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There were a lot of words here to simply fall back on the argument that innovation will solve every problem and do so before there is significant suffering. I a

There were a lot of words here to simply fall back on the argument that innovation will solve every problem and do so before there is significant suffering. I agree that life will always go on, but this idea that consumption and quality of life can do nothing but rise when it is so dependent on the limited cheap energy and resources that we only learned to exploit a century ago is insanity to me. Our ever increasing population and consumption will cause the price of energy and materials to increase as the low-hanging fruit is picked. It won't be the end of the world, but we will all be poorer and there will be suffering while we adjust. I too hope for some near free energy and material source to appear somehow and prevent this, but I struggle to see how you could blindly expect this to occur, not even entertaining the thought that even if such an innovation exists, we might not be able to discover it before the consequences of our current behavior sets in.

verisimi 5y ago
Perhaps we should petition the governance structure to create a maximum threshold of 10 million dollars per person. Sure, billionares will lose much of their wealth, and will try to hide in off shore funds (even more so than they do at present) but we can legislate for this and de-anonymise the wealth. We would then collapse those off shore legal structures, allocate the wealth to individuals, and apply the 10m limit. It wouldn't be that difficult, it would leave everyone with plenty of wealth, and is a simple answer. PS - I don't think this is the right answer. But then how can the answer to the environmental issues be to socialise the risks and expenses across all the population, while allowing the owners of the corporations that have exploited the world's resources for profit get keep and hide their immorally-gained wealth?
- skywal_l 5y ago
  Over-utilization of resources and inequalities are two related but distinct problems. Reducing inequalities will typically means more consumption and resources utilization. Those two problems must be solved but solving one will probably amplify the other.
  - verisimi 5y ago
    yes - I'm really making the point that all these privately held funds and wealth that are ultimately owned by some people never seem to be part of the potential answer! Its always about socialising the risk and expense on to the shoulders of the masses - who have the least power or wealth! Funny that.
  - f1yght 5y ago
    Conversely, could we not push to reduce consumption for the sake of reducing resource usage? There's a ton of waste from mass consumption.
  - teknopaul 5y ago
    Not sure I like the term "over-utilization" it's more likely over-consumption and under-utilización. The industrial revolution was arguably a by-product of huge amounts of wealth in the hands of a few. Efficiencies of scale may exist, but are not dependant on equal or inequal distribution of benefit. Seems to me historically rich people/nations have consumed more natural resources, often taking them from other people/nations, focusing not on global wealth creation but on moving resources in, at the expense of global wealth. On a global scale, inequality seems to have led to more consumption and destruction of someone else's long term resources. Equality seems to lead to more resource preservation, thus better utilización. Inequality is the result of thinking about yourself at the expense of others, equality is the result of thinking about others, and those targeting equality are likely to include future generations in their definition of "others" and thus more efficient/conservation use of long term resources. Interested to see any stats to back up the assertion that "reducing inequalities typically means more consumption" on a global scale.
- simonh 5y ago
  Most of the wealth of billionaires is not cash, it’s locked up in their ownership of the companies they control. Elon Musk for example has 99% of his wealth in shares in Tesla, SpaceX etc. The only way to take that off him is to take those companies away and give control of them to someone else. It’s the same for Warren Buffett, the vast majority of his wealth is in ownership and control via BH. He sells some of that to fund his lifestyle and philanthropic efforts, but taking away his control basically means breaking up BH and selling off all it’s assets and management structures to fund the tax/confiscation bill. It's the same for almost all the wealthy. Even for the conventionally wealthy, much of their wealth is in investments, so all those bonds and shares get taken and go where? Who manages them? Who makes investment decisions down the line? The current entire investment community can't, they've just had most of their assets taken away. So what you're talking about is the dismantlement of the ownership and management structures of huge swathes of the economy and what? Handing it over to who, civil servants? It would of course also make it impossible for anyone to start a company and grow it to becoming large and successful, because as soon as it became significant, the founders would have ownership and therefore control taken away from them.
