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To be honest, I find views like yours not only fatalist, but dangerous. Fatalist because you don't seem to believe that developed-world standards of living are

To be honest, I find views like yours not only fatalist, but dangerous. Fatalist because you don't seem to believe that developed-world standards of living are globally possible and so all genuine efforts will just be written off as band-aids. Dangerous because if people start believing this en masse, that prosperity is a zero-sum-game, then war is the only reasonable alternative.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
> Dangerous because if people start believing this en masse, that prosperity is a zero-sum-game, then war is the only reasonable alternative. It’s always been when resources are constrained. For all forms of life. Single family detached homes with garages on quarter acre lots and annual beach/ski vacations are not going to happen for all 8B+ people. The ones that don’t have this are unlucky to have ancestors who lost wars. Although, I might agree that it’s best (at least for me) if people don’t realize this or think about it in these terms en masse.
- notduncansmith 7y ago
  > Single family detached homes with garages on quarter acre lots and annual beach/ski vacations are not going to happen for all 8B+ people. The ones that don’t have this are unlucky to have ancestors who lost wars. True, but from a resource utilization perspective those things are pretty wasteful. We could definitely meet somewhere in the middle, our options are not “everyone lives like kings and some are destitute” or “all live like kings”. The idea that anyone needs those things (or even deserves them more than anyone else) is the real enemy here.
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    I’d much be here today than a king say 500 years ago. Not only do I have vastly longer life expectancy, the quality of life during which I’m alive is likely much better, both physically and spiritually, except the getting 100 servants part.
    - ErikAugust 7y ago
      You probably have 100 servants if you think about it. Between automation and all the specialized services you use.
      - shadowprofile77 7y ago
        Just the average basic combination of smartphone in the pocket, microwave oven and small electric oven in the kitchen and electric heating in the home do the work of literally dozens of people 500 years ago. For a king to heat their castle at night (or anyone to heat their home) required hours of very hard work. Getting timely information of any kind would have required the same, and couriers, court philosophers and so forth, and to make a basic hot dinner was hours of work even for modest mealtimes.
- strbean 7y ago
  > Single family detached homes with garages on quarter acre [...] are not going to happen for all 8B+ people. Why not? There are ~7.7 billion acres of arable land on the earth. 0.25 acres per person would leave ~5.7 billion acres of arable land for agriculture.
  - imgabe 7y ago
    The population number grows.
    - philwelch 7y ago
      At ever-decreasing rates as standard of living increases.
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
        Mormons, Hasidic Jews, Hutterites, the Amish. These are all US communities that have had fertility rates well above average for generations. Those are all culture bound groups. Even if they were forcibly assimilated > The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely in the foreseeable future https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513817302799#bb0180 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
        philwelch 7y ago
        Mormons and Catholics still show a pattern of decreasing fertility in recent years; they just had higher fertility before so they are merely around the level that mainline Protestants were once at. I agree that in the long run, the fertility trend will reverse itself. But in the medium term, it’s not an excuse for not fixing global poverty.
  - bumby 7y ago
    Because it’s not just the land but the infrastructure that makes that land “livable”. Installing sewers and electrical grids and internet and roads and grocery stores etc. is more prohibitive than land, even if that land was available for sale
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > It’s always been when resources are constrained. What resource is that constrained today? Beach access? I don't think people would even think about a war over that.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    BBC: Global resources stock check (2012) https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120618-global-resources-stock-check https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120618-global-resources... (image: http://i.imgur.com/L5qWNN9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/L5qWNN9.jpg) Rainforests, coral reefs, coal, oil, gas, aluminium, phosphorus, tantalum, titanium, copper, siliver, indium, antimony.
