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Tech Won’t Save Us. Shrinking Consumption Will
- trembonator 5y agoBuy more videogames and digital movies
- grecy 5y agoThis is the uncomfortable truth that many don't want to talk about. REDUCE. Then Reuse, then recycle. Reducing consumption is the first step.
- SubiculumCode 5y agoRecycling materials is often not less energy intensive than the original production.
- bmitc 5y agoThat's why reduce and reuse are before it. Recycling is not about emissions and energy. It's about trying to reduce the amount of stuff going into landfills and our environment (like plastics and electronic waste) and trying to reduce how much new material we're stripping out of the earth.
- SubiculumCode 5y agoIm saying recycle can probably be dropped altogether.
- titzer 5y agoAluminum, glass, and steel are highly recyclable. The biosphere is incredibly good at recycling raw materials. It is not particularly good at recycling the materials that we produce.
- bmitc 5y ago> The biosphere is incredibly good at recycling raw materials. That's not entirely true in a subtle but impactful way. Organic material such as food scraps, wood, paper, etc. do breakdown in landfills, but they emit methane as they do so. If these are instead composted, where the breakdown process releases much less methane, instead of being thrown away, then methane emissions can be drastically cutdown if everyone did it. Further, compost acts as a carbon sink. In fact, if composting saw 100% take up, it would reduce emissions by several whole percentage points. https://www.compostingcouncil.org/page/ClimateChangeBenefits https://www.compostingcouncil.org/page/ClimateChangeBenefits https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200224-how-cutting-your-food-waste-can-help-the-climate https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200224-how-cutting-your... https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/198/636609540953170000 https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/198/636... https://scraplab.princeton.edu/2020/03/the-composter-how-much-can-composting-help-in-solving-the-climate-challenge/ https://scraplab.princeton.edu/2020/03/the-composter-how-muc...
- titzer 5y agoI meant at an atomic and molecular level. You're right that decomposing in the wrong way will produce different waste products, like methane, which is worse in the short term than CO2 (IIRC, better in the 80+ year time frame). If we look at the biosphere, the vast majority of elements that make up a given lifeform get recycled within months or years. If they weren't, the waste products would accumulate in the environment. We do see that in geological strata, e.g. limestone deposits, and fossil fuels. Those deposits generally took millions upon millions of years to accumulate because those leftover waste products were pretty minuscule compared to the biomass turning over. We're producing waste faster than any other biological process in Earth's history, and it's new kinds of waste that no existing processes (other than defaults like erosion and UV irradiation) break down and recycle. And as a result those waste products are accumulating fast in the environment and unfortunately doing a ton of damage to the many intricate ecosystems that we indirectly depend on. Particularly plastic, forever chemicals, and an overwhelming amount of basically everything. I support composting and produce as little landfill waste as I can get away with. I "recycle" (as much as putting something in the recycle bin is actually recycling) plastics, glass, aluminum, paper, etc. I compost all my food waste, and the only thing I put in the regular trash is stuff that I can't reasonably clean and recycle (e.g. tainted food wrappers). My composting is pretty unsophisticated. I just toss it out into the woods, spreading it out on purpose, as opposed to concentrating it in a compost pile. The Sun's UV will disinfect and being open to the air will dessiccate it before it is broken down by microbiota and insects eventually. I am slightly worried about infecting/breeding/spreading dangerous bacteria, particularly from meat products (which I make an extra effort to never waste) so I am not yet composting to produce soil for my garden.
- foo_barrio 5y agoAlso, hardly ever do you get the thing you started with. Clear glass bottles are not recycled into more clear glass bottles. IIRC the recycled class glass is not clear enough and you end up with lower quality glass. Car tire rubber get recycled into other things (unless they get retreaded). I think aluminum cans are one of the few things that get recycled into more aluminum cans (minus some % loss).
- bmitc 5y agoWhy does that matter? Is there an alternative?
- aembleton 5y agoCleaning the glass bottles out and re-using them.
- foo_barrio 5y agoYes reduce and reuse. Recycling is the last the things to consider. Clean the bottles and re-use them. Don't crush them and spend energy making something else with that material.
