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It's not so crazy to me that we try to maintain the same quality of life. Watching the meter and waiting until 9 PM to wash your clothes is a pretty sad state o
by papreclip 7y ago
It's not so crazy to me that we try to maintain the same quality of life. Watching the meter and waiting until 9 PM to wash your clothes is a pretty sad state of affairs. Sweating through your clothes in a heat wave because everyone else wants AC is even worse.
Are we really ready to admit that the late 20th century was peak civilization? It seems to me we have solved all the wrong problems with technology (nitrogen fixation, disease, etc) that put natural checks on population several hundred years before we were ready to actively plan and manage population. As a result, all the problems introduced by overpopulation that are fundamentally unsolvable are getting worse and worse.
- hodgesrm 7y agoI would not be ready to admit anything of the sort, seeing as the solutions included things like decent sanitation and protection against childhood disease. The late 20th/early 21st century raised billions of people out of abject poverty. I can't imagine any viable solution to climate change (or other problems for that matter) that takes these things away.
- 0xffff2 7y ago>Are we really ready to admit that the late 20th century was peak civilization? Unequivocally yes. If we admit it now and work hard to limit climate change it might be a local peak. If we continue on our current path it's going to end up being the global peak. There is no scenario in which we fix the climate without giving significant ground on quality of life in the first world, especially considering that ideally we should be working to bring quality of life to parity across the developed and developing world.