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I'm genuinely curious when all of this will catch up to us. I spend a relatively large amount of my spare time keeping up with myriad of ways we are destroying

I'm genuinely curious when all of this will catch up to us. I spend a relatively large amount of my spare time keeping up with myriad of ways we are destroying our environment, the fact that our ecosystem is in deep danger is without question. At the same time, while I am anecdotally aware we are experiencing a range of shortages right now, it never seems to quite show up in our economic data. Take for example the FRED data on global fish prices [0]. When you look at that chart you see nothing particularly interesting. You can pore over all of the commodities charts and if that was all the data you had you would soon come to the conclusion that nothing obvious is wrong with our environment (at least from an economic standpoint). To be absolutely clear, I'm not questioning that something is wrong, I think we're in major trouble. But I am still genuinely surprised that this peril doesn't present itself in any economic data I can find. Any insights into when we will feel this our how/when this environmental destruction will become visible in our economic data would be appreciated. [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSALMUSDQ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSALMUSDQ

mason55 5y ago
I’d guess given technology advances you’d expect prices to go down, so the fact that they stay flat is actually indicating that fish are becoming harder to find. Similar to how if the price of something stays the same then it’s becoming cheaper because of inflation. Also, fish are not a long term investment. The price only depends on how hard they are to find combined with demand to eat them sometime soon. If you could buy a fish now with the expectation of selling it later when stocks dry up then I think you’d see a lot more upward pressure.
- HappyDreamer 5y ago
  Another thing cold be if costs for transportation and preparing the fish, storing it etc, grocery store salaries, as of now outweighs the cost of fishing it up from the ocean? (But if so, maybe not much longer.) (I don't know, just wondering.)
lupire 5y ago
Animal species almost always grow to consume more unless they are destroyed by predators or exhaust their environment.
justnotworthit 5y ago
It reminds me of the national debt/fiscal gap discussion. Everyone will agree you can't owe a million times GDP, but no one can describe the "limit". Every year and decade you have people crying out that it's unsustainable and will result in collapse, and you have people saying "nah, more". You have examples of countries imploding, and you have the USA with doubles down every X years. Surely you can't parlay indefinitely, but there hasn't been an implosion yet... until there is... but then everyone who enjoyed the political and financial benefits of parlaying is long dead, their inheritors heavily insulated... or there isn't a financial implosion... or there's some other disaster rendering this disaster moot... or something else (free energy? Second Coming?) appears and fixes it, allowing the reckless to get away with it... if we ever agree on who the reckless were... We could just follow Taleb's warnings (the precautionary principle, antifragility, black swan events), but we can't even agree on basic reality, and the people who are greatly benefiting off their version of reality will never budge, and the people who might suffer aren't yet born (probably).
- nomoreplease 5y ago
  > Everyone will agree you can't owe a million times GDP, but no one can describe the "limit". I’ve heard the limit described as “when the nation can only afford the interest payments on the principal” which means the nation can never pay back the principal itself. I heard that 10 years ago
lettergram 5y ago
> To be absolutely clear, I'm not questioning that something is wrong, I think we're in major trouble. But I am still genuinely surprised that this peril doesn't present itself in any economic data I can find. Any insights into when we will feel this our how/when this environmental destruction will become visible in our economic data would be appreciated. Simply put, The environmental destruction isn’t what you think. For instance, Based on my experience climate modeling and working with environmental papers - I don’t believe carbon emissions has a meaningful impact on global warming. Further, and in way of example: the warming should lead to increased food production (they often say as much in their papers). What will happen is greater soil erosion, so we have to protect against that (or we will long-term) have crop problems. The general point, is the system is more complex than we realize. There are no one-off answers because the system will always be adjusting to try to keep an equilibrium AND so will humans. Farm Fishing is on the rise, protection zones are being setup, global fishing rules have been ignored, but local ones have not, etc etc
- mixologic 5y ago
  "Based on my experience climate modeling and working with environmental papers" And what experience is that, exactly?
  - lettergram 5y ago
    I worked with several academics and corporations as a contractor building their simulations. I’ve also read a lot of papers as well, etc. Like most simulations, they pretty much only can match reality so closely. for instance, we don’t have many long term measurements, so we make (educated-ish) guesses. Academics also repeatedly run their models, tweaking parameters to get the results they want. Frankly, I don’t trust any research using simulations, after being paid to work on environmental, biological systems, simulations for drones and machines (trucks, construction, etc). (Drones and other machines at least had a way to quickly test).
    - mahogany 5y ago
      > we don’t have many long term measurements, so we make (educated-ish) guesses Out of curiosity, what are some examples of these measurements/guesses you are referring to?