- bmitc 5y agoThat was already pointed out, so I was confused by the comment chain. Of course reduce and reuse should be the priority, but the comment chain seemed to imply that recycling isn’t perfect, so it shouldn’t be done, as the person you responded to explicitly suggested in their other comment.
- foo_barrio 5y agoI was attempting to expand on "why" recycling is the last thing to do.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoWho cares if their drink is in clear glass as long as it's clean?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- endisneigh 5y agoShrinking consumption isn't going to happen. Most of this world hasn't even industrialized. Tech is the solution.
- throwawaygh 5y agoExtracting fewer resources from the planet doesn't have to mean shrinking consumption. We can have both economic growth and less extractive consumption. Or, as a currently-dead comment puts it, "Buy more videogames and digital movies". I might add books and music, but you get the point.
- agumonkey 5y agoI keep wondering how much more do we need to extract, since we have tons of stuff in machines and devices, it's more a matter of recycling it.
- throwaway75787 5y agoI've had this idea for a while. A roving machine that slowly and autonomously eats through commingled landfills, like a giant industrial shredder on tires. Take in everything, refrigerators, catalytic converters, electronics, toys, couches, nylon clothing, diapers. Separate everything with some combination of magnets, eddy current metal detectors, centrifuges, machine vision and other means. The metals can surely be sorted in many ways, aluminium, steel, rare earths, the odd radioactive extracted, others melted down and separated. Glass and recyclable plastics cut to pellets. Everything not recyclable but with some chemical energy in it sent to a incinerator (with a high-efficiency electrostatic filter) for power generation. Things like cinder blocks would be left over. This would also reclaim land and eliminating huge eyesores.
- cmarschner 5y agoThat‘s pretty much what is done in countries with a recycling industry. It might be a bit more manual (you might have containers on the street for glass for example) but an entire industry is supposed to make it happen and burn the rest and turn it into electricity on the way. You can read up on their proceedings, e.g. at https://www.recycling-magazine.com/ https://www.recycling-magazine.com/ The thing is: even after 40 years they‘re still not very good at it. Even the top countries just make the 50% mark. And that is done via a set of different political measures and education of the public https://www.nspackaging.com/analysis/best-recycling-countries/ https://www.nspackaging.com/analysis/best-recycling-countrie... .
- jjtheblunt 5y agoWhat happened to the Zero Population Growth movement popular 20+ years ago, or maybe for much longer? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth
- beaconstudios 5y agoIt turned out that it happens by itself in developed nations.
- mc32 5y agoCountries began importing population to make up for the lack of organic growth... and those that don't face an imploding population (S Korea forecasts going to 1/4 its curr pop by 2120, or to about its 1960 pop by 2100). Though, if all countries aimed for their 1960s pop, that may not be bad if its done gradually as appears to be happening in S Korea.
- agumonkey 5y agoShrinking will probably mean reviving 'culture'. Lower economic activity may imply more idle time, to be filled with group activities, art, rituals.
- TrispusAttucks 5y agoI for one would welcome this. Much preferable to everyone being too busy to hangout.
- agumonkey 5y agoI'm not the happiest of dudes, that's for context, but I have this feeling that people are hiding something.. binging tv shows all the time, new video games all the time, waiting for the new console. It seems like a neverending chase of new shallow fun they don't even really like. Maybe simpler but deeper moments would improve things.
- SubiculumCode 5y agoShrinking consumption would, but its never going to be pursued as a policy unless the climate crisis becomes so immediate and obvious to every human bring alive, and by then, it will be too late. Therefore, we pursue the techs and policies that are possible to implement, where we hope that adversity breeds ingenuity.
- mistermann 5y agoWe seem to have become hypnotized by the "blah blah blah" mentioned in the article, like frogs being slowly warmed, sous vide style.
- avitous 5y agoThe problem WILL be solved one way or another. Either we willingly make the changes necessary to render our existence sustainable at current population levels, or our environment will force those changes upon us in much more urgent terms, with the end result of reducing our population as necessary until our footprint is again sustainable. I have no hope that the former case will be the one pursued, human nature being what it is.
- marcodiego 5y agoShrinking consumption would create deflation, which would impact gains which could impact employment. Any change that affects economy should be taken slowly or else there's no time to prevent negative side-effects.
