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Here's what I've learned: there is zero chance of the world uniting behind any cause. The solution to any of these problems will be economic and out of necessit

by cletus 5y ago

Here's what I've learned: there is zero chance of the world uniting behind any cause. The solution to any of these problems will be economic and out of necessity and never because of altruism. Want to reduce fossil fuel usage? It'll only happen when cleaner alternatives are cheaper. Climate change? Nothing will change here until there's an economic reason for carbon sequestration. This may seem depressing but there's an important lesson here: any sense of urgency is almost always overblown. Things really do have a way of resolving themselves. Oh and as for space debris, yes it's a problem but space is also really big. Like the US also put a bunch of copper up in space [1] that's still there. How could this resolve itself? It'll end up resolving itself when launch costs are sufficiently cheap. We've made a ton of progress in the last few decades. IIRC SpaceX cost of getting payloads into LEO is like 20x cheaper than 20 years ago but it's still north of $1000/kg. But what does the situation look like when the cost gets below $10/kg? That's not as unrealistic as you may think. A lot of attention is given to space elevators. I think these are likely infeasible (eg they rely on discovering a sufficiently strong material that doesn't exist yet). But orbital rings [2]? These require no magical material and would be completely game-changing. If you have something like that just hang things off them to pick up passing space debris. [1]: https://www.wired.com/2013/08/project-west-ford/ https://www.wired.com/2013/08/project-west-ford/ [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E

celticninja 5y ago
Except the pandemic shows us that we can. It's not perfect but it was at least a good effort in terms of global cooperation. Bar a few outliers.
- cletus 5y ago
  Here's an alternative view: we may never reach herd immunity with Covid-19 and it may be something we just always have to deal with in large part because a significant percentage of the population won't get vaccinated because of side effects that, if they exist at all, are less than 1 in 1,000,000 likely to cause problems. A large number of people have shown they're quite willing to let millions of people die rather than do something that's less risky than taking a bath.
mc32 5y ago
This seems a bit exaggerated. We have maritime law, telephony agreements, bern convention, international aviation regulations that were developed over time as the need became critical. I suspect similar will happen as space matures from frontier to settled.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  All those things were seeded in different eras. The world is different today. Look at something like the Internet. Completely unregulated, and in the span of a decade has torn societies apart and undone many cultural norms because of rampant tech conglomerates doing whatever they want. And there's virtually no will at all to do anything about it. The best the US can do is inept boomer Congressmen yelling at Zuckerberg why FaceBook doesn't work on their phones.
  - mc32 5y ago
    We’ll see. The internet is or was different. It was passing bits around the globe. Making it into a turnpike would have stymied development. Fragmentation seems to be emerging with some locales wanting or needing more local control of content. That will likely increase with the success of the GFC and its implementation in ex-USSR satellites as well as in Russia itself.
- cletus 5y ago
  I think maritime law and safety is a good example of my point: the path to maritime law is paved in centuries of blood. And here's the kicker: this didn't even require global collective action. This required governments to police a narrow industry. That's so much easier and yet even then it took centuries.
typest 5y ago
This is overly cynical. I agree that in general cooperation is very hard, and if things can be solved by a private entity, that is a good strategy. But the world has united behind causes before. A good example is the hole in the ozone layer. The world identified CFCs as causing this problem, and united behind the Montreal protocol. Now, the hole is shrinking and is expected to be closed by mid century [1]. I emphasize this because international cooperation is important to solve many problems. Let's not misrepresent the situation and pretend it's impossible. It has happened before, and we would do well to make sure it continues to happen. [1]https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/international-treaties-and-cooperation-about-protection-stratospheric-ozone https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/international-tre...
- barbazoo 5y ago
  I bet there wasn't a refrigerator lobby back then manipulating public opinion and lining politician's pockets like it is with oil, gas, etc.
  - tuatoru 5y ago
    There was. The Montreal protocol happened because Du Pont (the major maker of CFCs) made the mistake* of making an engineer their chief negotiator. When he saw the science, he basically said "yeah, we have to stop using CFCs". * From Du Pont's point of view, not ours.
Workaccount2 5y ago
>any sense of urgency is almost always overblown. Things really do have a way of resolving themselves. This is just another way of saying "Nobody does anything until there are bodies on the ground" The point is to at least attempt to resolve the issue before there are any bodies on the ground. And often at the very least those efforts mitigate the number of bodies that do end up on the ground.
kar5pt 5y ago
We already have economic reasons for all these things. Not having natural disasters and rising sea levels is an economic benefit. The problem is we don't have a _system_ that captures those benefits in a way that incentivizes actors to work towards them. The reason people don't care is because we have an economic system that incentivizes them not to care. There's nothing natural or unchangeable about this, we're just choosing not to do anything.
AndrewKemendo 5y ago
Fully agree with this. In previous years cooperative agreements happened via small opaque groups of people across the world who had a fairly strong hand in driving alignment. Of course this meant that it wasn't so democratic and so people have been pushing against these types of "small group" deals made in back rooms by powerful people. That has changed such that people do not trust these groups to make these deals on their behalf because there have been bad outcomes. Now there are many more players in the conversation with their own perspectives which, while good for increasing diversity of opinion, also make the system mostly grind to a halt, which allows for groups who want to exploit their perspective to have more time to gain ground.
IshKebab 5y ago
> Here's what I've learned: there is zero chance of the world uniting behind any cause. What about CFCs? > It'll only happen when cleaner alternatives are cheaper. Seems like there's a pretty strong economic incentive for spare faring countries not to ruin space.

