4 ms·

I think this is a cop out that needlessly encourages people to not try to find sustainable solutions. Yes, the road to sustainability is hard and long, but a p

by shkkmo 6y ago

I think this is a cop out that needlessly encourages people to not try to find sustainable solutions. Yes, the road to sustainability is hard and long, but a path does exist that achieves sustainability without population reduction. Discouraging people from seeking that path does nobody any good.

k__ 6y ago
Or it's simply eco-facism. I think, we should move to sustainable solutions, but I don't believe in over population
- shkkmo 6y ago
  What do you mean by "I don't believe in overpopulation?" Overpopulation is definitely a real thing in ecological systems, so I assume you mean either: 1) We are not currently in an overpopulated state. 2) We are extremely unlikely to reach an overpopulated state in the nearish future. One important thing to note is that overpopulation is not a fixed threshold, but one that is dependant on a number of ecological, environmental and technological factors that makes it extremely hard to completely accept 2).
  - k__ 6y ago
    I mean, I believe in the concept, but I think humanity is far from reaching that state. Which doesn't mean that I think we can't live above our means with the population we already have. I just think it's a question of optimizing production and not restricting population growth.
at_a_remove 6y ago
Does that path exist? I am not entirely convinced that you can have our current population living with our current standards -- especially if the standards spread from say that USA to the poorest nations, sustainably.
- shkkmo 6y ago
  Not in our current economic structuring, but our current economic system places little to no value on sustainability. I wholey believe that we can replicate the aspects of our standard of living that have the biggest impacts on our quality of life. We can have nice clothes, we just need clothes that last a decade rather than a month or a year. We can travel, we just have to travel a bit slower using electric power. Education is a huge factor in our quality of life and can be done very sustainably. We can still have plenty of food, we just might not have year round cheap access to stuff that doesn't grow locally. So there is definitely a path to a very good aproximation of our standard of living that is sustainable for the entire planet. We just aren't currwntly on that path, or even really headed in that direction .
stouset 6y ago
Can we improve things? Sure. Should we invest in improving things? Absolutely. Neither of those permits the kind of pervasive magical thinking people have where we can somehow raise even a fraction of our 7 billion people to anything approximating a typical Western lifestyle without further accelerating environmental collapse. Or even maintaining the number of people with such a lifestyle that we currently do. Our planet fundamentally lacks the resources for sustained consumption anywhere near the scale we're operating at, no matter how green we try to make things. Even just on a purely thermodynamic level we're running out of energy budget without overheating the planet[1]. And that's completely ignoring greenhouse gases. [1]: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
- shkkmo 6y ago
  I think you'd be surprised as how sustainabily we could approximate the western standard of living if we had the will power to try as a whole society. There would certainly be sacrifices, but I suspect we would also gain significant quality if life improvements. What this requires is a change of mindset and I don't think attitudes like yours help. We are hundreds of years from that thermodynamic limit at our current exponential growth rate, but that growth may be slowing as population growth slows. It is also quite likely that extraplanetary energy sources could be available by then. I'm sort of unclear where you are goin with your argument? Are you arguing we need to kill of people or economically retard developing countries energy use? Neither of those seem reasonable stances so I am left wondering what you see as the path forward and what value you see in advancing your argument.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    >I'm sort of unclear where you are goin with your argument? Are you arguing we need to kill of people or economically retard developing countries energy use? Neither of those seem reasonable stances so I am left wondering what you see as the path forward and what value you see in advancing your argument. Lack of resources are a common cause of war. Lack of resources was a problem for humanity for its entire existence and only in the last 100 years has it ceased to be a problem. I'd love it if people voluntarily decided to keep this abundance state going instead of doing the usual party everything away until it's gone behavior.

by shkkmo 6y ago

k__ 6y ago

Or it's simply eco-facism. I think, we should move to sustainable solutions, but I don't believe in over population

shkkmo 6y ago
What do you mean by "I don't believe in overpopulation?" Overpopulation is definitely a real thing in ecological systems, so I assume you mean either: 1) We are not currently in an overpopulated state. 2) We are extremely unlikely to reach an overpopulated state in the nearish future. One important thing to note is that overpopulation is not a fixed threshold, but one that is dependant on a number of ecological, environmental and technological factors that makes it extremely hard to completely accept 2).
- k__ 6y ago
  I mean, I believe in the concept, but I think humanity is far from reaching that state. Which doesn't mean that I think we can't live above our means with the population we already have. I just think it's a question of optimizing production and not restricting population growth.

at_a_remove 6y ago

Does that path exist? I am not entirely convinced that you can have our current population living with our current standards -- especially if the standards spread from say that USA to the poorest nations, sustainably.

shkkmo 6y ago
Not in our current economic structuring, but our current economic system places little to no value on sustainability. I wholey believe that we can replicate the aspects of our standard of living that have the biggest impacts on our quality of life. We can have nice clothes, we just need clothes that last a decade rather than a month or a year. We can travel, we just have to travel a bit slower using electric power. Education is a huge factor in our quality of life and can be done very sustainably. We can still have plenty of food, we just might not have year round cheap access to stuff that doesn't grow locally. So there is definitely a path to a very good aproximation of our standard of living that is sustainable for the entire planet. We just aren't currwntly on that path, or even really headed in that direction .

stouset 6y ago

Can we improve things? Sure. Should we invest in improving things? Absolutely. Neither of those permits the kind of pervasive magical thinking people have where we can somehow raise even a fraction of our 7 billion people to anything approximating a typical Western lifestyle without further accelerating environmental collapse. Or even maintaining the number of people with such a lifestyle that we currently do. Our planet fundamentally lacks the resources for sustained consumption anywhere near the scale we're operating at, no matter how green we try to make things. Even just on a purely thermodynamic level we're running out of energy budget without overheating the planet[1]. And that's completely ignoring greenhouse gases. [1]: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

shkkmo 6y ago
I think you'd be surprised as how sustainabily we could approximate the western standard of living if we had the will power to try as a whole society. There would certainly be sacrifices, but I suspect we would also gain significant quality if life improvements. What this requires is a change of mindset and I don't think attitudes like yours help. We are hundreds of years from that thermodynamic limit at our current exponential growth rate, but that growth may be slowing as population growth slows. It is also quite likely that extraplanetary energy sources could be available by then. I'm sort of unclear where you are goin with your argument? Are you arguing we need to kill of people or economically retard developing countries energy use? Neither of those seem reasonable stances so I am left wondering what you see as the path forward and what value you see in advancing your argument.
- imtringued 6y ago
  >I'm sort of unclear where you are goin with your argument? Are you arguing we need to kill of people or economically retard developing countries energy use? Neither of those seem reasonable stances so I am left wondering what you see as the path forward and what value you see in advancing your argument. Lack of resources are a common cause of war. Lack of resources was a problem for humanity for its entire existence and only in the last 100 years has it ceased to be a problem. I'd love it if people voluntarily decided to keep this abundance state going instead of doing the usual party everything away until it's gone behavior.