- quantified 5y agoIf we approached financial efficiency like we did energy and material efficiency, something like UBI might work. We’ve learned how to raise and tend animals and plants for longevity and productiveness while we harvest their useful byproducts (milk, wool, apples, almonds). Why don’t we do the same with economic entities?
- marcodiego 5y agoUBI will become a basic necessity if automation and employer efficiency continue advancing.
- Proven 5y ago
- thunderbird120 5y agoI really shouldn't even have to say this but apparently this is unclear to some people. There are exactly zero sane countries which are going to adopt a policy of deliberately reducing the material standard of living of their citizens. Zero. Democratic, authoritarian, capitalist, communist, doesn't matter. No one is going to do that. No one is going to run on a platform of "I will make our country poorer and reduce its international influence". Anyone who thinks this that this is an even remotely plausible solution to the issue at hand is nothing short of delusional.
- selimthegrim 5y agoEven the Taliban will probably go back to selling drugs at some point.
- lettergram 5y agoWhat happens when inflation rises to the point people can’t purchase goods effectively? Reduced consumption. What happens when you lockdown the economy and force people out of the workforce — less production (higher cost of goods). I agree it’s delusional, but I’m pretty sure they’re doing it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Reset https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Reset Of course, the stakeholders will become massively rich.
- thunderbird120 5y agoInflation is usually demand driven and it certainly is in the current case. It is the result of INCREASED consumption. U.S. consumer spending (adjusted for inflation) is significantly above the pre-pandemic peak https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/consumer-spending https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/consumer-spending
- lettergram 5y agoI believe that assumes correct inflation figures. I don’t know if those are accurate. I can tell you almost all goods and assets are up over 6% this year. Hell, Kraft-Heinz, General Mills, etc are all raising prices 20% in January 2022, etc
- lettergram 5y agoSo the implication is effectively making everyone poorer — ie driving down consumption? Nice, that’s what I want for my future and my kids future! What the hell is this?
- songzme 5y agoI teach my kids to buy less, reuse as much as possible (like keeping the glass jars to make pickles, etc). Fix up old furniture instead of buying new ones. Eventually you'll learn to build an emotional attachment to things and value reliable old stuff that you've improved over time. Its a good thing.
- lettergram 5y agoI do all that but still want my kids to build wealth. Like don’t you want them to retire? Have a better future than you do?
- tjr225 5y ago> Have a better future than you do? I’m not sure if you’re serious or not but yeah- that’s the entire point of this discussion. “Wealth” is pointless if there is no habitable place for our children and their children to live.
- WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
- chiefofgxbxl 5y agoAlso worth adding that wealth doesn't need to mean owning more material possessions. Wealth can take the form of knowledge, opportunities, increased quality of life, etc. Think educational wealth, mental wealth, spiritual wealth, etc. Less can also be more. How wealthy is an elderly person who requires multiple prescription drugs, nurse/home-care, etc.? Sure they might have acquired money during their life to pay for these things, but that also means they are dependent (read: not free) on a lot of things too. Dependency is a sort of anti-wealth.
- bryanlarsen 5y agoThe only thing this narrative will accomplish is failure. Nobody will support significant sacrifice to combat climate change. Luckily they don't have to. Of course we won't be able to capture and store 37 gigatonnes of carbon annually. That's ludicrous. The path is straightforward: electrify everything, and make the grid green. There are only three major industries that are difficult to electrify: cement, steel and air travel. Steel & air travel can use hydrogen. For cement, you use low carbon processes to get carbon emissions down to about 10% of previous, and then store the rest. That's just a hundreds of megatonnes, and that is feasible. Electrifying (almost) everything will cost a lot of money up front, but will save a ton of money in the long run. And renewable energy is a lot cheaper. And will provide a ton of jobs. So consumption is going to go up, not down. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
- ramraj07 5y agoIt is true electryifying everything and going green on the grid is important, but do you think that when there’s oil available, no one’s going to use it? You can put laws in the big countries but what about the shady ones?
