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Humans have lived for millennia with a slower rate of tech advancement, yet here you're saying that the planet had to be sacrificed out of necessity. That's lik

by warent 5y ago

Humans have lived for millennia with a slower rate of tech advancement, yet here you're saying that the planet had to be sacrificed out of necessity. That's like arguing that it's necessary to sacrifice the brain on cocaine and amphetamines for a boost in productivity. The brain is life, the planet is life. These things cannot be sacrificed for some greater good because they are all there is. We've been aware of renewable energy for a very long time now. The concept of a fully-functional solar powered refrigerator first appeared in 1935. Can you imagine where we would be if we spent the last 100 years on clean, renewable energy? Maybe not 2020 levels of technology, but still damn far, and with a healthy planet.

gruez 5y ago
>Humans have lived for millennia with a slower rate of tech advancement, yet here you're saying that the planet had to be sacrificed out of necessity. [...] They also had life expectancy at birth of 30, and regular famines. I'm sure you'd change your tune after your wife died with your child in childbirth.
- ZoomerCretin 5y ago
  I’d be interested to know how oil consumption and the industries it supports are responsible for the lack of famines and lower maternal mortality rates typically credited to policy changes (farm subsidies), and the advancement of medicine and hygiene standards.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Much of our food is fertilized by energy-intensive synthetic fertilizers which are often created by fossil-fueled energy and almost always moved to the field and applied by internal combustion engines. That same ICE equipment is used to harvest and transport food. Oil is used in plastics which are used extensively in both food distribution and medicine/hygiene products.
  - corty 5y ago
    The agricultural revolution is responsible for both low child mortality and the lack of famines. Pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilizers and motorized farm implements are the reasons why humanity has been able to grow exponentially over the last 1.5 centuries, why famines have lessened and why better nourishment lead to fewer child deaths (with a small helping of better hygiene). All that is dependent on coal and oil.
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    It was a little thing called the Industrial Revolution and the rise of automation that it enabled. That was all sparked by the use of coal as an energy source, and later oil. Without coal and oil, we would all be toiling away on primitive farms still, having ten children and losing four of them before the age ofe 3.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    The majority of fertilizer used in the world is the result of the Haber–Bosch process[0] and that requires fossil fuels. Without the ammonia from this process, crop yields globally would drop like a stone.[1 see graph, world population vs. ammonia production] [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process [1]http://sites.psu.edu/shelbyfosterportfolio/wp-content/uploads/sites/34594/2015/09/Shelby-Foster-NHD-paper.pdf http://sites.psu.edu/shelbyfosterportfolio/wp-content/upload...
gojomo 5y ago
Yes - but the humans that lived for those "millenia" were much smaller in number than today. They were much poorer, often "dirt poor", despite constant manual labor that barely left time for literacy – much less HN-like discussions. They died comparatively young, often of diseases we can now avoid/cure, or in violent battles for meager resources. And, those were no great stewards for the environment either. They used slash-and-burn famring. They hunted species to extinction. The Sahara desert (& lots of other desertification) might be the result of primitve land misuse. And of course they rarely met a slightly-different tribe of humans on the next hillside, competing for limited resources, that they didn't eventually try to massacre (often succeeding). Unless you are over 100 years old – I'm not – there's no "we" that could have magically decided, with what they knew 100 years ago, to magically prioritize "solar refrigerators" or whatever other fairytale innovation you think could've replaced today's fossil-fuel usage. (Solar refrigerator usage wouldn't have delivered your computer, your meals, your education, or your entertainment.) There's only the people who existed then, doing the best they could with what they then knew, and now us, doing the best we can with what we now know. "We" now are only recently rich enough & smart enough to even care about far-away oil spills, & long-term sustainability. And we owe those riches & smarts to the flawed best efforts of prior generations. As we unwind those arrangements & path-dependencies that, with hindsight, are hurting us or likely to hurt our offspring in the future, we have to be realistic about how to feed, educate, & give meaning to 8 billion fellow humans. I don't want to go back to a tiny population of humans eking by – when lucky! – on hunter-gathering or subsistence farming, until the sun burns out. (And any defections to a more ambitious developmental path would be held down by what new religion or government, exactly?) If that's the 'sustainable' future, we might as well just end it all now – homo sapiens already lived that cycle of mundane misery, for hundreds-of-thousands-of-years. I'd rather see how the 'progress' path, with potential happy & ever-varying lives for billions or trillions more humans, might work out – instead of just retreat back to the 'safe stagnation' path.

