leading to them wanting to leave those places. This can and will cause tremendous wars of fighting about resources. Think of the war in Syria, here droughts have contributed to destabilizing the country.
erikpukinskis 7y ago
> choosing to improve our environment rather than to get it back to some idealized past There’s a third way, FWIW, which is a “cycle mindset”. That this has happened before, and we will inevitably return to the past. That things won’t be the same, but they will be.
chachachoney 7y ago
I think you're confusing prelapsarian yearnings with the innate desire for sustainability & equipoise with the environment. Ecosystems are not static, and neither are our species' interactions with them, but that doesn't mean that it's naive to strive for solutions which have minimal impact on external systems and by extension other members of our species who depend on them. The reason we don't have more universal 'economical' story tropes is that most forms of economical thinking are simply bad-faith optimization routines for the benefit of a very few, and contain all sorts of hidden variables which represent the unmet needs of expendable or undesirable members of our own species. We (as a species) haven't seen a lot of good-faith economical solutions which improve the environment for all without hidden costs paid at the expense of others. When we have seen a significant number of such examples, our tropes will reflect them. (of perhaps... tropes which point to such solutions threaten the architects of bad-faith economic solutions while unattainable eden paradise tropes do not...)

L_226 7y ago

> A static ecosystem didn't exist without us and it certainly doesn't exist with us. It is possible that our species is creating a static ecosystem - one without biodiversity and blandly homogenous in its design to sustain our current way of life, with no room for "inefficiencies" (i.e. everything else on the planet that competes for resources).

sametmax 7y ago

If you run in a straight line, toward a cliff, you can hope that when you get there, a bridge will have been built. And it may work quite often. It has for us in the past (although we are kin to forget the cost we paid for it). But it's not a bad answer to suggest to slow down to give time for the bridge to be built, or just change course. You can also assume some of us will not die in the fall even if the bridge is not there, and part of the group will survive. But it's not bad to suggest we could choose another way. The thing is, even if the universe is not a closed system, our Earth system can be approximated as such, once we consider social/logistical/scientific bottlenecks, education, time available, speed of consumption and reaction, inertia, and our desire to avoid a genocide. I keep posting this video (in 8 parts): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_other&playnext=1&list=SP6A1FD147A45EF50D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_othe... Because I wish more people would watch it. It's a very good mathematical and political explanation of why we can't continue just thinking "growth". It addresses the usual rebukes such as "we are not in a finite system", "this is not a zero sum game", "innovation/adaptation will save us" or "we can make it sustainable/reasonable". I particularly like the part where Albert Allen Bartlett explains how our growth affects democracy, comfort, health, and peace, not just resource consumption.

ratel 7y ago
The analogy of the cliff seems nice, until you give it some thought. a) We are not actually running. What does stop and think about it actually mean? If there is a cliff and if we can stop or change direction. why not on the edge of the cliff, why way before that? b) Nobody is excepting a bridge to miraculously appear, but we might be thinking about how to cross that cliff when we get there and prepare. Humans are actually quite good at that. Will it costs us more than we were expecting when we could not yet see that 'cliff' yet. Definitely, but we were not born with foresight and have a limited time-frame of reference even if we can predict with some certainty. The later is why we are not investing everything for the time our sun will turn off its light. Call it the human condition. As for your insistence that 'growth' cannot be sustained. I suspect you mean population growth, although nobody is actually "thinking" as in wishing for that. I for one cannot have a meaningful conversation on that. People who really belief that is our biggest problem are no longer here to have that conversation with and all others tend to mean: There are too many _other_ people. That discussion has been taking place under many different guises, none of them remotely interesting.
- mistermann 7y ago
  > a) We are not actually running. What does stop and think about it actually mean? To me, "running" refers approximately to "going about business on our current trajectory; the status quo". "Stop and think" means just that: stop and think, but think deeply. Thinking shallowly is effortless, thinking deeply is a different story (perhaps especially for those of higher intelligence, whose shallow thinking can often be equivalent to the layman's deep thinking). For any given problem, is the situation more complex than it appears on the surface? Have I overlooked anything? Are there non-obvious second order effects that are invisible when thinking about the situation in isolation, but manifest themselves in the real world of integrated systems? Are there any examples in history where shallow thinking got humanity into trouble? For this, the speaker gives the example of the Aswan Dam, on the Nile river; many other things could be added to that list, such as war. > If there is a cliff and if we can stop or change direction. why not on the edge of the cliff, why way before that? Momentum, and lack of support from an often selfish, non-unified, and shallow thinking public (see how quickly China can execute on disruptive projects vs the glacial speed in democracies that require consensus). > b) Nobody is excepting a bridge to miraculously appear, but we might be thinking about how to cross that cliff when we get there and prepare. Humans are actually quite good at that. Good, but not perfect, especially when the problem is not purely technical, but involves (even in part) relationships with other humans (see: seemingly minor actions that lead to major interpersonal, tribal (political polarism, culture wars), or international conflicts). I like this part from the 8th segment of the playlist (emphasis and [additions] mine): > ...now except for the petroleum graphs the things I tell you are not predictions of the future, I'm only reporting facts and the results of some very simple arithmetic, but I do this with confidence that these facts, this arithmetic, and more importantly our level of understanding of them will play a major role in shaping our future. Now don't take what I've said blindly or uncritically because of the rhetoric or for any other reason. Please, you check the facts, please check my arithmetic, if you find errors please let me know. But if you don't find errors then, I hope you'll take this very very seriously. > You are important people, you can think, and if there was ever a time when the human race needs people who will think, it's right now. It's our responsibility as citizens in a democracy to think, and so to be successful with this experiment of human life on earth we have to understand the laws of nature as we encounter them in the study of science and mathematics [and psychology and sociology]. We have to remember the message of this cartoon: thinking is very upsetting it tells us things we'd rather not know. We should remember the words of Galileo, he said I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. We should remember the words of Aldous Huxley, he observed that facts do not cease to exist because they're ignored. And we should remember HL Mencken social philosophy, he believed that it was in the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant [or unpleasant, in some psychologically counter-intuitive situations], and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting, and we should remember Eric Sevareide's, law he was a newscaster who made the transition from radio to television back in the 1950s he observed that the chief source of problems is solutions. Now let's just look at an example the Nile River for