- Schiendelman 5y agoOnce the big countries seriously start to transition, they’ll need the shady countries to stop benefiting from oil as well. We’ll all end up paying poor countries to not use oil, and embargoing them if they keep it up - and that’ll be a worthy thing to pay for.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoI've got one word for you: China. The US can't just cut off China without serious second order effects rippling through the economy. Therefore, it won't happen. And, if you can't get China to cooperate, none of it matters. They're currently the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, have publicly said they'll be increasing their emissions for some time, and have not committed to net zero before 2060.
- Tiktaalik 5y agoThe more interesting solutions oriented stuff is in the second part of the article. > A sensible society, he argues, would have taxed the hell out of big cars, big homes and frequent travellers decades ago, but there is a shortage of common sense and yes, it has something to do with supply chains. The dull solution is that inefficient, heavily CO2 emitting stuff should be carbon taxed, and carbon tariffed. (read: big inefficient homes and cars) The solutions have been with us this whole time. If we went back to 19th century urban planning and transportation solutions, compact cities, apartments, bicycles and trains, we'd massively cut our CO2 emissions while having no real negative impact on our standard of living.
- teakettle42 5y ago> If we went back to 19th century urban planning and transportation solutions, compact cities, apartments, bicycles and trains, we'd massively cut our CO2 emissions while having no real negative impact on our standard of living. That’s a bold assertion that may, in fact, be true for you, but it would clearly, substantially, and obviously negatively impact the standard of living for millions of others who would find being crammed into sardine can utopia anything but utopia.
- jodrellblank 5y agoYou could shrink roads and non-space bits of green or concrete filler, expand living areas into some of that reclaimed space while shrinking the city from the rest of that space, have more personal space of higher quality with lower air and noise pollution and closer services in a smaller city and better public transport to/from suburban living areas, and have less sardine can life than currently.
- teakettle42 5y agoI’m not sure how you shrink my tree-covered acreage to fit into this model, and how attempting to doing so wouldn’t be negatively impacting my quality of life.
- maxerickson 5y agoThere's too many people that have less than they want for shrinking consumption to actually happen.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pcstl 5y agoShrinking consumption would mean either that developing countries would need to stay in poverty forever, or to somehow find a way to greatly impoverish people in the developed nations that would not lead to widespread rioting. Additionally, the bulk of world emissions currently comes from developing countries: https://www.cgdev.org/media/developing-countries-are-responsible-63-percent-current-carbon-emissions https://www.cgdev.org/media/developing-countries-are-respons... So shrinking consumption in developed countries would be far from enough. We'd need to find a way to make China, for instance, accept that they should accept a vast diminution in their living standards in order to satisfy mostly Western activists. Solutions to climate change based on shrinking consumption or reducing growth in general are political and technical nonstarters. We need to focus on decoupling growth and consumption from resource usage and emissions. Only by developing the technology to do so do we have any hope to mitigate the effects of climate change.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago> the bulk of world emissions currently comes from developing countries And the bulk of emissions in developed countries comes from corporations. I don't know offhand, but I'd be shocked if the same bulk for developing countries isn't produced by corporations as well, and not shocked but wildly surprised if it's not the exact same corporations.
- pcstl 5y agoI do not believe it is the exact same corporations, as China is the single largest contributor to emissions right now and they are not very friendly to the idea of foreign corporations acquiring a significant foothold in their domestic market. However, I believe this discussion is completely orthogonal to the point I was making. I was not talking about the bulk of emissions coming from developing countries as some kind of moral judgement about developing countries, simply to state that reducing emissions in developed countries would not be enough - which means that reduced consumption in developing countries would be required, which would in turn mean condemning a significant amount of the world's population to perpetual poverty.