by warent 5y ago

gruez 5y ago

>Humans have lived for millennia with a slower rate of tech advancement, yet here you're saying that the planet had to be sacrificed out of necessity. [...] They also had life expectancy at birth of 30, and regular famines. I'm sure you'd change your tune after your wife died with your child in childbirth.

ZoomerCretin 5y ago
I’d be interested to know how oil consumption and the industries it supports are responsible for the lack of famines and lower maternal mortality rates typically credited to policy changes (farm subsidies), and the advancement of medicine and hygiene standards.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Much of our food is fertilized by energy-intensive synthetic fertilizers which are often created by fossil-fueled energy and almost always moved to the field and applied by internal combustion engines. That same ICE equipment is used to harvest and transport food. Oil is used in plastics which are used extensively in both food distribution and medicine/hygiene products.
- corty 5y ago
  The agricultural revolution is responsible for both low child mortality and the lack of famines. Pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilizers and motorized farm implements are the reasons why humanity has been able to grow exponentially over the last 1.5 centuries, why famines have lessened and why better nourishment lead to fewer child deaths (with a small helping of better hygiene). All that is dependent on coal and oil.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  It was a little thing called the Industrial Revolution and the rise of automation that it enabled. That was all sparked by the use of coal as an energy source, and later oil. Without coal and oil, we would all be toiling away on primitive farms still, having ten children and losing four of them before the age ofe 3.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  The majority of fertilizer used in the world is the result of the Haber–Bosch process[0] and that requires fossil fuels. Without the ammonia from this process, crop yields globally would drop like a stone.[1 see graph, world population vs. ammonia production] [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process [1]http://sites.psu.edu/shelbyfosterportfolio/wp-content/uploads/sites/34594/2015/09/Shelby-Foster-NHD-paper.pdf http://sites.psu.edu/shelbyfosterportfolio/wp-content/upload...

gojomo 5y ago

Yes - but the humans that lived for those "millenia" were much smaller in number than today. They were much poorer, often "dirt poor", despite constant manual labor that barely left time for literacy – much less HN-like discussions. They died comparatively young, often of diseases we can now avoid/cure, or in violent battles for meager resources. And, those were no great stewards for the environment either. They used slash-and-burn famring. They hunted species to extinction. The Sahara desert (& lots of other desertification) might be the result of primitve land misuse. And of course they rarely met a slightly-different tribe of humans on the next hillside, competing for limited resources, that they didn't eventually try to massacre (often succeeding). Unless you are over 100 years old – I'm not – there's no "we" that could have magically decided, with what they knew 100 years ago, to magically prioritize "solar refrigerators" or whatever other fairytale innovation you think could've replaced today's fossil-fuel usage. (Solar refrigerator usage wouldn't have delivered your computer, your meals, your education, or your entertainment.) There's only the people who existed then, doing the best they could with what they then knew, and now us, doing the best we can with what we now know. "We" now are only recently rich enough & smart enough to even care about far-away oil spills, & long-term sustainability. And we owe those riches & smarts to the flawed best efforts of prior generations. As we unwind those arrangements & path-dependencies that, with hindsight, are hurting us or likely to hurt our offspring in the future, we have to be realistic about how to feed, educate, & give meaning to 8 billion fellow humans. I don't want to go back to a tiny population of humans eking by – when lucky! – on hunter-gathering or subsistence farming, until the sun burns out. (And any defections to a more ambitious developmental path would be held down by what new religion or government, exactly?) If that's the 'sustainable' future, we might as well just end it all now – homo sapiens already lived that cycle of mundane misery, for hundreds-of-thousands-of-years. I'd rather see how the 'progress' path, with potential happy & ever-varying lives for billions or trillions more humans, might work out – instead of just retreat back to the 'safe stagnation' path.