mason55 5y ago

I’d guess given technology advances you’d expect prices to go down, so the fact that they stay flat is actually indicating that fish are becoming harder to find. Similar to how if the price of something stays the same then it’s becoming cheaper because of inflation. Also, fish are not a long term investment. The price only depends on how hard they are to find combined with demand to eat them sometime soon. If you could buy a fish now with the expectation of selling it later when stocks dry up then I think you’d see a lot more upward pressure.

HappyDreamer 5y ago
Another thing cold be if costs for transportation and preparing the fish, storing it etc, grocery store salaries, as of now outweighs the cost of fishing it up from the ocean? (But if so, maybe not much longer.) (I don't know, just wondering.)

lupire 5y ago

Animal species almost always grow to consume more unless they are destroyed by predators or exhaust their environment.

justnotworthit 5y ago

It reminds me of the national debt/fiscal gap discussion. Everyone will agree you can't owe a million times GDP, but no one can describe the "limit". Every year and decade you have people crying out that it's unsustainable and will result in collapse, and you have people saying "nah, more". You have examples of countries imploding, and you have the USA with doubles down every X years. Surely you can't parlay indefinitely, but there hasn't been an implosion yet... until there is... but then everyone who enjoyed the political and financial benefits of parlaying is long dead, their inheritors heavily insulated... or there isn't a financial implosion... or there's some other disaster rendering this disaster moot... or something else (free energy? Second Coming?) appears and fixes it, allowing the reckless to get away with it... if we ever agree on who the reckless were... We could just follow Taleb's warnings (the precautionary principle, antifragility, black swan events), but we can't even agree on basic reality, and the people who are greatly benefiting off their version of reality will never budge, and the people who might suffer aren't yet born (probably).

nomoreplease 5y ago
> Everyone will agree you can't owe a million times GDP, but no one can describe the "limit". I’ve heard the limit described as “when the nation can only afford the interest payments on the principal” which means the nation can never pay back the principal itself. I heard that 10 years ago

lettergram 5y ago

> To be absolutely clear, I'm not questioning that something is wrong, I think we're in major trouble. But I am still genuinely surprised that this peril doesn't present itself in any economic data I can find. Any insights into when we will feel this our how/when this environmental destruction will become visible in our economic data would be appreciated. Simply put, The environmental destruction isn’t what you think. For instance, Based on my experience climate modeling and working with environmental papers - I don’t believe carbon emissions has a meaningful impact on global warming. Further, and in way of example: the warming should lead to increased food production (they often say as much in their papers). What will happen is greater soil erosion, so we have to protect against that (or we will long-term) have crop problems. The general point, is the system is more complex than we realize. There are no one-off answers because the system will always be adjusting to try to keep an equilibrium AND so will humans. Farm Fishing is on the rise, protection zones are being setup, global fishing rules have been ignored, but local ones have not, etc etc

mixologic 5y ago
"Based on my experience climate modeling and working with environmental papers" And what experience is that, exactly?
- lettergram 5y ago
  I worked with several academics and corporations as a contractor building their simulations. I’ve also read a lot of papers as well, etc. Like most simulations, they pretty much only can match reality so closely. for instance, we don’t have many long term measurements, so we make (educated-ish) guesses. Academics also repeatedly run their models, tweaking parameters to get the results they want. Frankly, I don’t trust any research using simulations, after being paid to work on environmental, biological systems, simulations for drones and machines (trucks, construction, etc). (Drones and other machines at least had a way to quickly test).
  - mahogany 5y ago
    > we don’t have many long term measurements, so we make (educated-ish) guesses Out of curiosity, what are some examples of these measurements/guesses you are referring to?