8 ms·

> The world is going to be much awful-er as climate change unfolds. Climate change is not being addressed seriously currently, at all. And the trend is towards

> The world is going to be much awful-er as climate change unfolds. Climate change is not being addressed seriously currently, at all. And the trend is towards it not being addressed. The world has been getting better, and continues to get better. Unfortunately, I don't have a reference to it, but I recall attending a talk that charted out some kind of measure of wealth/welfare/well-off-ness based on various climate change scenarios. The thing that stood out to me was that even on the worse climate change predictions, future generations will STILL be better off than us. Just not as better off as they would be with better climate change action. Whether or not the data used in that talk was accurate, I'm optimistic about the future, and I think it will be better, with peaks and troughs on the way there. I'm glad to have been born no earlier than I was, and would prefer to have been born later than I was! The main thing that concerns me is that it's going to be the poorest people in the world that will suffer as a result of climate change. I think that's where climate action should be directed primarily -- aimed at either preventing the great harms that will affect the poorest, or compensating them for the harms that can't be prevented, so that the harms of climate change are spread more fairly among us.

throwanapple 4y ago
Has the world also been getting better for other species we share the planet with? https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity
vlovich123 4y ago
I’m always skeptical of economic models of the present let alone the future. Past performance is not indicative of future results and all economic models have very poor prediction performance over longer terms because of this. Black swan events completely eclipse and wipe out any growth that was sustained over the longer term. If we miss something in the forecast that results in a rapid ecological collapse, then reality will look different. Additionally, a slowing down of progress is actually a worrying sign if it’s driven by pushback from our world. The reason is that even if we stopped all human CO2 emissions, climate change would continue to get worse because it takes time for the climate to stabilize. And we’re not at net 0. We’re still pumping out more each year than any other in the past and we’re just starting to level off the acceleration of that growth. My point being here that even if one or two might be slightly better, three or four might be slightly worse and the downward slope from there is significantly faster (easier to increase entropy than decrease it). The only thing that gives me the tiniest bit of hope is that two generations of progress is a significant amount of time for scientific breakthroughs. If we can really unlock our green energy production (which we can with nuclear fission today and hopefully fusion not too far off) and get our sequestration up by many orders of magnitude (which with fission and fission we could conceivably enable but there are other logistical roadblocks), then we might be able to unwind some of the damage. Some damage will be permanent obviously. Still, I think betting on that outcome is a fool’s wager. The outcome scenario of a loss is quite bad. Much better to try to arrest the damage as hard as possible now.
- GoodJokes 4y ago
chongli 4y ago
Life was much better for those in Europe who survived the black death. They lived longer, healthier lives. They were paid more due to labour shortages. By nearly every measure their lives were better off than those who lived before the plague. That is small comfort to those who suffered and died during the plague. We're in a similar boat. The winners (survivors) of the climate change disaster will be better off. But if we're to be good Rawlsians [1] then we shouldn't assume that we will be among the survivors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position
- yorwba 4y ago
  The black death is a bad analogy. At the time, population was at the upper limit that could be sustained with the technology of the time. If a farmer wanted a larger harvest, they would need to farm a larger area, denying its use to others, thus causing them to starve. Conversely, the large number of deaths directly increased the resources available to everyone else. It was a zero-sum game, with one person's loss being the other's gain, and vice versa. We no longer live in that world. Assume climate change kills off 100 million people (more than any estimate I could find), i.e. slightly more than 1% of the current world population. The resulting increase in resources per capita would be less than a single year of global GDP growth. This is very much not zero-sum. If a farmer who used to till the fields by hand switches to using a tractor, they're feeding many more people than they harm with the tractor's greenhouse gas emissions.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    > Assume climate change kills off 100 million people (more than any estimate I could find), i.e. slightly more than 1% of the current world population. The resulting increase in resources per capita would be less than a single year of global GDP growth. I presume this is highly dependent on which 100M people are killed.
    - yorwba 4y ago
      I was talking about the difference between (world resources)/(world population) and (world resources)/(world population - 100 million). Of course if you personally kill a very rich person and take their stuff, that might be a life-changing event for you, but unlike during the black death, the average person's income is not significantly derived from dead people's stuff.
29athrowaway 4y ago
> "The world has been getting better, and continues to get better." Perhaps the tiny surface of the world you interact with now has more conveniences than before, but that is very distant from a reality where things are getting better. Your perception depends on taking many factors for granted, not acknowledging we depend on multiple concurrent progress traps. If you go to the supermarket and the shelves are empty, if there's no water running through your pipes, if there's no power coming from your outlets, if there's no internet connectivity, and so on, your reality bubble will be popped. Overusing topsoil, overusing fresh water, killing all the pollinators, pumping aquifers dry, overfishing, using fossil fuels, having pollution festivals like halloween, air travel for trivial reasons, etc. We live our lives thinking the natural world will adapt to our stupid wasteful lifestyle which gets more wasteful every day. But that won't do. Everyone will have to adapt and have a lifestyle that is more sustainable, and that lifestyle will be very different to the one we have now. Every society is 3 meals away from revolution, and that revolution is coming in our lifetimes when we finish ruining the planet for ourselves. Terraforming mars won't do shit for the political instability that will unfold as a consequence of failed harvests, water exhaustion, topsoil death, etc. War for the resources that are left is inevitable as resources become scarce. Toxic optimism won't make things better. Only acknowledging problems instead of hiding them behind layers of abstraction will.
- Winsaucerer 4y ago
  > Perhaps the tiny surface of the world you interact with now has more conveniences than before, but that is very distant from a reality where things are getting better. By MANY measures, the world has been getting gradually better for just about everyone: https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit.... When we look at the facts globally, there is a clear and obvious trajectory. > Toxic optimism won't make things better. Only acknowledging problems instead of hiding them behind layers of abstraction will. Who isn't acknowledging problems? My optimism doesn't mean I think there aren't serious, present, and pressing problems (I do!). These problems must be identified, and we must take action to resolve them. I'm just optimistic that we will continue to do so, as we always have. I believe in doing the work involved, and my optimism makes me think it's worth putting in the effort, that it's worth doing the hard yards.
rob74 4y ago
> The world has been getting better, and continues to get better ...and as a result of that, the world's population has been growing and growing (and the standard of living of this population has also on average improved), which leads to more CO2 emissions, a higher consumption of finite natural resources etc. etc. Now there are two possible theories: (1) things will continue to get better, if any problems will come up along the way we will surely be able to solve them. (2) we are accelerating towards a brick wall which we can't see yet, but when we see it it will be too late to avoid the crash.
- scratcheee 4y ago
  >as a result of that, the world's population has been growing and growing At first yes, but not recently, now the opposite is true, if anything. We haven't had exponential growth since the 60s and are currently headed towards a steady state population because of improved standards of living. Turns out health and properity leads to smaller families. We do still have significant growth, but that is largely because we're filling out the older demographics in many countries, the birth rate is largely under control already, and once the current generations spread through we'll be in a stead state (around 11 billion). In fact, there's no way to _stop_ this growth now, short of killing or sterilising people, since the birthrate is already under control, we're just waiting for the last exponential generations to get old. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI Long term, we probably should encourage (slightly) sub-2 children per family to let the total population shrink, but that will take a long time (unless something disasterous happens)
  - rob74 4y ago
    Here too (as with anything) there are different opinions, all more or less scientifically founded: https://www.science.org/content/article/experts-be-damned-world-population-will-continue-rise https://www.science.org/content/article/experts-be-damned-wo...