- emodendroket 5y ago
- maxdo 5y agoIdeology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas. What article is saying: - "go back to caves, don't buy anything, it is stupid but you should believe in that". This is not people want. I used to live in a country tried to build communism. I do understand and support clean energy, ecology. But this kind of calls remind of ideology over natural order of things. People will always want to live in a warm house during winter, surround themself with comfort etc. Only science and technology can bring us to the end goal of 100% clean , renewable everything. Some examples: Why do we need all this rockets, going to space, mars, lets solve problems on earth first: - with this mind set no boom of Solar Energy, since it's been designed for space - no closed-cycle tech also developed for space first - even CO2 from air was developed for space and military goals first Creating tremendously complex goals of going to the space, other planets triggered lots of tech with autonomy and limited resources in mind. Another example, electric cars. Hey lets reduce consumption of cars 50%: - People will keep using old, inefficient cars, that produce more pollution, - Investors will invest less money to EV, so slower transition, less charging infrastructure - No cheap EV in a forceable future - No cheap battery storages to keep solar, wind energy Keeping demand naturally as it is pushed gasoline car to museums by 2030-35. That itself will cut humongous amount of co2. So that we can focus on producing more clean energy for more efficient EV's. Another example, lets limit to heating to 60f (15c) and cut the emission from heating: - Consumption is high, pricing for keeping the house warm jumped? Good, people will install geothermal, solar etc. As you can see consumption triggers progress and provide with playground for better tech. All you need to provide restrictions in the areas like plastic etc. Economy will find it's way.
- quantified 5y agoIf you give everyone what they want, well, there’s not enough beachfront, pizza, makeup and recreational drugs for all. What people want in a consumption culture and what can be sustained are completely different. I’d agree with the idea that targeted areas of restriction may be fruitful. But I think the real issue is expectations and ethics.
- hotpotamus 5y agoCouldn't you get the whole country high with a couple kilos of LSD or Fentanyl? Weed is called that for a reason as well. And pizza is about as cheap a food as can be. Seems like we're almost post scarcity on some things. Might need to go to VR for beachfront for all since that is scarce indeed.
- Gatsky 5y agoMy impression is that modern economics has no playbook for something like this, and with the undue influence economics has on high level geopolitics these days, it seems very unlikely to have legs.
- MattGaiser 5y agoThere is no other choice beyond tech of some form or another. People won't wear a mask in stores and restaurants to prevent the spread of disease. This pandemic tested the level of shared sacrifice acceptable in a mere short term crisis. It was not high at all. Basically, sacrifice, except if it is of other people, cannot be part of the equation. Current price inflation caused by loads of extra money for spending and supply chain disruption is already politically devastating. Tech either stops environmental harm, gives us a way out of environmental harm, or lets us fight to have what remains. The solution will be one of: - Solar panels/electrification -- mitigate - Carbon capture/body cooling suits/fake trees -- adapt - Bombs and guns -- win
- c0nducktr 5y agoBased on what I've seen, and considering past history, Option 3 appears most likely. Hopefully the biosphere isn't too terribly damaged by the time we reach it.
- danny_codes 5y agoI disagree with this premise. Consumption by itself is not an issue, it's just a question of what we consume. For example, if all energy was generated from not-fossil-fuel, than (insofar as anthropogenic climate change is concerned) we have no climate-change problem at all. Pollution of any kind can be addressed in this way. Don't like electronic waste? Build electronics in ways that facilitate perfect recyclability. Don't like tire graveyards? Design tires that biodegrade, or are otherwise reusable. It's not that we need new technology to save ourselves. It's simply that we need to allocate resources towards moving our existing technologies in a more sustainable direction.
- 300bps 5y agoWe’re spoiled. 3.5 billion years of stored energy from the sun is ripe for the picking just under the surface. We’ll burn all 3.5 billion years of it in 200 or so years. An episode of the BBC Show “Bang Goes the Theory” showed me how ridiculous our lifestyle is when they put a typical English family into a house powered solely by bicyclists. The family had no idea - they just went about their day while a few dozen bicyclists were practically killing themselves so they could run the shower and the kettle at the same time. I agree with the author, lower consumption is the only real solution.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoHistorically, the role of the bicyclists was performed by slaves, serfs, peasants... If you get rid of the machines, involuntary servitude will be back before you know it, because human nature hasn't changed, yo. Personally, I'd rather that not happen.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoYou are leaving out the point that we have practically limitless energy in the form of solar, wind, and nuclear. It's inevitable, the oil companies can't block it forever.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoRemember Thomas Malthus thought that the only way to avoid human overpopulation was sexual abstinence. It worked horribly. Humans love sex. They also love consumption and material goods. You are not going to convince people in developed nations to cut back their consumption. And you are not going to convince people in developing nations that they will never have the lifestyle of the developed nations. In addition, in a democracy, attempting to try to do those things will be political suicide. People will happily tell pollsters that they want to combat climate change, but the minute it affects them (for example rising fuel prices), they will be out in the streets attempting to throw the politicians out of office (see the yellow vest protest in France). For overpopulation, the solution literally turned out to be a pill. Once women had access to safe, cheap, reliable birth control, population growth leveled off. Either tech will save us, or we are doomed.