  - verisimi 5y ago
    > Most of the wealth of billionaires is not cash, it’s locked up in their ownership of the companies they control. Elon Musk for example has 99% of his wealth in shares in Tesla, SpaceX etc. Yes. But its possible to allocate a value to these assets. The point I'm making is that it if we are trying to find a solution to these problems, the easiest one would be to take the billions in wealth - more wealth that can be spent in hundreds of lifetimes - away from the people who hold it and redistribute it to those who don't. This doesn't seem to be under consideration, but this is because it doesn't suit those that run corporations and governments - the elite aren't planning to shoot themselves in the foot. As I said elsewhere, I don't think this is actually a valid solution. I only mention this as an equally invalid solution - putting the cost onto the population in general, ie the comparatively poor - is actively being implemented. Despite the obvious unfairness and greater complexity - the implementation of a technocratic system that allocates energy and resources. So the new system is also insane and will be harder 99.9999% of the world's population, but does allow the billionaires to keep their comfort. Which of these 2 insane options is better in your opinion?
- valenterry 5y ago
  10M dollars cash? No problem, rich folks will just buy other assets and use them to trade. If you mean 10M assets, then you will now have to estimate the value for a lot of things, including stocks. It will also take motivation away from founders and investors - why they take a big risk if they have an upper limit of roi? I agree that the current inequality is a big problem, but your solution is certainly not a "simple answer" unless you accept potential decline of quality of life for everyone.
  - oblio 5y ago
    > why they take a big risk if they have an upper limit of roi? Power? Influence? Popularity?
    - valenterry 5y ago
      You don't get much power if you only end up owning only small part of the business in the end - same for influence compared to now. Popularity, well maybe. But I think it's only a part of what motivates people today.
- volatilecarbon 5y ago
  I'd much rather see public investment in projects that will make the world livable once energy and resources are no longer cheap. Rail transportation in particular. Every car a person is not required to own to live in America would save them ~$10,000 a year in costs today. When cars and gas are more expensive, they'll save even more. Those savings might even save them from losing their home or going hungry if things get bad. In particular, I look at suburban areas with no stores or workplaces for miles, where the only transport option is the car, and I struggle to see how they won't become blighted slums (like what Detroit's became as it shrank) when gas and cars are too expensive for the average person to afford.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    > Rail transportation in particular. ahem bus rapid transit
    - f1yght 5y ago
      BRT is still reliant on using roads that cars are on and even if it were electric, requires recharging (Unless it's on a wire). So rail in this instance makes more sense as you get cars out of the way and you wouldn't need to charge it. If it's on a guided wire might as well make it a rail.
      - TuringTest 5y ago
        The infrastructure for railways is considerably more expensive to build than a BRT, even with the dedicated lanes required for it to be fast. A middle ground are light rail and tram, but those tend to be slower than a bus based-BRT system as the cheap rails don't support speeds as fast as a metro or railway.
      - fennecfoxen 5y ago
        > BRT is still reliant on using roads that cars are on no no no no NO. The whole point of it being Bus Rapid Transit (as opposed to just a series of buses) is that it ISN'T just using the same roads that cars are on.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Why not just implement a damn negative interest rate on cash and a land value tax on land? In fact, it is quite amusing to see capitalists talk about free markets when the currencies they use quite literally exist to prevent free markets from forming. A precious metal currency is a tool for maintaining power with the aristocracy. Perpetual land ownership is effectively the same. Feudalism ended by giving everyone the freedom to become a feudalist, that's capitalism. It works much better but how about we stop the concentration of power for good? When you are rich, you have the option of investing or lending. If you lend, then someone else must invest on your behalf. When you think about it, lending simply shifts all the risk of an investment onto the borrower. In an increasingly saturated economy, which the author of the original article doesn't even recognize as a thing, most investments are unable break even. The risk adjusted return of an investment is negative but you, the lender, can always pull out your money as cash to get guaranteed 0%, this threat makes banks unwilling to lower their interest rate below 0%. Banks stop lending to risky lenders. Saved money is no longer circulating in the economy. Deflation/low inflation sets in. If the government does nothing or austerity, then you get a great depression very