throwanapple 4y ago

Has the world also been getting better for other species we share the planet with? https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity

vlovich123 4y ago

I’m always skeptical of economic models of the present let alone the future. Past performance is not indicative of future results and all economic models have very poor prediction performance over longer terms because of this. Black swan events completely eclipse and wipe out any growth that was sustained over the longer term. If we miss something in the forecast that results in a rapid ecological collapse, then reality will look different. Additionally, a slowing down of progress is actually a worrying sign if it’s driven by pushback from our world. The reason is that even if we stopped all human CO2 emissions, climate change would continue to get worse because it takes time for the climate to stabilize. And we’re not at net 0. We’re still pumping out more each year than any other in the past and we’re just starting to level off the acceleration of that growth. My point being here that even if one or two might be slightly better, three or four might be slightly worse and the downward slope from there is significantly faster (easier to increase entropy than decrease it). The only thing that gives me the tiniest bit of hope is that two generations of progress is a significant amount of time for scientific breakthroughs. If we can really unlock our green energy production (which we can with nuclear fission today and hopefully fusion not too far off) and get our sequestration up by many orders of magnitude (which with fission and fission we could conceivably enable but there are other logistical roadblocks), then we might be able to unwind some of the damage. Some damage will be permanent obviously. Still, I think betting on that outcome is a fool’s wager. The outcome scenario of a loss is quite bad. Much better to try to arrest the damage as hard as possible now.