- lambdadmitry 5y agoTo be fair, state pensions and stable financial systems might be just as much a solution for overpopulation as contraceptives. Kids are your bank and healthcare in advance age in developing countries. You don't need as many (or any at all) when you know your needs will be met by a combination of state support and your money that will still be yours.
- nkurz 5y agoThe link at the bottom of the page to Part Two (where he suggests solutions) is fairly easy to miss. Quoting some of it: [H]ere is what our leaders should be saying: We are eight billion people competing for finite resources and consuming energy at unprecedented levels. Economic growth is destroying the Earth and the atmosphere. It has degraded our humanity, and divorced us from the values of our ancestors. Growth is a ponzi scheme. Increased prosperity depends on making more people because more people consume more goods. If we don’t prioritize the health of the planet over our short-term economic interests the oceans will sicken with acid, the forests will die, and the fisheries will disappear. Nature will reduce our numbers if we do not scale down our appetites and ambitions. The technospshere threatens our physical and spiritual existence. It must be scaled back and reoriented to serve people. Now it actively mines data from people while altering our brain functions to serve the growth of the technosphere. We have exploited the richest of our fossil fuels, and renewables can’t offer the same energy density and quality. That is why energy conservation is the only way forward. Our energy use must consistently drop by three or four per cent a year over the next decade. ... Ignore those alarmists that say contraction means you and I must live in cold caves. An economic retreat does not mean returning to the Dark Ages. As Hagens has observed, a 30-per-cent GDP drop in the United States would bring that nation back to a 1990s level of energy spending. A 50 per cent drop in GDP would bring the U.S. back to a 1973 level. Were those times so bad? https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/11/04/Returning-1970s-Economy-Could-Save-Our-Future/ https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/11/04/Returning-1970s-Econo...
- chanakya 5y agoMost greenhouse emissions are already from non-western countries. That will be much more true in the decades to come. Even if western countries were to stop all emissions today, the net impact in 2100 won't be more than about 0.5 degC. Are we really going to ask the non-rich world to cut back on their consumption and shrink their economies?
- volkse 5y agoNo one is going to reduce consumption. To even suggest such a thing as a solution to any issue at any meaningful scale betrays a complete misunderstanding of the world by the author..
- anm89 5y agoShrinking consumption (ie economic deflation, a decrease in GDP) would absolutely destroy the USA. That's not a moral statement. I personally absolutely aim to reduce my consumption. But we live in a financialized debt based economy. It's about one nuance a way from an actual pyramid scheme except instead of recruiting people what it needs is GDP growth. The whole gig explodes when growth stops. Luckily the US could hypothetically keep growing for a VERY long time where as some other countries (China, Japan) are not going to fare as well (on the time frame of their own demographics curves).
- CameronNemo 5y agoSome people want the union to survive at the expense of so much more, and it shows.
- xupybd 5y agoExactly, population growth is halting. I don't think we can sustain the same economic systems without population growth.
- anm89 5y agoUs population is expected to grow through most of this century.
- xupybd 5y agoYes but the rate of growth is much lower and the trend is down.
- c0nducktr 5y agoThe same economic systems have lead, and continue to lead us towards the death our environment. Why keep those systems? We need to improve on those systems, if not reject them entirely.
- xupybd 5y agoOh yeah I'm talking about improving. Minor tweaks not uprooting the entire thing. I'm also talking about doing so as a reaction to declining population not preemptively. We don't know exactly what the future will look like best to address the needs when they arise. But the change in population growth is going to have a major impact on our world economic system. I'm a big fan of free markets and think our current iteration is one of the best ever, despite it's problems.
- cperciva 5y agoFor the benefit of the non-Canadians: The Tyee is a progressive fringe publication -- increasingly fringe in recent years as it raises its revenue from donations and it needs clickbait and outrage-porn to attract that funding. Sometimes they make decent points, but they also spew a lot of utter nonsense.