soon. If the government does something, then it must act as the borrower of last resort, who is creating artificial demand for capital. If I had to describe QE it is actually as if the government created a state operated investment fund for government bonds that is exclusively accessible to banks. It's not really money printing. It's a weird ass way of letting banks find a solvent borrower of last resort. When you deposit money on your bank account, the bank doesn't know when you are going to spend it. A bank reserve created by QE is just as liquid as money so it does the job. You can spend your money instantly and no bank is going to care. They can just shrug off the fact that they are lending out deposits that can be spent instantly for 30 years. This is still better than doing nothing. For all we know, the money could be spent on climate change or whatever. However, it would be better to address the problem at its root and just tell the rich to get lost by no longer guaranteeing automatic capital accumulation and free capital preservation.
kiba 5y ago
Our ever increasing population and consumption will cause the price of energy and materials to increase as the low-hanging fruit is picked. It won't be the end of the world, but we will all be poorer and there will be suffering while we adjust. I too hope for some near free energy and material source to appear somehow and prevent this, but I struggle to see how you could blindly expect this to occur, not even entertaining the thought that even if such an innovation exists, we might not be able to discover it before the consequences of our current behavior sets in. We'll heat ourselves to death before we'll run out of resources and energy, because humans are 100 watts space heater. The problem is not about the amount of energy but the side effect of pollution.
- Majestic121 5y ago
  I don't understand the causality link you establish : "because human are 100 watts space heater". Are you saying that because humans produce heat, running out of resources is not really a problem?
evrydayhustling 5y ago
Yeah, although the author is excited about new knowledge, he is ignoring our growing knowledge about toxicity and the costs of disrupting ecosystem resources, as well as the compounding expenses of maintaining a high standard of living at greater population density. You can be optimistic about the long arc of human progress and still realistic about our ability to take catastrophic steps backwards.
- teknopaul 5y ago
  It's interesting that it's easy to spot nonsense by how it's written before you get to something that's wrong. Rich/knowledgeable people can benefit from fission but poorer people are still dependant on simpler resources such as rain fall and fertile soil. We're he correct, we wouldn't see increased poverty right now. But we do. Knowledge itself is not equally distributed, just as resources aren't. Be good if countries relied on their own resources, protected shared resources, and shared knowledge. It's impirically incorrect to presume that some people having knowledge of how to effectively use resources is sufficient to end poverty for others. People are still looking after themselves at the expense of shared (or imported) resources. We see basic resources depleted. We are in a boom of misinformation vs knowledge expansion. It's odd that people think "we understand/we have the knowledge" when they themselves don't.
- throwaway6532 5y ago
  >You can be optimistic about the long arc of human progress and still realistic about our ability to take catastrophic steps backwards This is the line I'm straddling at the moment. If you're not realistic about our ability to take a catastrophic step backwards you'll always just see things as "business as usual" until "business as very unusual" hits. I find it interesting to research technologies and methods that are potentials for replacing our unsustainable practices and some of what I learn gives me hope, but it's super naive to pin your hopes on "business as usual" continuing based on all of that panning out before the current system is pushed outside its safe operating envelope for too long and non-linear behavior kicks in.
pfdietz 5y ago
What he is pointing out is the long history of doomsaying being wrong, because it implicitly depends on the assumption that technology has reached its peak and cannot further improve. To get a real doomsaying argument, you have to base it not on details of current technology, but on hard physical limits that no technological improvement can evade. And it's really tough to do that. The population limit for Earth based on pure thermodynamics is somewhere around 1 trillion people. > Our ever increasing population and consumption will cause the price of energy and materials to increase as the low-hanging fruit is picked. This appears to be wrong. Population growth is inexorably declining, and with renewables charging hard energy prices are going to be declining, not increasing.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  The question is not "if" but "when". Sure renewables are becoming bigger every day but will we have enough of them before getting into climate catastrophe ? That's the question...