    - dave_b 7y ago
      According to that, we should be just about out of antimony by now. Yet somehow the market for drugs and batteries still seems to be humming along. 2/10 fear porn.
      - xyzzyz 7y ago
        Even better is only 80 years for aluminum, the third most common mineral in Earth's crust, constituting 8% of its weight. What an absurd alarmism.
        Mirioron 7y ago
        Even if we can't get more. It's not like we're using it in a nuclear reaction that turns aluminium into something else. The aluminium is still there.
        velosol 7y ago
        Not to mention how incredibly recyclable it is. In the US alone aluminum is made from scrap >30% percent of the time [1]. [1]: https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/aluminum-statistics-and-information https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/aluminum-statistics-and-in... (click on an annual PDF).
- nothrabannosir 7y ago
  >> Dangerous because if people start believing this en masse, that prosperity is a zero-sum-game, then war is the only reasonable alternative. > It’s always been when resources are constrained. For all forms of life. The comment you're responding to is saying that resources aren't constrained; we're just not using them effectively. That's a political problem and it can be solved only when people believe it can be.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    The amount of energy required to move x amount of mass is a math problem, not a political problem. We’ve already seen what happens to the world’s ecosystem when a very small portion of the world’s population lives a comparably luxurious lifestyle, and unless a breakthrough in thermodynamics is achieved in very short order, I don’t see how it can scale to the whole world. All those new jet setters, car driving commuters, and air conditioned homes aren’t going to come without consequence. I’m not aware of any technological breakthroughs that can enable us to use resources without heavily altering the ecosystem.
    - mrob 7y ago
      >The amount of energy required to move x amount of mass is a math problem If the energy isn't lost to friction then most of it can be recovered. Although I think it's impractical, the Hyperloop concept is one way to reduce friction. Instead of increasing transport speeds beyond current air travel, it could be used at the same speeds but much lower energy cost.
    - njarboe 7y ago
      Nuclear energy and solar power can/could solve most of the polluting energy problem and can work today. Increasing meat consumption and the need for more farmland to support it, I feel is a harder problem to solve.
      - xorfish 7y ago
        Meat doesn't require farmland, it will be produced in ordinary factories in a few years.
- da39a3ee 7y ago
  > Single family detached homes with garages on quarter acre lots and annual beach/ski vacations are not going to happen for all 8B+ people. The ones that don’t have this are unlucky to have ancestors who lost wars. Think of all the areas of the world in which neither the winners nor the losers of the wars have the things you refer to. Your statement (a) is incorrect, and (b) reveals that you have a dangerous and unpleasant view of your homeland (You're American; I don't think there's any doubt about that!) as a land of prosperity that is somehow due to its military prowess.
  - benrbray 7y ago
    Isn't it fairly well-established that the US has maintained its economic superiority for so long by NOT being bombed to hell like Europe after WWII and afterwards using military force to destabilize developing economies in south america, the middle east, etc etc.?
    - im3w1l 7y ago
      You're subtly changing the topic by saying economic superiority. If we go back to prosperity, there are many other prosperous countries than the US.
    - da39a3ee 7y ago
      I'm no historian/economist/geographer, but isn't it sufficient to invoke having a huge empty continent with vegetation, climate and soil suitable for agriculture and human life activities in general, that only needed a bit of genocide to get rid of the low density previous occupants? N. hemisphere East-West wide continent and all that.
omginternets 7y ago
"I can't fight it" and "I may as well prepare for it" doesn't have to mean war. It might instead involve abandoning an economy built on infinite growth, even at the expense of some material wealth.
- martythemaniak 7y ago
  Have you ever tried to convince real people of that? Parents? Ones in developing countries in particular? Fusion and space colonization seem pretty easy in comparison, at least to me.
  - ficklepickle 7y ago
    It's true. Humans seem unwilling to entertain any reduction in convenience. It's funny, because maintaining the status quo will result in a much larger inconvenience. We are too smart for our own good, but not smart enough by half.