- CameronNemo 5y agoAlternative hypothesis: without the need to appease corporate ad sponsors or billionaire owners, the publication is free to explore seemingly "fringe" ideas and topics.
- cperciva 5y agoPerhaps, but on the occasions they've covered a topic I'm intimately familiar with, their journalism has been laughably off the mark. In the spirit of preventing Gell-Mann amnesia, I'm not going to assume that they're any more accurate about anything else they write about.
- freeslave 5y agoCanadian and BC resident here. The Tyee is left-leaning but hardly "fringe". I would suggest they rely less on clickbait than many mainstream publications. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-tyee/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-tyee/
- cperciva 5y agoThey've gotten worse in the year since that page was last updated.
- Dumblydorr 5y agoWe can use technology to shrink our consumption. It seems like the author's actual evidence is the weakest areas of the green tech, they don't take on the strengths of wind and solar or the innovations on batteries and EVs and electric bikes and busses. Instead the author takes on pie on the sky futuristic tech which is still nascent and may not pan out in the long run. Obviously green tech looks bad if you're only looking at hydrogen, CCS, direct air capture, those aren't even 1% of the development of one of the above mentioned domains.
- lambdadmitry 5y agoI honestly can't wrap my head around the views of people promoting "degrowth" as a solution. How do they reconcile their ideas with the basic reality that is evident from a single chart like that one [0] and, again, very basic facts about our world like population numbers? The simple reality is that there are a lot of people and most of them are very poor by Western standards. There are almost 8 billion people on this planet, and only 1 billion of them live in the West. There will most likely be 10 billion people, with almost all of the extra 2 billion being born in the developing world. Those 8 billion people's living conditions are abysmal compared to developed world, so they want to improve them, which means increasing their energy consumption. 8 billion people is 8 times more than 1 billion people, therefore even if it's somehow possible to "degrow" Western economies to the level of consumption of 1970s and force the developing world to stop at that level, that's still a severalfold increase in overall carbon output. If we unshackle ourselves from the reality of international politics, let's assume that instead of waiting for the developing world to catch up we somehow redistribute all wealth equally and freeze it at that level. Ignoring all beneficial effects of wealth concentration (you can't build five smaller semiconductor plants for the price of a one big one) and previous wealth expenditure (infrastructure already in place is worth a lot of carbon), the resulting average quality of life on this planet will be closer to favelas than to whatever even the most ascetic green activists would be happy to accept. And we actually need to reduce that level, not just abandon overseas holidays. Of course, we can't ignore international politics, so any measure that fails the MAP test (can you convince Modi, Assad, and Putin to implement it?) is at most a minor respite, not a solution. Something tells me that it would be hard for green activists to convince those leaders to deliberately reduce their citizens' living conditions and, for two of them, abandon their biggest export revenue streams. I don't know what's going on in people's heads when they talk about "degrowth". Most of the time I brought up [0] the discussion switched to per-capita measures and emotional arguments about guilt of past emissions, as if our atmosphere cares about Americans being especially polluting per capita when there are 20 times more people polluting somewhat less but increasing their pollutions every day. The easiest explanation I can think of is a combination of despair ("but nothing else would work"), desire for "simple" solutions ("just reduce consumption" sounds simpler and less tradeoff-y than, say, nuclear), blindness to the world outside of Western bubble ("we just need to do our part, how hard can it be not fly to vacations"), and a quasi-religious notion of carbon piety. It's disheartening and I strongly believe it's hugely disruptive to productive efforts to combat climate change. [0]: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/1711C/production/_121429449_countries_v1-nc.png https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/1711C/production...
- the__alchemist 5y agoNeal Stephenson's new novel Termination Shock addresses this. Without spoiling too much: Its characters view political obstacles to mitigating climate change as important as technological ones. They see the urgent need to act, and try to do so with politics in mind. It's sci-fi that keeps the human element center-stage.
- jtdev 5y ago
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoDegrowth is not a solution in the same way that "just stop fighting" isn't a viable pathway to world peace. Look for other solutions.
- bmitc 5y ago> Degrowth is not a solution Why?