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    We're almost surely going to have substantial warming. But it's a stretch to go from that to doom. We may end up seeing albedo modification as a stopgap.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      Beyond the warming, the consequences of climate change are very real. Hurricanes that used to be the feat of a decade are now an over-yearly occurrence. Beyond climate change, the consequences of pollution are very real. Many water sources can't be drunk anymore, and the agro industry is killing bees/insects (necessary for vegetal life) on a wide scale and depleting the soil of its water/nutrients turning it slowly into a desert. Extinction is far off, but "doom" is a very likely outcome at this point given that no government is doing anything, besides advocating for "green growth" which is the opposite of what ecologists have been preaching for decades (green degrowth).
slothtrop 5y ago
Population is projected to level out, so it's a moot point. We're facing a crucial need specifically for curbing emissions in the short-run, but we're unlikely to too rapidly exploit resources by virtue that growth in demand will stall and efficiency will continue to improve. Incidentally that can be a catalyst for change in the way society functions. The significant choice facing us is determining the path we take towards post-scarcity and nil GDP growth, because it's happening one way or another.
- teknopaul 5y ago
  Don't forget that GDP can go down. And so can wealth. Ukraine just had a trillion dollars worth of growth bombed out of existance. Coal isn't the only resource that can go up in smoke.
  - slothtrop 5y ago
    Historically those stagnant periods of low economic growth were usually broken up with violent strife. It can happen again of course, but does not seem likely (atm) on a significant scale. If we assume we're not all going to be bombed out of existence, then the question is whether most of us are going to be holding up empty bags when the stagnation sets in.
- throwaway6532 5y ago
  >Population is projected to level out, so it's a moot point. Is it projected to level out or to decline? Because birth rates below replacement indicate decline, not leveling out.
benstrumental 5y ago
>Our ever increasing population and consumption will cause the price of energy and materials to increase as the low-hanging fruit is picked. Not only are we picking the low-hanging fruit in energy production, but we're picking it at a temporarily discounted cost (with carbon emissions not being priced in) at the expense of our future selves and future generations.
silicon2401 5y ago
> I struggle to see how you could blindly expect this to occur, not even entertaining the thought that even if such an innovation exists, we might not be able to discover it before the consequences of our current behavior sets in. People believe what's convenient. It's inconvenient to be realistic and accept that we're heading in a bad direction (because then we all have to sacrifice comforts). Rome and its way of life fell, the British Empire and its way of life fell, and one day our global consumerist society and its way of life will fall too
- throwaway6532 5y ago
  Don't forget how the bronze age ended.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    With the widespread adoption of Naue Type II bronze cutting/thrusting swords and organized infantry that rendered centralized chariot armies -- and the societies that depended on them for defense -- obsolete.
    - throwaway6532 4y ago
      I mean I was going with drought, famine, civil unrest and the sea peoples, but sure.
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        There was a book published not too long ago, by Eric Cline, titled "1177: The Year Civilization Collapsed", about the Late Bronze Age Collapse. I initially liked this book. But I eventually came to the conclusion that it didn't really explain anything and concocted an overly elaborate framework that did more to obscure what happened than to clarify. It felt like that old joke about philosophy, the field where "one kicks up a lot of dust then complains one can't see anything." It ended up being so complex that it's not falsifiable. I was much happier with the narrative in another book, "The End of the Bronze Age", by Robert Drews. Drews presents the military-technological explanation. It's simpler and it just seems to fit better. It also explains why social organization in the Iron Age was so different from the Bronze Age.
cupofpython 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines We about to get some new entries
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Why? Are you referring to consequences of the war in Ukraine, where about 1% of global grain production may be at risk?
Longlius 5y ago
>Our ever-increasing population Even the most optimistic projections put the world population peaking well before 2100. Growth has slowed considerably and will likely continue to slow even more as worldwide economic malaise puts further pressure on birth rates (especially since the developing world is urbanizing and urbanization is correlated with a decline in births per woman).
- throwaway6532 5y ago
  What say your population of young people halved every generation for three generations. Would your city or country have enough people to keep it functioning given the level of specialization required for the level of complexity it is based on?

