6 ms·

I don't think so. I mean, fifteen years ago, electric cars weren't a thing. If we had abandoned cars in favor of bicycles then, Tesla wouldn't have gotten off

I don't think so. I mean, fifteen years ago, electric cars weren't a thing. If we had abandoned cars in favor of bicycles then, Tesla wouldn't have gotten off the ground. And I think I'd rather ride around in a Tesla than on a Schwinn. Basically, I think we have to find climate solutions that allow us to maintain our standard of living. And I think by accepting that's what we need to do, we can and will find those choices, and not divert attention to unpalatable options. I'm an optimist, but the post-enlightenment world routinely justifies such optimism.

Jolter 7y ago
If we had made laws 20 years ago, forbidding combustion engines by 2019, I'm convinced we would have all been driving electric cars by now. The problem electric cars had in the past, that Tesla was the first to overcome, was range. So, we would have driven electric cars that were slightly less convenient than combustion cars, which would have been very tolerable and likely would have helped a great deal with our huge carbon emission. The problem with your line of reasoning is that you seem to pre-suppose that the market has to solve every problem, even the ones that the market created.
KirinDave 7y ago
> Basically, I think we have to find climate solutions that allow us to maintain our standard of living. And I think by accepting that's what we need to do, we can and will find those choices, and not divert attention to unpalatable options. This is a statement made by a rich and enormously privileged person. You can't deny that most of the world's population lives in poverty without these choices. Your goal is not to push a post-enlightenment techno-optimism despite the couching of things in that framework. Your goal is to avoid losing what you have today. And that's just not realistic. We will all need to redefine what is "normal." Our lifestyles not only can't pass environmental debts forward, they can no longer be defined by the extreme luxury of the top 7 richest nations at the expense of the majority of the world. Both our lives are sustained by what amounts to indentured servitude. As traditional power systems are disrupted by the inability to maintain deep supply chains, people aren't going to bow to your desire for comfort at their expense. Why should they? We absolutely have to keep moving forward with technology that is more efficient and makes energy essentially free in the long term (and minimally rationed in the short term). But we can't do it at the expense of the future while chanting "standard of living" at obvious outcomes we don't like.
- CapricornNoble 7y ago
  >>>Our lifestyles not only can't pass environmental debts forward, they can no longer be defined by the extreme luxury of the top 7 richest nations at the expense of the majority of the world. Outside of India and China, the developing world doesn't possess the military/technical capabilities to prevent the richest from securing the natural resources to maintain their gilded standard of living. Developing countries will either rapidly industrialize and militarize, becoming yet another part of the problem, or they are likely to be marginalized into migration, collapse, and death. >>>Your goal is to avoid losing what you have today. Which in practical terms applies to every human being, ever, who didn't become an ascetic monk.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    > Developing countries will either rapidly industrialize and militarize, becoming yet another part of the problem, or they are likely to be marginalized into migration, collapse, and death. Without re-examining our priorities quickly and changing our economies, this fate awaits everyone. > Which in practical terms applies to every human being, ever, who didn't become an ascetic monk. No, not everyone is a Reactionary.
    - candiodari 7y ago
      > Without re-examining our priorities quickly and changing our economies, this fate awaits everyone. I don't get this way of thinking. This isn't the first time people thought that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism They were wrong then, they will be wrong now. Why do I think that ? Because we are already far over the carrying capacity of the planet without fossil fuels. Either technology will save us or your doom scenario WILL happen. In other words, you could be wrong or right. If you're wrong, then of course we should only take limited steps to change. If you're right and we cannot adapt, then we're fucked unless we kill something like 90% of the human race (exact number doesn't really matter, even if it's 50%). Any event that kills 90% of the human race is going to be as bad as just waiting for the "migration, collapse and death", whether we engineer it or not. So you're wrong. Not just because there's a range of technologies that could save our ass, but also because "changing our priorities" is no different from "migration, collapse, and death" at this point. BUT on the plus side: stabilization is happening, without us having to do anything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#Human_population_growth_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#Human_popula... World population is on the path to peaking at around 8.5 billion humans and then dropping to steady state at around 7.5 billion. That's our current guess. Barring a great war or something like that, that's what will happen. Animals come with a built-in "carrying capacity guesser", and populations end up very close to the exact STABLE carrying capacity of whatever environment they find themselves in. And while it's possible to disrupt this (famously the case of rabbits and cats in artificial environments without good enough places to hide for the rabbits, but abundant food availability), shouldn't our default assumption be that there clearly is a mechanism controlling human population size, and that it's not in fact screwing up ? That that 8.5/7.5 billion number is in fact a pretty good guess ? As the history of Yellowstone park illustrates, humans have done far more damage attempting to control population sizes of animals than we have just letting them be.
danzig13 7y ago
I would rather ride around on a Schwinn in a metro area that has been designed for human sized inhabitants to enjoy their lives; not based on segregation era rules and property tax avoidance.
Geee 7y ago
Maintain? We will obviously increase our energy use, and not by a little but by order of billions and billions (non-accurate estimate). We haven't really even started consuming energy yet. We just came out of caves and are barely learning to walk as a civilization. We don't need to cut our consumption until we actually run out of energy, i.e. have harnessed the whole sun with a Dyson sphere and used up every other source. After that, there are other stars to harness.