- philwelch 7y ago
  Economic growth doesn’t necessitate consuming more resources. In fact, it often necessitates consuming fewer resources. Netflix today has four times the annual revenue Blockbuster had at its peak. Which company consumed more natural resources? Which kind of car is more valuable, a Tesla Model S or a Ford Explorer? Which one consumes petroleum products? Economic value is a measure of the value delivered to some customer, as measured by that customer’s willingness to pay for it. If I want to watch a movie, I don’t care whether or not somebody has to manufacture a hard plastic cassette or disk, in fact I’d rather they didn’t and they’d rather save the expense if there’s any alternative. If I want to drive somewhere I don’t fundamentally give a damn if the car is powered by the gasoline in the tank or by a hydroelectric dam in the mountains so long as I can get where I want to go in style and comfort. Efficiently allocating scarce resources is the entire object of the game—and if you add up everyone’s score at the end of the year, you have a measure of economic growth.
Thriptic 7y ago
It's also somewhat misguided in my opinion. For some reason a large portion of the population have decided that it is categorically impossible to do anything about global warming from a technical or policy perspective. They have thrown up their hands and have decreed that we must all live awful lifestyles and shouldn't even try to innovate our way out of the problem. We are spending a tiny fraction of available resources fighting this problem, and it is not inconceivable that we could develop solutions which would change the state of the world dramatically if we actually threw money and talent at the problems.
- henrikschroder 7y ago
  My biggest source of hope for the climate crisis is that we got into our current state by expending enormous amounts of human labour. Those mines didn't dig themselves, those factories didn't build themselves, those highway networks didn't fill with cars by themselves. It took effort to fuck things up, which means that with effort, we can un-fuck things as well.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    The problem is that we've spun up a bunch of positive feedback loops in the process, and so un-fucking things is a lot costlier.
    - henrikschroder 7y ago
      In some cases, yes, in some cases, no. Reforestation for example appears to be very cheap, fast, and simple.
      - int_19h 7y ago
        Is it cheaper in terms of man-hours spent on each kilo of carbon sequestered, compared to man-hours spent on emitting it?
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  and another group of people think some magic technology or wishful political thinking that doesn't exist right now can solve all our problems in the future.
qmmmur 7y ago
If you think that all 8 billion people can live with the environmental impact of a select portion of the human race who have already done irrevocable damage to the planet you are living in a fantasy. I hope that's not a guiding goal for you in life.
mikekchar 7y ago
Japanese people, in general, are enamoured with the Edo period: from about 1600 until the latter half of the 1800's. Japan was a very poor country and it's refusal to do much international trade (or even talk to the outside world, really) didn't help matters. However this period is often considered to be the most enlightened for Japanese culture. Poverty was rampant and people lived in a feudal society, but people were by and large comfortable. The minimalistic Japanese esthetic that exists even now is a carry over from that period. People's dwellings were very small, but in comparison to European standards things were incredibly clean. There are numerous writings from Europeans who almost universally remark on both the level of poverty and on the surprising level of happiness. There is an interesting book (the name of which escapes me at the moment) where the author tries to enumerate some of the things that the Edo period Japanese got right and that could be used as a model going forward. One of the things that I think we, as a more affluent generation/society, often get wrong is that we equate prosperity with comfort. Indeed, we also equate comfort with being better. A friend of mine was eating grapes that he brought with his lunch. "You know how sometimes you eat a grape and it's got this amazing flavour and sweetness, but sometimes you eat a grape and it is virtually tasteless? I mean, even with the same variety of grape. Why is that?" I had to explain to him that eating grapes in February is not necessarily going to lead to tasty grapes because they aren't really in season anywhere. Why are we flying unripe grapes from half way around the world? And why are we ever trying to buy and sell grapes that are over irrigated and over produced so that they