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or... we can just introduce a $100/tonne carbon tax, which would not even cause more than short dip in economic growth. Consumption isn't bad, carbon is bad. A

or... we can just introduce a $100/tonne carbon tax, which would not even cause more than short dip in economic growth. Consumption isn't bad, carbon is bad. All the modern conveniences can be produced by low-carbon technology or offset by direct air capture, and for relatively low cost. An anti-growth mindset is religious thinking.

javajosh 6y ago
Energy moves atoms around, at all levels of scale, and a lot of our energy comes from unwinding the chemical springs in fossil fuels that leave those flacid springs in the air. Making and shipping stuff requires a lot of atoms to move, at each phase of the supply chain, and all of that motion requires a lot of energy. This is in addition to the energy required to run and maintain the machinery in a modern American household! So yeah, I think consumption is bad because it drives a great deal of carbon release, both at production and during operation. As for growth, I guess I'm in favor of quality over quantity, of both stuff and people. It seems to me that Earth would be better off with, like, 1B people gardening and sustainable farming, reading and writing books on paper, with perhaps one or two high-tech cities where people work on things like particle physics experiments, do space missions (especially planetary defense and exploration). I wish it weren't so. Part of me wishes I lived in the 19th century, when so much of the world was still new, and to be explored, and the forests seemed endless and forbidding. And, unlike earlier times, there was technology available to exploit all those endless resources. People were blessedly ignorant of the externalities of their actions, and TBH the tech was relatively inefficient, so truly massive harm wasn't even possible. But I would say that to have a "pro-growth" mindset is itself a religious view, one that stands in opposition to the simple truth that we live in the very thin, very precious skin that is the entirely unique and valuable biosphere of Earth.
- pentae 6y ago
  So what if we could profitably do carbon recapture for $100/ton which was funded by a $100/ton carbon tax and start an entire industry that reverses carbon in the atmosphere, would you still be against consumption then?

javajosh 6y ago

Energy moves atoms around, at all levels of scale, and a lot of our energy comes from unwinding the chemical springs in fossil fuels that leave those flacid springs in the air. Making and shipping stuff requires a lot of atoms to move, at each phase of the supply chain, and all of that motion requires a lot of energy. This is in addition to the energy required to run and maintain the machinery in a modern American household! So yeah, I think consumption is bad because it drives a great deal of carbon release, both at production and during operation. As for growth, I guess I'm in favor of quality over quantity, of both stuff and people. It seems to me that Earth would be better off with, like, 1B people gardening and sustainable farming, reading and writing books on paper, with perhaps one or two high-tech cities where people work on things like particle physics experiments, do space missions (especially planetary defense and exploration). I wish it weren't so. Part of me wishes I lived in the 19th century, when so much of the world was still new, and to be explored, and the forests seemed endless and forbidding. And, unlike earlier times, there was technology available to exploit all those endless resources. People were blessedly ignorant of the externalities of their actions, and TBH the tech was relatively inefficient, so truly massive harm wasn't even possible. But I would say that to have a "pro-growth" mindset is itself a religious view, one that stands in opposition to the simple truth that we live in the very thin, very precious skin that is the entirely unique and valuable biosphere of Earth.

pentae 6y ago
So what if we could profitably do carbon recapture for $100/ton which was funded by a $100/ton carbon tax and start an entire industry that reverses carbon in the atmosphere, would you still be against consumption then?