verisimi 5y ago

Perhaps we should petition the governance structure to create a maximum threshold of 10 million dollars per person. Sure, billionares will lose much of their wealth, and will try to hide in off shore funds (even more so than they do at present) but we can legislate for this and de-anonymise the wealth. We would then collapse those off shore legal structures, allocate the wealth to individuals, and apply the 10m limit. It wouldn't be that difficult, it would leave everyone with plenty of wealth, and is a simple answer. PS - I don't think this is the right answer. But then how can the answer to the environmental issues be to socialise the risks and expenses across all the population, while allowing the owners of the corporations that have exploited the world's resources for profit get keep and hide their immorally-gained wealth?

skywal_l 5y ago
Over-utilization of resources and inequalities are two related but distinct problems. Reducing inequalities will typically means more consumption and resources utilization. Those two problems must be solved but solving one will probably amplify the other.
- verisimi 5y ago
  yes - I'm really making the point that all these privately held funds and wealth that are ultimately owned by some people never seem to be part of the potential answer! Its always about socialising the risk and expense on to the shoulders of the masses - who have the least power or wealth! Funny that.
- f1yght 5y ago
  Conversely, could we not push to reduce consumption for the sake of reducing resource usage? There's a ton of waste from mass consumption.
- teknopaul 5y ago
  Not sure I like the term "over-utilization" it's more likely over-consumption and under-utilización. The industrial revolution was arguably a by-product of huge amounts of wealth in the hands of a few. Efficiencies of scale may exist, but are not dependant on equal or inequal distribution of benefit. Seems to me historically rich people/nations have consumed more natural resources, often taking them from other people/nations, focusing not on global wealth creation but on moving resources in, at the expense of global wealth. On a global scale, inequality seems to have led to more consumption and destruction of someone else's long term resources. Equality seems to lead to more resource preservation, thus better utilización. Inequality is the result of thinking about yourself at the expense of others, equality is the result of thinking about others, and those targeting equality are likely to include future generations in their definition of "others" and thus more efficient/conservation use of long term resources. Interested to see any stats to back up the assertion that "reducing inequalities typically means more consumption" on a global scale.
simonh 5y ago
Most of the wealth of billionaires is not cash, it’s locked up in their ownership of the companies they control. Elon Musk for example has 99% of his wealth in shares in Tesla, SpaceX etc. The only way to take that off him is to take those companies away and give control of them to someone else. It’s the same for Warren Buffett, the vast majority of his wealth is in ownership and control via BH. He sells some of that to fund his lifestyle and philanthropic efforts, but taking away his control basically means breaking up BH and selling off all it’s assets and management structures to fund the tax/confiscation bill. It's the same for almost all the wealthy. Even for the conventionally wealthy, much of their wealth is in investments, so all those bonds and shares get taken and go where? Who manages them? Who makes investment decisions down the line? The current entire investment community can't, they've just had most of their assets taken away. So what you're talking about is the dismantlement of the ownership and management structures of huge swathes of the economy and what? Handing it over to who, civil servants? It would of course also make it impossible for anyone to start a company and grow it to becoming large and successful, because as soon as it became significant, the founders would have ownership and therefore control taken away from them.
- verisimi 5y ago
  > Most of the wealth of billionaires is not cash, it’s locked up in their ownership of the companies they control. Elon Musk for example has 99% of his wealth in shares in Tesla, SpaceX etc. Yes. But its possible to allocate a value to these assets. The point I'm making is that it if we are trying to find a solution to these problems, the easiest one would be to take the billions in wealth - more wealth that can be spent in hundreds of lifetimes - away from the people who hold it and redistribute it to those who don't. This doesn't seem to be under consideration, but this is because it doesn't suit those that run corporations and governments - the elite aren't planning to shoot themselves in the foot. As I said elsewhere, I don't think this is actually a valid solution. I only mention this as an equally invalid solution - putting the cost onto the population in general, ie the comparatively poor - is actively being implemented. Despite the obvious unfairness and greater complexity - the implementation of a technocratic system that allocates energy and resources. So the new system is also insane and will be harder 99.9999% of the world's population, but does allow the billionaires to keep their comfort. Which of these 2 insane options is better in your opinion?
