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I grew up in the 1970's when environmentalism was just getting started (I can recall the 4th or 5th Earth Day[0] being celebrated). Back then the concern was p

by chiph 6y ago

I grew up in the 1970's when environmentalism was just getting started (I can recall the 4th or 5th Earth Day[0] being celebrated). Back then the concern was population growth[1] and the consumption of resources. Fossil fuels were a major concern then as well, mostly because of automobile exhaust. During the current pandemic, people have posted before/after photos of their cities. But places like Los Angeles had smog so thick that the skyline was hidden[2]. Since then, better engine controls and catalytic converters have reduced emissions to amazingly low levels. If you're behind an older car that has a carburetor some time, you'll definitely notice the smell of raw gasoline. Imagine millions of cars emitting that! There's no question that the more people, the more resources get consumed. However what is an important question is: Is world population growth exceeding our ability to engineer lower per-person resource usage? Right now, that curve has positive slope, and we need to get it to a slight negative slope, without losing the advantages of a technological civilization. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth [2] https://timeline.com/la-smog-pollution-4ca4bc0cc95d https://timeline.com/la-smog-pollution-4ca4bc0cc95d

TomSwirly 6y ago
> However what is an important question is: Is world population growth exceeding our ability to engineer lower per-person resource usage? That's a trick question. The answer is that human population increases by about 1.1% a year; and independently, individual human consumption increases exponentially as well. The exact rate depends on the specific resource or commodity being consumed of course. Now, you're right that technology allows individual things to be manufactured more effectively, with less waste. What you miss is that this causes people to buy a lot more things, so it more than cancels out. I spent some time looking at this, and I found a few resources that had decreased consumption. Freon is the most obvious one, but it's important to notice that it was replaced by another safer but rather similar gas - raw material consumption did not decrease. Even things like biofuels - wood, dung, or other biological products that are burned for heat. They used to be nearly all the world's energy production - now they're a tiny part but on their own, their growth is now and has always been exponential. It's just that fossil fuels grew much faster - we never cut down on anything. We need to use less of absolutely everything. For us not to such the world dry, we individually and as a species need to decrease our consumption by as much an order of magnitude. If we are not to decimate our biosphere, we need both far more efficient manufacturing, but also a lot less manufacturing.

by chiph 6y ago

TomSwirly 6y ago

> However what is an important question is: Is world population growth exceeding our ability to engineer lower per-person resource usage? That's a trick question. The answer is that human population increases by about 1.1% a year; and independently, individual human consumption increases exponentially as well. The exact rate depends on the specific resource or commodity being consumed of course. Now, you're right that technology allows individual things to be manufactured more effectively, with less waste. What you miss is that this causes people to buy a lot more things, so it more than cancels out. I spent some time looking at this, and I found a few resources that had decreased consumption. Freon is the most obvious one, but it's important to notice that it was replaced by another safer but rather similar gas - raw material consumption did not decrease. Even things like biofuels - wood, dung, or other biological products that are burned for heat. They used to be nearly all the world's energy production - now they're a tiny part but on their own, their growth is now and has always been exponential. It's just that fossil fuels grew much faster - we never cut down on anything. We need to use less of absolutely everything. For us not to such the world dry, we individually and as a species need to decrease our consumption by as much an order of magnitude. If we are not to decimate our biosphere, we need both far more efficient manufacturing, but also a lot less manufacturing.