by cletus 5y ago

celticninja 5y ago

Except the pandemic shows us that we can. It's not perfect but it was at least a good effort in terms of global cooperation. Bar a few outliers.

cletus 5y ago
Here's an alternative view: we may never reach herd immunity with Covid-19 and it may be something we just always have to deal with in large part because a significant percentage of the population won't get vaccinated because of side effects that, if they exist at all, are less than 1 in 1,000,000 likely to cause problems. A large number of people have shown they're quite willing to let millions of people die rather than do something that's less risky than taking a bath.

mc32 5y ago

This seems a bit exaggerated. We have maritime law, telephony agreements, bern convention, international aviation regulations that were developed over time as the need became critical. I suspect similar will happen as space matures from frontier to settled.

JohnWhigham 5y ago
All those things were seeded in different eras. The world is different today. Look at something like the Internet. Completely unregulated, and in the span of a decade has torn societies apart and undone many cultural norms because of rampant tech conglomerates doing whatever they want. And there's virtually no will at all to do anything about it. The best the US can do is inept boomer Congressmen yelling at Zuckerberg why FaceBook doesn't work on their phones.
- mc32 5y ago
  We’ll see. The internet is or was different. It was passing bits around the globe. Making it into a turnpike would have stymied development. Fragmentation seems to be emerging with some locales wanting or needing more local control of content. That will likely increase with the success of the GFC and its implementation in ex-USSR satellites as well as in Russia itself.
cletus 5y ago
I think maritime law and safety is a good example of my point: the path to maritime law is paved in centuries of blood. And here's the kicker: this didn't even require global collective action. This required governments to police a narrow industry. That's so much easier and yet even then it took centuries.

typest 5y ago

This is overly cynical. I agree that in general cooperation is very hard, and if things can be solved by a private entity, that is a good strategy. But the world has united behind causes before. A good example is the hole in the ozone layer. The world identified CFCs as causing this problem, and united behind the Montreal protocol. Now, the hole is shrinking and is expected to be closed by mid century [1]. I emphasize this because international cooperation is important to solve many problems. Let's not misrepresent the situation and pretend it's impossible. It has happened before, and we would do well to make sure it continues to happen. [1]https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/international-treaties-and-cooperation-about-protection-stratospheric-ozone https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/international-tre...

barbazoo 5y ago
I bet there wasn't a refrigerator lobby back then manipulating public opinion and lining politician's pockets like it is with oil, gas, etc.
- tuatoru 5y ago
  There was. The Montreal protocol happened because Du Pont (the major maker of CFCs) made the mistake* of making an engineer their chief negotiator. When he saw the science, he basically said "yeah, we have to stop using CFCs". * From Du Pont's point of view, not ours.

Workaccount2 5y ago

>any sense of urgency is almost always overblown. Things really do have a way of resolving themselves. This is just another way of saying "Nobody does anything until there are bodies on the ground" The point is to at least attempt to resolve the issue before there are any bodies on the ground. And often at the very least those efforts mitigate the number of bodies that do end up on the ground.

kar5pt 5y ago

We already have economic reasons for all these things. Not having natural disasters and rising sea levels is an economic benefit. The problem is we don't have a _system_ that captures those benefits in a way that incentivizes actors to work towards them. The reason people don't care is because we have an economic system that incentivizes them not to care. There's nothing natural or unchangeable about this, we're just choosing not to do anything.

AndrewKemendo 5y ago

Fully agree with this. In previous years cooperative agreements happened via small opaque groups of people across the world who had a fairly strong hand in driving alignment. Of course this meant that it wasn't so democratic and so people have been pushing against these types of "small group" deals made in back rooms by powerful people. That has changed such that people do not trust these groups to make these deals on their behalf because there have been bad outcomes. Now there are many more players in the conversation with their own perspectives which, while good for increasing diversity of opinion, also make the system mostly grind to a halt, which allows for groups who want to exploit their perspective to have more time to gain ground.

IshKebab 5y ago

> Here's what I've learned: there is zero chance of the world uniting behind any cause. What about CFCs? > It'll only happen when cleaner alternatives are cheaper. Seems like there's a pretty strong economic incentive for spare faring countries not to ruin space.