no longer have any flavour? Well, the answer is that people want to buy inexpensive grapes in Canada in February. But, is this actually a good idea? As a society, perhaps we would actually be better off if you could only buy grapes in Canada in September or October. Maybe you would have culturally relevant food as well, instead of fulfilling every whim of every person in society. And maybe we don't need cars everywhere. I mean, how many families have 2 cars? How many have kids and therefore have 3 or 4 cars? Are we actually better off this way? And do you actually need air conditioning in most parts of North America? And do we need to keep our houses at 22 C, and have remote car starters so that our cars idle and are sitting at 22 C for when we dash into them and we have giant underground tunnels all heated to 22 C and we don't have to walk outside when we are shopping, and all the parking garages are heated so that we don't even have to run to our car and don't even get me started about taking a bus, or walking out of doors: It's winter out there! Which is not to say that I am idolising the noble savage and thinking that we're all going to turn into Tarzan and swing from tree house to tree house on vines in a wonderful magical world where we don't need anything. It's just that I don't think the pursuit of riches is necessarily going to enrich our lives and culture. I've been rich and I've been poor and I've got to say that the rich are often the ones missing out.
rsync 7y ago
"... you don't seem to believe that developed-world standards of living are globally possible ..." I do believe that first-world, middle-class living standards, circa 2020, are globally possible ... just not in 2020. By the time that those standards are globally possible without unpaid debits in the form of environmental externalities, there will be a new "first world" standard that we will then decide whether or not to borrow from the future to pay for ...
shadowprofile77 7y ago
Much of this kind of attitude (where it can't substantiate claims concretely) is a type of fashionable nihilism masquerading as environmental concern. It serves as a kind of jaded virtue signalling too. This isn't to say that we shouldn't be worried about various aspects of the environment and human habits, or that we shouldn't individually and collectively push for better use of resources, but to simply claim we're lost as a species and discount all notions of us being capable of continuing to improve human well-being with better technology is both cheap and ignorant of centuries of real progress that have no reason for not being able to continue or improve in real ways..
fulafel 7y ago
People just need to understand that we can have good life with less consumption. For us rich people it can be hard to see how you can still have good healthcare, education, worklife balance then but it's worth the effort to think it through and learn about examples in other countries.
lm28469 7y ago
> Fatalist because you don't seem to believe that developed-world standards of living are globally possible and so all genuine efforts will just be written off as band-aids. If everyone lived like the average american we'd be in deeeep trouble. We went way too far past equilibrium and the only reason we're still able to make somehow it work is because the majority of the world hasn't make it as far as us.
bobbydroptables 7y ago
>Fatalist because you don't seem to believe that developed-world standards of living are globally possible I don't know about the rest of your comment but there's no question that current first world standards are not possible for all people. It's a very simple math problem. If everyone ate beef and drove cars and consumed carbon and participated in wanton habits at the current levels of the first world then the planet would be utterly and irreversibly ruined. It's not even close. I understand acknowledging our unsustainable habits makes us uncomfortable. But for better or worse that doesn't change the truth.
- philipkglass 7y ago
  Japan consumes less than half the energy per capita that the US does. The UK is even lower. Portugal's energy per capita is less than 1/3 of the US figure [1]. Japan and South Korea consume less than half the meat per capita as the US [2]. These are all highly developed countries. When we consider sustainability and the limits of global development, "American" too often stands in for "developed," and "upper-income-bracket Texan" too often stands in for "American." Even among Americans, there are large differences between states in CO2 emissions per capita: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... New York has only 1/3 the per-capita emissions as Texas. If the rest of the globe wants to be like Americans, it still makes a big difference whether they want to live like in Houston or like in New York City. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...