GoodJokes 4y ago

chongli 4y ago

Life was much better for those in Europe who survived the black death. They lived longer, healthier lives. They were paid more due to labour shortages. By nearly every measure their lives were better off than those who lived before the plague. That is small comfort to those who suffered and died during the plague. We're in a similar boat. The winners (survivors) of the climate change disaster will be better off. But if we're to be good Rawlsians [1] then we shouldn't assume that we will be among the survivors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

yorwba 4y ago
The black death is a bad analogy. At the time, population was at the upper limit that could be sustained with the technology of the time. If a farmer wanted a larger harvest, they would need to farm a larger area, denying its use to others, thus causing them to starve. Conversely, the large number of deaths directly increased the resources available to everyone else. It was a zero-sum game, with one person's loss being the other's gain, and vice versa. We no longer live in that world. Assume climate change kills off 100 million people (more than any estimate I could find), i.e. slightly more than 1% of the current world population. The resulting increase in resources per capita would be less than a single year of global GDP growth. This is very much not zero-sum. If a farmer who used to till the fields by hand switches to using a tractor, they're feeding many more people than they harm with the tractor's greenhouse gas emissions.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > Assume climate change kills off 100 million people (more than any estimate I could find), i.e. slightly more than 1% of the current world population. The resulting increase in resources per capita would be less than a single year of global GDP growth. I presume this is highly dependent on which 100M people are killed.
  - yorwba 4y ago
    I was talking about the difference between (world resources)/(world population) and (world resources)/(world population - 100 million). Of course if you personally kill a very rich person and take their stuff, that might be a life-changing event for you, but unlike during the black death, the average person's income is not significantly derived from dead people's stuff.

29athrowaway 4y ago

> "The world has been getting better, and continues to get better." Perhaps the tiny surface of the world you interact with now has more conveniences than before, but that is very distant from a reality where things are getting better. Your perception depends on taking many factors for granted, not acknowledging we depend on multiple concurrent progress traps. If you go to the supermarket and the shelves are empty, if there's no water running through your pipes, if there's no power coming from your outlets, if there's no internet connectivity, and so on, your reality bubble will be popped. Overusing topsoil, overusing fresh water, killing all the pollinators, pumping aquifers dry, overfishing, using fossil fuels, having pollution festivals like halloween, air travel for trivial reasons, etc. We live our lives thinking the natural world will adapt to our stupid wasteful lifestyle which gets more wasteful every day. But that won't do. Everyone will have to adapt and have a lifestyle that is more sustainable, and that lifestyle will be very different to the one we have now. Every society is 3 meals away from revolution, and that revolution is coming in our lifetimes when we finish ruining the planet for ourselves. Terraforming mars won't do shit for the political instability that will unfold as a consequence of failed harvests, water exhaustion, topsoil death, etc. War for the resources that are left is inevitable as resources become scarce. Toxic optimism won't make things better. Only acknowledging problems instead of hiding them behind layers of abstraction will.

Winsaucerer 4y ago
> Perhaps the tiny surface of the world you interact with now has more conveniences than before, but that is very distant from a reality where things are getting better. By MANY measures, the world has been getting gradually better for just about everyone: https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit.... When we look at the facts globally, there is a clear and obvious trajectory. > Toxic optimism won't make things better. Only acknowledging problems instead of hiding them behind layers of abstraction will. Who isn't acknowledging problems? My optimism doesn't mean I think there aren't serious, present, and pressing problems (I do!). These problems must be identified, and we must take action to resolve them. I'm just optimistic that we will continue to do so, as we always have. I believe in doing the work involved, and my optimism makes me think it's worth putting in the effort, that it's worth doing the hard yards.

rob74 4y ago

> The world has been getting better, and continues to get better ...and as a result of that, the world's population has been growing and growing (and the standard of living of this population has also on average improved), which leads to more CO2 emissions, a higher consumption of finite natural resources etc. etc. Now there are two possible theories: (1) things will continue to get better, if any problems will come up along the way we will surely be able to solve them. (2) we are accelerating towards a brick wall which we can't see yet, but when we see it it will be too late to avoid the crash.

scratcheee 4y ago
>as a result of that, the world's population has been growing and growing At first yes, but not recently, now the opposite is true, if anything. We haven't had exponential growth since the 60s and are currently headed towards a steady state population because of improved standards of living. Turns out health and properity leads to smaller families. We do still have significant growth, but that is largely because we're filling out the older demographics in many countries, the birth rate is largely under control already, and once the current generations spread through we'll be in a stead state (around 11 billion). In fact, there's no way to _stop_ this growth now, short of killing or sterilising people, since the birthrate is already under control, we're just waiting for the last exponential generations to get old. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI Long term, we probably should encourage (slightly) sub-2 children per family to let the total population shrink, but that will take a long time (unless something disasterous happens)
- rob74 4y ago
  Here too (as with anything) there are different opinions, all more or less scientifically founded: https://www.science.org/content/article/experts-be-damned-world-population-will-continue-rise https://www.science.org/content/article/experts-be-damned-wo...