valenterry 5y ago
10M dollars cash? No problem, rich folks will just buy other assets and use them to trade. If you mean 10M assets, then you will now have to estimate the value for a lot of things, including stocks. It will also take motivation away from founders and investors - why they take a big risk if they have an upper limit of roi? I agree that the current inequality is a big problem, but your solution is certainly not a "simple answer" unless you accept potential decline of quality of life for everyone.
- oblio 5y ago
  > why they take a big risk if they have an upper limit of roi? Power? Influence? Popularity?
  - valenterry 5y ago
    You don't get much power if you only end up owning only small part of the business in the end - same for influence compared to now. Popularity, well maybe. But I think it's only a part of what motivates people today.
volatilecarbon 5y ago
I'd much rather see public investment in projects that will make the world livable once energy and resources are no longer cheap. Rail transportation in particular. Every car a person is not required to own to live in America would save them ~$10,000 a year in costs today. When cars and gas are more expensive, they'll save even more. Those savings might even save them from losing their home or going hungry if things get bad. In particular, I look at suburban areas with no stores or workplaces for miles, where the only transport option is the car, and I struggle to see how they won't become blighted slums (like what Detroit's became as it shrank) when gas and cars are too expensive for the average person to afford.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  > Rail transportation in particular. ahem bus rapid transit
  - f1yght 5y ago
    BRT is still reliant on using roads that cars are on and even if it were electric, requires recharging (Unless it's on a wire). So rail in this instance makes more sense as you get cars out of the way and you wouldn't need to charge it. If it's on a guided wire might as well make it a rail.
    - TuringTest 5y ago
      The infrastructure for railways is considerably more expensive to build than a BRT, even with the dedicated lanes required for it to be fast. A middle ground are light rail and tram, but those tend to be slower than a bus based-BRT system as the cheap rails don't support speeds as fast as a metro or railway.
    - fennecfoxen 5y ago
      > BRT is still reliant on using roads that cars are on no no no no NO. The whole point of it being Bus Rapid Transit (as opposed to just a series of buses) is that it ISN'T just using the same roads that cars are on.
imtringued 5y ago
Why not just implement a damn negative interest rate on cash and a land value tax on land? In fact, it is quite amusing to see capitalists talk about free markets when the currencies they use quite literally exist to prevent free markets from forming. A precious metal currency is a tool for maintaining power with the aristocracy. Perpetual land ownership is effectively the same. Feudalism ended by giving everyone the freedom to become a feudalist, that's capitalism. It works much better but how about we stop the concentration of power for good? When you are rich, you have the option of investing or lending. If you lend, then someone else must invest on your behalf. When you think about it, lending simply shifts all the risk of an investment onto the borrower. In an increasingly saturated economy, which the author of the original article doesn't even recognize as a thing, most investments are unable break even. The risk adjusted return of an investment is negative but you, the lender, can always pull out your money as cash to get guaranteed 0%, this threat makes banks unwilling to lower their interest rate below 0%. Banks stop lending to risky lenders. Saved money is no longer circulating in the economy. Deflation/low inflation sets in. If the government does nothing or austerity, then you get a great depression very soon. If the government does something, then it must act as the borrower of last resort, who is creating artificial demand for capital. If I had to describe QE it is actually as if the government created a state operated investment fund for government bonds that is exclusively accessible to banks. It's not really money printing. It's a weird ass way of letting banks find a solvent borrower of last resort. When you deposit money on your bank account, the bank doesn't know when you are going to spend it. A bank reserve created by QE is just as liquid as money so it does the job. You can spend your money instantly and no bank is going to care. They can just shrug off the fact that they are lending out deposits that can be spent instantly for 30 years. This is still better than doing nothing. For all we know, the money could be spent on climate change or whatever. However, it would be better to address the problem at its root and just tell the rich to get lost by no longer guaranteeing automatic capital accumulation and free capital preservation.