lotsofpulp 7y ago

> Dangerous because if people start believing this en masse, that prosperity is a zero-sum-game, then war is the only reasonable alternative. It’s always been when resources are constrained. For all forms of life. Single family detached homes with garages on quarter acre lots and annual beach/ski vacations are not going to happen for all 8B+ people. The ones that don’t have this are unlucky to have ancestors who lost wars. Although, I might agree that it’s best (at least for me) if people don’t realize this or think about it in these terms en masse.

notduncansmith 7y ago
> Single family detached homes with garages on quarter acre lots and annual beach/ski vacations are not going to happen for all 8B+ people. The ones that don’t have this are unlucky to have ancestors who lost wars. True, but from a resource utilization perspective those things are pretty wasteful. We could definitely meet somewhere in the middle, our options are not “everyone lives like kings and some are destitute” or “all live like kings”. The idea that anyone needs those things (or even deserves them more than anyone else) is the real enemy here.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  I’d much be here today than a king say 500 years ago. Not only do I have vastly longer life expectancy, the quality of life during which I’m alive is likely much better, both physically and spiritually, except the getting 100 servants part.
  - ErikAugust 7y ago
    You probably have 100 servants if you think about it. Between automation and all the specialized services you use.
    - shadowprofile77 7y ago
      Just the average basic combination of smartphone in the pocket, microwave oven and small electric oven in the kitchen and electric heating in the home do the work of literally dozens of people 500 years ago. For a king to heat their castle at night (or anyone to heat their home) required hours of very hard work. Getting timely information of any kind would have required the same, and couriers, court philosophers and so forth, and to make a basic hot dinner was hours of work even for modest mealtimes.
strbean 7y ago
> Single family detached homes with garages on quarter acre [...] are not going to happen for all 8B+ people. Why not? There are ~7.7 billion acres of arable land on the earth. 0.25 acres per person would leave ~5.7 billion acres of arable land for agriculture.
- imgabe 7y ago
  The population number grows.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    At ever-decreasing rates as standard of living increases.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      Mormons, Hasidic Jews, Hutterites, the Amish. These are all US communities that have had fertility rates well above average for generations. Those are all culture bound groups. Even if they were forcibly assimilated > The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely in the foreseeable future https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513817302799#bb0180 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
      - philwelch 7y ago
        Mormons and Catholics still show a pattern of decreasing fertility in recent years; they just had higher fertility before so they are merely around the level that mainline Protestants were once at. I agree that in the long run, the fertility trend will reverse itself. But in the medium term, it’s not an excuse for not fixing global poverty.
- bumby 7y ago
  Because it’s not just the land but the infrastructure that makes that land “livable”. Installing sewers and electrical grids and internet and roads and grocery stores etc. is more prohibitive than land, even if that land was available for sale
marcosdumay 7y ago
> It’s always been when resources are constrained. What resource is that constrained today? Beach access? I don't think people would even think about a war over that.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  BBC: Global resources stock check (2012) https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120618-global-resources-stock-check https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120618-global-resources... (image: http://i.imgur.com/L5qWNN9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/L5qWNN9.jpg) Rainforests, coral reefs, coal, oil, gas, aluminium, phosphorus, tantalum, titanium, copper, siliver, indium, antimony.
  - dave_b 7y ago
    According to that, we should be just about out of antimony by now. Yet somehow the market for drugs and batteries still seems to be humming along. 2/10 fear porn.
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      Even better is only 80 years for aluminum, the third most common mineral in Earth's crust, constituting 8% of its weight. What an absurd alarmism.
      - Mirioron 7y ago
        Even if we can't get more. It's not like we're using it in a nuclear reaction that turns aluminium into something else. The aluminium is still there.
      - velosol 7y ago
        Not to mention how incredibly recyclable it is. In the US alone aluminum is made from scrap >30% percent of the time [1]. [1]: https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/aluminum-statistics-and-information https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/aluminum-statistics-and-in... (click on an annual PDF).
nothrabannosir 7y ago
>> Dangerous because if people start believing this en masse, that prosperity is a zero-sum-game, then war is the only reasonable alternative. > It’s always been when resources are constrained. For all forms of life. The comment you're responding to is saying that resources aren't constrained; we're just not using them effectively. That's a political problem and it can be solved only when people believe it can be.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  The amount of energy required to move x amount of mass is a math problem, not a political problem. We’ve already seen what happens to the world’s ecosystem when a very small portion of the world’s population lives a comparably luxurious lifestyle, and unless a breakthrough in thermodynamics is achieved in very short order, I don’t see how it can scale to the whole world. All those new jet setters, car driving commuters, and air conditioned homes aren’t going to come without consequence. I’m not aware of any technological breakthroughs that can enable us to use resources without heavily altering the ecosystem.
  - mrob 7y ago
    >The amount of energy required to move x amount of mass is a math problem If the energy isn't lost to friction then most of it can be recovered. Although I think it's impractical, the Hyperloop concept is one way to reduce friction. Instead of increasing transport speeds beyond current air travel, it could be used at the same speeds but much lower energy cost.
  - njarboe 7y ago
    Nuclear energy and solar power can/could solve most of the polluting energy problem and can work today. Increasing meat consumption and the need for more farmland to support it, I feel is a harder problem to solve.
    - xorfish 7y ago
      Meat doesn't require farmland, it will be produced in ordinary factories in a few years.
da39a3ee 7y ago
> Single family detached homes with garages on quarter acre lots and annual beach/ski vacations are not going to happen for all 8B+ people. The ones that don’t have this are unlucky to have ancestors who lost wars. Think of all the areas of the world in which neither the winners nor the losers of the wars have the things you refer to. Your statement (a) is incorrect, and (b) reveals that you have a dangerous and unpleasant view of your homeland (You're American; I don't think there's any doubt about that!) as a land of prosperity that is somehow due to its military prowess.
- benrbray 7y ago
  Isn't it fairly well-established that the US has maintained its economic superiority for so long by NOT being bombed to hell like Europe after WWII and afterwards using military force to destabilize developing economies in south america, the middle east, etc etc.?
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    You're subtly changing the topic by saying economic superiority. If we go back to prosperity, there are many other prosperous countries than the US.
  - da39a3ee 7y ago
    I'm no historian/economist/geographer, but isn't it sufficient to invoke having a huge empty continent with vegetation, climate and soil suitable for agriculture and human life activities in general, that only needed a bit of genocide to get rid of the low density previous occupants? N. hemisphere East-West wide continent and all that.