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoIt's not politically viable. It's not even viable within countries that are doing well, much less across the world where people still live in extreme poverty. You'd need a global authoritarian regime with strong control over the population & extreme taxes or a command economy to make it a reality
- lambdadmitry 5y agoI believe at least some proponents of degrowth see it as a vehicle for exactly what you described. That is, if degrowth is really the only solution and the only way to do that is a global authoritarian regime, oh well what can we do, might as well create one and redistribute wealth in a way they see better while we're at it
- stjohnswarts 5y agoTech is a huge portion of the solution if the world population doesnt' shrink significantly. We're not going to willing go back to communal villages and hunting and gathering without a cataclysm
- errcorrectcode 5y agoIf personal austerity were to catch-on, Brawndo would automatically fire everyone. Consumption drives food on the table. It's the nuances of consumption, not ignorant, self-righteous virtue-signaling: "starvation, not bathing, not traveling, homelessness, childlessness, and suicide are how I keep my carbon footprint to an absolute minimum." How the climate emergency will be fixed: bio CCS at-scale using oceanic organisms to do the hard work of carbon fixation for us. GMO and automated floating "farms" as necessary.
- barrenko 5y agoThis was explored in "Interstellar". Religion was the last attempt at anti-natalism and issuing blame and self-pity. It never worked and will never worked. If you are scared of technology, good luck being human.
- jollybean 5y agoNuclear Energy. Over the course of only 10 years, France made 80% of their electricity Nuclear. Have we become so much less competent that we, every modern nation, couldn't do it again? Even faster/cheaper/safely? Of course we could, if we really wanted to. One of the primary issues with getting nuclear going is ... the Greens. The Greens are a giant obstacle to Nuclear, an energy source which could, if applied appropriately and assertively, wipe out the C02 crisis. The math is already there, we're literally ignoring it in our discussions. "The World Is On Fire" but nobody is really talking about it? Is this a giant existential crisis then 'manufactured' in a kind of systematic way?
- gcanyon 5y agoIn 2000 I lived in Los Angeles in an air conditioned house (power bill >$100/month), drove to work every day consuming at least three gallons of gas, the computers I worked on consumed ~100-200 watts, and all my lights were incandescent. In 2019 I lived in Bangkok in a (very-lightly) air conditioned apartment (power bill $15/month), walked to work, the computer I worked on consumed maybe 60 watts, and all my lights were LED. I've since moved to Seattle and the power bill has gone back up, but I'm working remotely on another ~60 watt computer, and the next will be ~20 watts. The trend is in the right direction.
- thinkski 5y agoThere’s a continuous tension between capacity and load. We’ve been fortunate that technology (and untapped resources) have largely placed capacity above load for much of our lifetimes. Spare capacity tends to be followed by an increase in load. Remains to be seen if technology advances can keep capacity above load. If not, load will decrease, either gradually or drastically, one way or another. It’s really a restatement of supply and demand. Prices that are free to respond to an imbalance between the two keep the two in balance. Prices have been low for a long time because capacity has been high / load has been low. As load increases faster than capacity, expect prices to increase,
- jrsj 5y ago“Shrinking consumption” is just code for a transfer of wealth & income from consumers to asset holders. Meanwhile technology could potentially provide the opposite with the right approach. As others have mentioned, green energy as an example is more labor intensive and less capital intensive, and the end result is a lot more individuals and communities owning the means to generate and store the energy they need instead of having to pay a form of rent to energy corps forever. The powers that be might see climate change as a threat but they do not want that kind of economic shift. They want a larger % of lifelong renters and a larger share of wealth for themselves.
- arpanetus 5y agoshrinking won't save us neither, but the 10x change will. imagine asking china & india to shrink their volumes of energy consumption :)
- briandw 5y agoThis is the classic “Prophet vs Wizard” dichotomy as laid out in The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann. I highly recommend the book for getting a thorough background on the thoughts of both camps. I really wish it wasn’t always presented as a binary choice. I’m not convinced that we can’t be both less wasteful and more productive. Like genetically engineering plants that require fewer pesticides and less tilling. But I guess that’s just the Wizard view.
- huetius 5y agoI mostly agree with the article, but the devil is in the details. Just as there are good and bad technological applications, there are good and bad ways to decrease consumption.