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Some people think it's worth redefining society to protect the environment. I wouldn't agree with that absolutely either, but it's a logical and defensible posi

Some people think it's worth redefining society to protect the environment. I wouldn't agree with that absolutely either, but it's a logical and defensible position. It's not incoherent.

pyronik19 5y ago
The problem is there position is completely irrational when you take the amount of damage down to standards of living to the negligible environmental damage done from PV panels. It's almost like the goal is to maximize human misery not minimize environmental damage.
stickfigure 5y ago
Wholly impractical solutions are not defensible.
roenxi 5y ago
"The position is coherent" is a devastatingly low bar for the table stakes or redefining society that radically.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  I also don't think it's particularly coherent. Reversing economic development in many places might actually push populations back into less sustainable modes of managing/interacting with their local environments.
  - parineum 5y ago
    Or dying.
ch4s3 5y ago
It doesn't seem particularly coherent to me for a few reasons. To draw a hard line between human activity/habitat and nature seems artificial. A human settlement is not so different from a beaver dam of ant colony in many ways. The idea especially in the US that there is some pre-colonial unspoiled nature that we could preserve or return to seems historically ignorant. Native Americans were managing the land with fire in much of North America for at least 15k years and the whole place was a giant game park with archipelagos of agriculture and settlements. Early settlers remarked that upon arrival they could ride a horse through New England forests at a full gallop, which wouldn't be possible in a primeval/unmanaged forest. So redefining society away form managing nature would be a radical departure and it unclear what the end goal would even be. There is nothing to roll the clock back to really anywhere in the world, and even if you "re-wild" a lot of the continent it's not clear what you would get, it certainly wouldn't resemble the Americas of 1491 ecologically. Mostly these folks seem like neo-malthusians who just hate people and civilization. I'm all for increasing bio-diversity, pulling carbon out of the air, and cleaning up waste but I don't think any of that requires us to use drastically less energy. If anything we should aim to make energy so clean and cheap that those other things become cheap and easy.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > The idea especially in the US that there is some pre-colonial unspoiled nature that we could preserve or return to seems historically ignorant. Who are you replying to here? Who's argued this?
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    The point I'm making is that there's a certain type of activist who believes these kinds o things, and they're arguing for things like reduction of per-capita energy use to reduce society's impact on the land based on the idea that there was ever really land here that wasn't actively managed by people. (At least since the glaciers receded) I'm making the case that these neo-malthusians want to protect an imagined environment of the past that didn't exist. There are certainly things we're doing that are environmentally negative form the perspective of biodiversity, CO2, local water tables, etc but I don't think fixing those things necessarily means using less energy, or having a lower standard of living.
    - XorNot 5y ago
      A huge chunk of this thinking is ultimately the puritan moral code writ large. US-society in particular believes all good things must somehow involve suffering or sacrifice: so "fixing" environmental damage must involve making a sacrifice, and if it's not a constant one you "feel" then how can it be solution? This also goes the other way: the sacrifice of the environment or air pollution or waterways of whatever is the obvious price that must be paid for luxury amenities.
      - ch4s3 5y ago
        I’m never really convinced of that the puritans were so profoundly influential on modern American habits. They were a relatively small group relative to the whole effort of colonization and almost everyone else thought they were crazy. Even their own children, as evidenced by the Half Way Compromise. Notwithstanding I see that kind of “Puritanism” among European X-RAY activists. There’s something certainty very human about it, but I think people often reach for irrational, exuberant religiosity during confusing and difficult times.

Some people think it's worth redefining society to protect the environment. I wouldn't agree with that absolutely either, but it's a logical and defensible position. It's not incoherent.

pyronik19 5y ago

The problem is there position is completely irrational when you take the amount of damage down to standards of living to the negligible environmental damage done from PV panels. It's almost like the goal is to maximize human misery not minimize environmental damage.

stickfigure 5y ago

Wholly impractical solutions are not defensible.

roenxi 5y ago

"The position is coherent" is a devastatingly low bar for the table stakes or redefining society that radically.

ch4s3 5y ago
I also don't think it's particularly coherent. Reversing economic development in many places might actually push populations back into less sustainable modes of managing/interacting with their local environments.
- parineum 5y ago
  Or dying.

ch4s3 5y ago

It doesn't seem particularly coherent to me for a few reasons. To draw a hard line between human activity/habitat and nature seems artificial. A human settlement is not so different from a beaver dam of ant colony in many ways. The idea especially in the US that there is some pre-colonial unspoiled nature that we could preserve or return to seems historically ignorant. Native Americans were managing the land with fire in much of North America for at least 15k years and the whole place was a giant game park with archipelagos of agriculture and settlements. Early settlers remarked that upon arrival they could ride a horse through New England forests at a full gallop, which wouldn't be possible in a primeval/unmanaged forest. So redefining society away form managing nature would be a radical departure and it unclear what the end goal would even be. There is nothing to roll the clock back to really anywhere in the world, and even if you "re-wild" a lot of the continent it's not clear what you would get, it certainly wouldn't resemble the Americas of 1491 ecologically. Mostly these folks seem like neo-malthusians who just hate people and civilization. I'm all for increasing bio-diversity, pulling carbon out of the air, and cleaning up waste but I don't think any of that requires us to use drastically less energy. If anything we should aim to make energy so clean and cheap that those other things become cheap and easy.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> The idea especially in the US that there is some pre-colonial unspoiled nature that we could preserve or return to seems historically ignorant. Who are you replying to here? Who's argued this?
- ch4s3 5y ago
  The point I'm making is that there's a certain type of activist who believes these kinds o things, and they're arguing for things like reduction of per-capita energy use to reduce society's impact on the land based on the idea that there was ever really land here that wasn't actively managed by people. (At least since the glaciers receded) I'm making the case that these neo-malthusians want to protect an imagined environment of the past that didn't exist. There are certainly things we're doing that are environmentally negative form the perspective of biodiversity, CO2, local water tables, etc but I don't think fixing those things necessarily means using less energy, or having a lower standard of living.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    A huge chunk of this thinking is ultimately the puritan moral code writ large. US-society in particular believes all good things must somehow involve suffering or sacrifice: so "fixing" environmental damage must involve making a sacrifice, and if it's not a constant one you "feel" then how can it be solution? This also goes the other way: the sacrifice of the environment or air pollution or waterways of whatever is the obvious price that must be paid for luxury amenities.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      I’m never really convinced of that the puritans were so profoundly influential on modern American habits. They were a relatively small group relative to the whole effort of colonization and almost everyone else thought they were crazy. Even their own children, as evidenced by the Half Way Compromise. Notwithstanding I see that kind of “Puritanism” among European X-RAY activists. There’s something certainty very human about it, but I think people often reach for irrational, exuberant religiosity during confusing and difficult times.