omginternets 7y ago

"I can't fight it" and "I may as well prepare for it" doesn't have to mean war. It might instead involve abandoning an economy built on infinite growth, even at the expense of some material wealth.

martythemaniak 7y ago
Have you ever tried to convince real people of that? Parents? Ones in developing countries in particular? Fusion and space colonization seem pretty easy in comparison, at least to me.
- ficklepickle 7y ago
  It's true. Humans seem unwilling to entertain any reduction in convenience. It's funny, because maintaining the status quo will result in a much larger inconvenience. We are too smart for our own good, but not smart enough by half.
philwelch 7y ago
Economic growth doesn’t necessitate consuming more resources. In fact, it often necessitates consuming fewer resources. Netflix today has four times the annual revenue Blockbuster had at its peak. Which company consumed more natural resources? Which kind of car is more valuable, a Tesla Model S or a Ford Explorer? Which one consumes petroleum products? Economic value is a measure of the value delivered to some customer, as measured by that customer’s willingness to pay for it. If I want to watch a movie, I don’t care whether or not somebody has to manufacture a hard plastic cassette or disk, in fact I’d rather they didn’t and they’d rather save the expense if there’s any alternative. If I want to drive somewhere I don’t fundamentally give a damn if the car is powered by the gasoline in the tank or by a hydroelectric dam in the mountains so long as I can get where I want to go in style and comfort. Efficiently allocating scarce resources is the entire object of the game—and if you add up everyone’s score at the end of the year, you have a measure of economic growth.

Thriptic 7y ago

It's also somewhat misguided in my opinion. For some reason a large portion of the population have decided that it is categorically impossible to do anything about global warming from a technical or policy perspective. They have thrown up their hands and have decreed that we must all live awful lifestyles and shouldn't even try to innovate our way out of the problem. We are spending a tiny fraction of available resources fighting this problem, and it is not inconceivable that we could develop solutions which would change the state of the world dramatically if we actually threw money and talent at the problems.

henrikschroder 7y ago
My biggest source of hope for the climate crisis is that we got into our current state by expending enormous amounts of human labour. Those mines didn't dig themselves, those factories didn't build themselves, those highway networks didn't fill with cars by themselves. It took effort to fuck things up, which means that with effort, we can un-fuck things as well.
- int_19h 7y ago
  The problem is that we've spun up a bunch of positive feedback loops in the process, and so un-fucking things is a lot costlier.
  - henrikschroder 7y ago
    In some cases, yes, in some cases, no. Reforestation for example appears to be very cheap, fast, and simple.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      Is it cheaper in terms of man-hours spent on each kilo of carbon sequestered, compared to man-hours spent on emitting it?
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
and another group of people think some magic technology or wishful political thinking that doesn't exist right now can solve all our problems in the future.

qmmmur 7y ago

If you think that all 8 billion people can live with the environmental impact of a select portion of the human race who have already done irrevocable damage to the planet you are living in a fantasy. I hope that's not a guiding goal for you in life.