kiba 5y ago

Our ever increasing population and consumption will cause the price of energy and materials to increase as the low-hanging fruit is picked. It won't be the end of the world, but we will all be poorer and there will be suffering while we adjust. I too hope for some near free energy and material source to appear somehow and prevent this, but I struggle to see how you could blindly expect this to occur, not even entertaining the thought that even if such an innovation exists, we might not be able to discover it before the consequences of our current behavior sets in. We'll heat ourselves to death before we'll run out of resources and energy, because humans are 100 watts space heater. The problem is not about the amount of energy but the side effect of pollution.

Majestic121 5y ago
I don't understand the causality link you establish : "because human are 100 watts space heater". Are you saying that because humans produce heat, running out of resources is not really a problem?

evrydayhustling 5y ago

Yeah, although the author is excited about new knowledge, he is ignoring our growing knowledge about toxicity and the costs of disrupting ecosystem resources, as well as the compounding expenses of maintaining a high standard of living at greater population density. You can be optimistic about the long arc of human progress and still realistic about our ability to take catastrophic steps backwards.

teknopaul 5y ago
It's interesting that it's easy to spot nonsense by how it's written before you get to something that's wrong. Rich/knowledgeable people can benefit from fission but poorer people are still dependant on simpler resources such as rain fall and fertile soil. We're he correct, we wouldn't see increased poverty right now. But we do. Knowledge itself is not equally distributed, just as resources aren't. Be good if countries relied on their own resources, protected shared resources, and shared knowledge. It's impirically incorrect to presume that some people having knowledge of how to effectively use resources is sufficient to end poverty for others. People are still looking after themselves at the expense of shared (or imported) resources. We see basic resources depleted. We are in a boom of misinformation vs knowledge expansion. It's odd that people think "we understand/we have the knowledge" when they themselves don't.
throwaway6532 5y ago
>You can be optimistic about the long arc of human progress and still realistic about our ability to take catastrophic steps backwards This is the line I'm straddling at the moment. If you're not realistic about our ability to take a catastrophic step backwards you'll always just see things as "business as usual" until "business as very unusual" hits. I find it interesting to research technologies and methods that are potentials for replacing our unsustainable practices and some of what I learn gives me hope, but it's super naive to pin your hopes on "business as usual" continuing based on all of that panning out before the current system is pushed outside its safe operating envelope for too long and non-linear behavior kicks in.

pfdietz 5y ago

What he is pointing out is the long history of doomsaying being wrong, because it implicitly depends on the assumption that technology has reached its peak and cannot further improve. To get a real doomsaying argument, you have to base it not on details of current technology, but on hard physical limits that no technological improvement can evade. And it's really tough to do that. The population limit for Earth based on pure thermodynamics is somewhere around 1 trillion people. > Our ever increasing population and consumption will cause the price of energy and materials to increase as the low-hanging fruit is picked. This appears to be wrong. Population growth is inexorably declining, and with renewables charging hard energy prices are going to be declining, not increasing.