perfunctory 7y ago

> This is the correct way of thinking to move forward. I guess it depends. In case of rare earth elements supply problems we will just skip the next iPhone upgrade cycle, wait until supply chain readjusts and buy the next iPhone version a couple of years later. No big deal. This cannot be said about all (eco)systems. Just to take a random example - Aral Sea [0]. "The Aral Sea is considered an example of ecosystem collapse." "...As a result, the land around the Aral Sea is heavily polluted, and the people living in the area are suffering from a lack of fresh water and health problems, including high rates of certain forms of cancer and lung diseases. Respiratory illnesses, including tuberculosis (most of which is drug resistant) and cancer, digestive disorders, anaemia, and infectious diseases are common ailments in the region. Liver, kidney, and eye problems can also be attributed to the toxic dust storms. All of this has resulted in an unusually high fatality rate among vulnerable parts of the population: the child mortality rate is 75 in every 1,000 newborns, and maternity death is 12 in every 1,000 women." And these people cannot just "adapt to changes" and move to new territories, because somebody is standing on the border with a gun. Tell them that "economic" thinking is the way "to move forward". All I am trying to say it's not so black and white. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea

imustbeevil 7y ago
> Tell them that "economic" thinking is the way "to move forward". What would the "ecological" solution be for those people? As in, what can they do ecologically? Economics is just the study of scarcity. Water in that location became scarce. Any action anyone takes as a result of that scarcity is economical thinking.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  The point is that water didn't just become scarce all by itself. It was the result of the economic activity upstream. To be honest I don't know what those people can do now, after the ecosystem collapse. But the situation could have been avoided in the first place I suppose. "economic" and "ecological" thinking need to work together to begin with imho. Or maybe "economic" vs "ecological" is the wrong dichotomy and misleading terminology. Maybe ecology should be just part of the economy. Who knows.

Sharlin 7y ago

You cannot just let the economy to find a way, not in general. The negative externalities incurred in the process are simply way too high. Or, rather, if you want economy to find a way, you have to make sure those externalities are fully paid for by those who cause them.

rfrey 7y ago
I think it’s useful to distinguish between ‘economic thinking’ as described by your parent, and the current western economic leaning toward market economies. As I understand the comment, economic thinking is a story about adaptive systems, not necessarily a story about unfettered markets.
- clarkmoody 7y ago
  An unfettered market is the most adaptive system possible: land, minerals, goods, money and labor not restricted in their movement, allocation, or prices. The system responds quickly to changing conditions and reallocates resources accordingly. Prices communicate the scarcity of goods and money (interest rates) and send signals to consumers and producers alike to ration those things with higher prices or to seek alternatives. Check out the Depression of 1920-21[1] for an example of the economy bouncing back without government intervention. As soon as you introduce price controls, permitting, licensing, interest rate controls, labor restrictions (age, wage), quotas, or any of the other government interventions in the economy, you introduce inefficiency compared to the "unfettered market." The primary criticism of markets is externalities not accounted for in prices. This is where free-market environmentalism[2] steps in to argue that that the failure is due to the fact that there is no property in air and water, so you have a tragedy of the commons. Increasing property rights to include previously unowned resources could capture the externalities and begin to correct market failure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_of_1920%E2%80%9321 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_of_1920%E2%80%9321 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-market_environmentalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-market_environmentalism
  - jbay808 7y ago

est31 7y ago

We got to this ecological thinking not by random chance. Think of DDT or of nuclear tests that polluted the biosphere until a degree that traces were found in children's milk teeth close to the test areas. Will climate change be the end of humanity? Likely it won't. Probably some areas will even become usable for farming that previously weren't. But the homes of significant populations will become inhospitable, leading to them wanting to leave those places. This can and will cause tremendous wars of fighting about resources. Think of the war in Syria, here droughts have contributed to destabilizing the country.

erikpukinskis 7y ago

> choosing to improve our environment rather than to get it back to some idealized past There’s a third way, FWIW, which is a “cycle mindset”. That this has happened before, and we will inevitably return to the past. That things won’t be the same, but they will be.

chachachoney 7y ago

I think you're confusing prelapsarian yearnings with the innate desire for sustainability & equipoise with the environment. Ecosystems are not static, and neither are our species' interactions with them, but that doesn't mean that it's naive to strive for solutions which have minimal impact on external systems and by extension other members of our species who depend on them. The reason we don't have more universal 'economical' story tropes is that most forms of economical thinking are simply bad-faith optimization routines for the benefit of a very few, and contain all sorts of hidden variables which represent the unmet needs of expendable or undesirable members of our own species. We (as a species) haven't seen a lot of good-faith economical solutions which improve the environment for all without hidden costs paid at the expense of others. When we have seen a significant number of such examples, our tropes will reflect them. (of perhaps... tropes which point to such solutions threaten the architects of bad-faith economic solutions while unattainable eden paradise tropes do not...)