mikekchar 7y ago

Japanese people, in general, are enamoured with the Edo period: from about 1600 until the latter half of the 1800's. Japan was a very poor country and it's refusal to do much international trade (or even talk to the outside world, really) didn't help matters. However this period is often considered to be the most enlightened for Japanese culture. Poverty was rampant and people lived in a feudal society, but people were by and large comfortable. The minimalistic Japanese esthetic that exists even now is a carry over from that period. People's dwellings were very small, but in comparison to European standards things were incredibly clean. There are numerous writings from Europeans who almost universally remark on both the level of poverty and on the surprising level of happiness. There is an interesting book (the name of which escapes me at the moment) where the author tries to enumerate some of the things that the Edo period Japanese got right and that could be used as a model going forward. One of the things that I think we, as a more affluent generation/society, often get wrong is that we equate prosperity with comfort. Indeed, we also equate comfort with being better. A friend of mine was eating grapes that he brought with his lunch. "You know how sometimes you eat a grape and it's got this amazing flavour and sweetness, but sometimes you eat a grape and it is virtually tasteless? I mean, even with the same variety of grape. Why is that?" I had to explain to him that eating grapes in February is not necessarily going to lead to tasty grapes because they aren't really in season anywhere. Why are we flying unripe grapes from half way around the world? And why are we ever trying to buy and sell grapes that are over irrigated and over produced so that they no longer have any flavour? Well, the answer is that people want to buy inexpensive grapes in Canada in February. But, is this actually a good idea? As a society, perhaps we would actually be better off if you could only buy grapes in Canada in September or October. Maybe you would have culturally relevant food as well, instead of fulfilling every whim of every person in society. And maybe we don't need cars everywhere. I mean, how many families have 2 cars? How many have kids and therefore have 3 or 4 cars? Are we actually better off this way? And do you actually need air conditioning in most parts of North America? And do we need to keep our houses at 22 C, and have remote car starters so that our cars idle and are sitting at 22 C for when we dash into them and we have giant underground tunnels all heated to 22 C and we don't have to walk outside when we are shopping, and all the parking garages are heated so that we don't even have to run to our car and don't even get me started about taking a bus, or walking out of doors: It's winter out there! Which is not to say that I am idolising the noble savage and thinking that we're all going to turn into Tarzan and swing from tree house to tree house on vines in a wonderful magical world where we don't need anything. It's just that I don't think the pursuit of riches is necessarily going to enrich our lives and culture. I've been rich and I've been poor and I've got to say that the rich are often the ones missing out.

rsync 7y ago

"... you don't seem to believe that developed-world standards of living are globally possible ..." I do believe that first-world, middle-class living standards, circa 2020, are globally possible ... just not in 2020. By the time that those standards are globally possible without unpaid debits in the form of environmental externalities, there will be a new "first world" standard that we will then decide whether or not to borrow from the future to pay for ...

shadowprofile77 7y ago

Much of this kind of attitude (where it can't substantiate claims concretely) is a type of fashionable nihilism masquerading as environmental concern. It serves as a kind of jaded virtue signalling too. This isn't to say that we shouldn't be worried about various aspects of the environment and human habits, or that we shouldn't individually and collectively push for better use of resources, but to simply claim we're lost as a species and discount all notions of us being capable of continuing to improve human well-being with better technology is both cheap and ignorant of centuries of real progress that have no reason for not being able to continue or improve in real ways..

fulafel 7y ago

People just need to understand that we can have good life with less consumption. For us rich people it can be hard to see how you can still have good healthcare, education, worklife balance then but it's worth the effort to think it through and learn about examples in other countries.

lm28469 7y ago

> Fatalist because you don't seem to believe that developed-world standards of living are globally possible and so all genuine efforts will just be written off as band-aids. If everyone lived like the average american we'd be in deeeep trouble. We went way too far past equilibrium and the only reason we're still able to make somehow it work is because the majority of the world hasn't make it as far as us.

bobbydroptables 7y ago

>Fatalist because you don't seem to believe that developed-world standards of living are globally possible I don't know about the rest of your comment but there's no question that current first world standards are not possible for all people. It's a very simple math problem. If everyone ate beef and drove cars and consumed carbon and participated in wanton habits at the current levels of the first world then the planet would be utterly and irreversibly ruined. It's not even close. I understand acknowledging our unsustainable habits makes us uncomfortable. But for better or worse that doesn't change the truth.

philipkglass 7y ago
Japan consumes less than half the energy per capita that the US does. The UK is even lower. Portugal's energy per capita is less than 1/3 of the US figure [1]. Japan and South Korea consume less than half the meat per capita as the US [2]. These are all highly developed countries. When we consider sustainability and the limits of global development, "American" too often stands in for "developed," and "upper-income-bracket Texan" too often stands in for "American." Even among Americans, there are large differences between states in CO2 emissions per capita: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... New York has only 1/3 the per-capita emissions as Texas. If the rest of the globe wants to be like Americans, it still makes a big difference whether they want to live like in Houston or like in New York City. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...