wiz21c 5y ago
The question is not "if" but "when". Sure renewables are becoming bigger every day but will we have enough of them before getting into climate catastrophe ? That's the question...
- pfdietz 5y ago
  We're almost surely going to have substantial warming. But it's a stretch to go from that to doom. We may end up seeing albedo modification as a stopgap.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Beyond the warming, the consequences of climate change are very real. Hurricanes that used to be the feat of a decade are now an over-yearly occurrence. Beyond climate change, the consequences of pollution are very real. Many water sources can't be drunk anymore, and the agro industry is killing bees/insects (necessary for vegetal life) on a wide scale and depleting the soil of its water/nutrients turning it slowly into a desert. Extinction is far off, but "doom" is a very likely outcome at this point given that no government is doing anything, besides advocating for "green growth" which is the opposite of what ecologists have been preaching for decades (green degrowth).

slothtrop 5y ago

Population is projected to level out, so it's a moot point. We're facing a crucial need specifically for curbing emissions in the short-run, but we're unlikely to too rapidly exploit resources by virtue that growth in demand will stall and efficiency will continue to improve. Incidentally that can be a catalyst for change in the way society functions. The significant choice facing us is determining the path we take towards post-scarcity and nil GDP growth, because it's happening one way or another.

teknopaul 5y ago
Don't forget that GDP can go down. And so can wealth. Ukraine just had a trillion dollars worth of growth bombed out of existance. Coal isn't the only resource that can go up in smoke.
- slothtrop 5y ago
  Historically those stagnant periods of low economic growth were usually broken up with violent strife. It can happen again of course, but does not seem likely (atm) on a significant scale. If we assume we're not all going to be bombed out of existence, then the question is whether most of us are going to be holding up empty bags when the stagnation sets in.
throwaway6532 5y ago
>Population is projected to level out, so it's a moot point. Is it projected to level out or to decline? Because birth rates below replacement indicate decline, not leveling out.

benstrumental 5y ago

>Our ever increasing population and consumption will cause the price of energy and materials to increase as the low-hanging fruit is picked. Not only are we picking the low-hanging fruit in energy production, but we're picking it at a temporarily discounted cost (with carbon emissions not being priced in) at the expense of our future selves and future generations.

silicon2401 5y ago

> I struggle to see how you could blindly expect this to occur, not even entertaining the thought that even if such an innovation exists, we might not be able to discover it before the consequences of our current behavior sets in. People believe what's convenient. It's inconvenient to be realistic and accept that we're heading in a bad direction (because then we all have to sacrifice comforts). Rome and its way of life fell, the British Empire and its way of life fell, and one day our global consumerist society and its way of life will fall too

throwaway6532 5y ago
Don't forget how the bronze age ended.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  With the widespread adoption of Naue Type II bronze cutting/thrusting swords and organized infantry that rendered centralized chariot armies -- and the societies that depended on them for defense -- obsolete.
  - throwaway6532 4y ago
    I mean I was going with drought, famine, civil unrest and the sea peoples, but sure.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      There was a book published not too long ago, by Eric Cline, titled "1177: The Year Civilization Collapsed", about the Late Bronze Age Collapse. I initially liked this book. But I eventually came to the conclusion that it didn't really explain anything and concocted an overly elaborate framework that did more to obscure what happened than to clarify. It felt like that old joke about philosophy, the field where "one kicks up a lot of dust then complains one can't see anything." It ended up being so complex that it's not falsifiable. I was much happier with the narrative in another book, "The End of the Bronze Age", by Robert Drews. Drews presents the military-technological explanation. It's simpler and it just seems to fit better. It also explains why social organization in the Iron Age was so different from the Bronze Age.

cupofpython 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines We about to get some new entries

pfdietz 4y ago
Why? Are you referring to consequences of the war in Ukraine, where about 1% of global grain production may be at risk?

Longlius 5y ago

>Our ever-increasing population Even the most optimistic projections put the world population peaking well before 2100. Growth has slowed considerably and will likely continue to slow even more as worldwide economic malaise puts further pressure on birth rates (especially since the developing world is urbanizing and urbanization is correlated with a decline in births per woman).

throwaway6532 5y ago
What say your population of young people halved every generation for three generations. Would your city or country have enough people to keep it functioning given the level of specialization required for the level of complexity it is based on?