Jolter 7y ago

If we had made laws 20 years ago, forbidding combustion engines by 2019, I'm convinced we would have all been driving electric cars by now. The problem electric cars had in the past, that Tesla was the first to overcome, was range. So, we would have driven electric cars that were slightly less convenient than combustion cars, which would have been very tolerable and likely would have helped a great deal with our huge carbon emission. The problem with your line of reasoning is that you seem to pre-suppose that the market has to solve every problem, even the ones that the market created.

KirinDave 7y ago

> Basically, I think we have to find climate solutions that allow us to maintain our standard of living. And I think by accepting that's what we need to do, we can and will find those choices, and not divert attention to unpalatable options. This is a statement made by a rich and enormously privileged person. You can't deny that most of the world's population lives in poverty without these choices. Your goal is not to push a post-enlightenment techno-optimism despite the couching of things in that framework. Your goal is to avoid losing what you have today. And that's just not realistic. We will all need to redefine what is "normal." Our lifestyles not only can't pass environmental debts forward, they can no longer be defined by the extreme luxury of the top 7 richest nations at the expense of the majority of the world. Both our lives are sustained by what amounts to indentured servitude. As traditional power systems are disrupted by the inability to maintain deep supply chains, people aren't going to bow to your desire for comfort at their expense. Why should they? We absolutely have to keep moving forward with technology that is more efficient and makes energy essentially free in the long term (and minimally rationed in the short term). But we can't do it at the expense of the future while chanting "standard of living" at obvious outcomes we don't like.

CapricornNoble 7y ago
>>>Our lifestyles not only can't pass environmental debts forward, they can no longer be defined by the extreme luxury of the top 7 richest nations at the expense of the majority of the world. Outside of India and China, the developing world doesn't possess the military/technical capabilities to prevent the richest from securing the natural resources to maintain their gilded standard of living. Developing countries will either rapidly industrialize and militarize, becoming yet another part of the problem, or they are likely to be marginalized into migration, collapse, and death. >>>Your goal is to avoid losing what you have today. Which in practical terms applies to every human being, ever, who didn't become an ascetic monk.
- KirinDave 7y ago
  > Developing countries will either rapidly industrialize and militarize, becoming yet another part of the problem, or they are likely to be marginalized into migration, collapse, and death. Without re-examining our priorities quickly and changing our economies, this fate awaits everyone. > Which in practical terms applies to every human being, ever, who didn't become an ascetic monk. No, not everyone is a Reactionary.
  - candiodari 7y ago
    > Without re-examining our priorities quickly and changing our economies, this fate awaits everyone. I don't get this way of thinking. This isn't the first time people thought that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism They were wrong then, they will be wrong now. Why do I think that ? Because we are already far over the carrying capacity of the planet without fossil fuels. Either technology will save us or your doom scenario WILL happen. In other words, you could be wrong or right. If you're wrong, then of course we should only take limited steps to change. If you're right and we cannot adapt, then we're fucked unless we kill something like 90% of the human race (exact number doesn't really matter, even if it's 50%). Any event that kills 90% of the human race is going to be as bad as just waiting for the "migration, collapse and death", whether we engineer it or not. So you're wrong. Not just because there's a range of technologies that could save our ass, but also because "changing our priorities" is no different from "migration, collapse, and death" at this point. BUT on the plus side: stabilization is happening, without us having to do anything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#Human_population_growth_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#Human_popula... World population is on the path to peaking at around 8.5 billion humans and then dropping to steady state at around 7.5 billion. That's our current guess. Barring a great war or something like that, that's what will happen. Animals come with a built-in "carrying capacity guesser", and populations end up very close to the exact STABLE carrying capacity of whatever environment they find themselves in. And while it's possible to disrupt this (famously the case of rabbits and cats in artificial environments without good enough places to hide for the rabbits, but abundant food availability), shouldn't our default assumption be that there clearly is a mechanism controlling human population size, and that it's not in fact screwing up ? That that 8.5/7.5 billion number is in fact a pretty good guess ? As the history of Yellowstone park illustrates, humans have done far more damage attempting to control population sizes of animals than we have just letting them be.

danzig13 7y ago

I would rather ride around on a Schwinn in a metro area that has been designed for human sized inhabitants to enjoy their lives; not based on segregation era rules and property tax avoidance.

Geee 7y ago

Maintain? We will obviously increase our energy use, and not by a little but by order of billions and billions (non-accurate estimate). We haven't really even started consuming energy yet. We just came out of caves and are barely learning to walk as a civilization. We don't need to cut our consumption until we actually run out of energy, i.e. have harnessed the whole sun with a Dyson sphere and used up every other source. After that, there are other stars to harness.