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It may be sustainable on a longer time scale than you're thinking of. For instance, perhaps we use fossil fuels to provide the value needed to find new sustaina

It may be sustainable on a longer time scale than you're thinking of. For instance, perhaps we use fossil fuels to provide the value needed to find new sustainable sources of energy. Could we really make nuclear fusion reactors without ever having first burnt a lot of coal and oil? Lots of things are unsustainable in the short term but sustainable in the long term. Hunter-gathering for instance. If you pick the berries off a bush, they're gone. You can't keep doing that all day every day or the plant will never reproduce and eventually stop producing berries. But if you look at the hunter-gatherer's berry picking habits over a whole year, it may well be sustainable because he's not doing it at the same rate all the time. Similarly, our unsustainable behaviors may be limited to a few centuries of rapid change taking us into a new and different sustainable future that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

gbrown 6y ago
That's some excellent wishful thinking, and I hope you're right. Meanwhile, I've read plenty of articles suggesting that we're likely in for unavoidable and hugely disruptive warming, at the very least, and I don't currently see us globally acting quickly enough. I've also taken an amateur interest in ecology and the natural sciences, and once you actually learn a bit about the species around you, the loss of habitat and biodiversity we're undergoing becomes a staggeringly obvious fact that most people are just completely oblivious to.
- heartbeats 6y ago
  I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. There's lots of nuclear power plants out there, shut down for political reasons, that'd be ready to go in weeks if you didn't have all the anti-nuclear protests, for starters. There's also geo-engineering and such - spraying black stuff in the atmosphere to reduce the amount of incoming sunlight. The idea that humanity couldn't deal with this situation if it spent anywhere in the ballpark of 100% of its resources on it seems to me frankly laughable.
  - sellyme 6y ago
    > I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of people could be dying and some would find it politically expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring. We absolutely have the resources and capability to solve these problems. We just don't have the will or the policy.
    - heartbeats 6y ago
      > We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of people could be dying and some would find it politically expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring. I'm sorry, I don't follow, who do you mean? Colonialism? The Uighurs in China? People in India/Pakistan? Possible victims of global warming? The Holocaust? >We just don't have the will or the policy. Right, that's what I mean. The minute things get anywhere near serious, people are gonna figure something out real quick. Restarting the nuclear power plants and closing the coal plants would take weeks, be profitable in economic terms, and hugely reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that nobody's done this means we aren't serious about it. I mean, if you were really serious, you would just deregulate nuclear power totally. If the estimates of the harms of global warming are true, you could take 1 Chernobyl-scale incident per year and still come out on top. The fact that nobody's done this means we aren't serious about it. The combination of facts that (1) we aren't serious about this and (2) there's plenty of low-hanging fruit we could reap if we were, leads me to believe this will not really be a problem, as soon as we do get serious about it.
      - ix101 6y ago
        Maybe he's referring to what has been dominating news headlines for the past 14 months.
      - kaba0 6y ago
        Can we really stop a planet sized chain reaction? We can’t even pass carbon taxes, there are many many climate change deniers, so unfortunately I can’t see a too bright future ahead. Sure, human technology is super advanced, but we are no play for the elements.
- exporectomy 6y ago
  You're big on worrying about problems which you seem to only have subjective feelings about the severity of. How do you know "hugely disruptive warming" is bad enough to be worth all that worry or worth people paying a high price to try to prevent?

gbrown 6y ago

That's some excellent wishful thinking, and I hope you're right. Meanwhile, I've read plenty of articles suggesting that we're likely in for unavoidable and hugely disruptive warming, at the very least, and I don't currently see us globally acting quickly enough. I've also taken an amateur interest in ecology and the natural sciences, and once you actually learn a bit about the species around you, the loss of habitat and biodiversity we're undergoing becomes a staggeringly obvious fact that most people are just completely oblivious to.

heartbeats 6y ago
I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. There's lots of nuclear power plants out there, shut down for political reasons, that'd be ready to go in weeks if you didn't have all the anti-nuclear protests, for starters. There's also geo-engineering and such - spraying black stuff in the atmosphere to reduce the amount of incoming sunlight. The idea that humanity couldn't deal with this situation if it spent anywhere in the ballpark of 100% of its resources on it seems to me frankly laughable.
- sellyme 6y ago
  > I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of people could be dying and some would find it politically expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring. We absolutely have the resources and capability to solve these problems. We just don't have the will or the policy.
  - heartbeats 6y ago
    > We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of people could be dying and some would find it politically expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring. I'm sorry, I don't follow, who do you mean? Colonialism? The Uighurs in China? People in India/Pakistan? Possible victims of global warming? The Holocaust? >We just don't have the will or the policy. Right, that's what I mean. The minute things get anywhere near serious, people are gonna figure something out real quick. Restarting the nuclear power plants and closing the coal plants would take weeks, be profitable in economic terms, and hugely reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that nobody's done this means we aren't serious about it. I mean, if you were really serious, you would just deregulate nuclear power totally. If the estimates of the harms of global warming are true, you could take 1 Chernobyl-scale incident per year and still come out on top. The fact that nobody's done this means we aren't serious about it. The combination of facts that (1) we aren't serious about this and (2) there's plenty of low-hanging fruit we could reap if we were, leads me to believe this will not really be a problem, as soon as we do get serious about it.
    - ix101 6y ago
      Maybe he's referring to what has been dominating news headlines for the past 14 months.
    - kaba0 6y ago
      Can we really stop a planet sized chain reaction? We can’t even pass carbon taxes, there are many many climate change deniers, so unfortunately I can’t see a too bright future ahead. Sure, human technology is super advanced, but we are no play for the elements.
exporectomy 6y ago
You're big on worrying about problems which you seem to only have subjective feelings about the severity of. How do you know "hugely disruptive warming" is bad enough to be worth all that worry or worth people paying a high price to try to prevent?