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This is super interesting, let's continue the conversation: population increase is a big factor driving energy consumption (and garbage emissions) indeed. Let's

This is super interesting, let's continue the conversation: population increase is a big factor driving energy consumption (and garbage emissions) indeed. Let's assume we have GLOBAL STAGNANT POPULATION GROWTH from today on. So we stay at 7 billion, no problem (this is of course wrong, nicest estimates say we'll stabilise around 9 billion). The 2 questions now are: 1) what allowed us to reach this amount of population? 2) can this amount of population remain stable with the current inputs given to the system or not? My two answers: 1) Energy. Abundant energy is what allowed population to reach such heights (x7 in 200 years). In a nutshell it did so by enabling us to get abundant resources, food, medicine and comfort, the first stages of Maslow basically. It did so at scales that would have defied imagination in previous centuries. 2) There are two possible answers here: - Yes, it is sustainable, meaning we don't deplete earth's resources faster than they renew themselves, situation which will get better with the improvement of technology and will compensate for more and more people getting into the middle class (i.e. more consumers). - No, it is not sustainable, meaning we are depleting earth's resources faster than they renew themselves, and this situation will get worse with more and more people accessing the middle class (or worse: higher classes) and so the population will collapse at some point due to shortages of food/pandemics/wars etc. Data to help answer the questions: - all serious scientific reports (IPCC, https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound... and others) say that we are currently depleting earth's resources much faster than it can renew them and destabilising many natural systems like climate/life etc to irreversible points - the average american currently emits 16 tons of CO2/year, the average human emits 4 tons/year, we need to get to under 2 tons/year to make sure the climate does not blow up too much => consequence of this: 5 billion people with a lifestyle a bit closer to the one of americans (i.e. a growing middle class) is much worse than 10 billion with the living standard of people in say, south-east asia or Africa => the living standard is much more important as a factor than the amount of people, if we get more energy with the same amount of people, we'll just keep giving more and more comfort to more and more people, trust me that energy won't stay unused on the side nicely. - Similar idea to previous point: there is a direct correlation between living standard and amount of destruction of the environment. The rich destroy the planet incredibly more than normal people, even in developped country (symbolised extremely by Brandson & friends). More and more rich/middle class people = more and more energy consumption. This factor is much more powerful than population growth. - [To be fact checked] I don't remember exactly the numbers but in the past 50 years, optimisations thanks to technology have divided the consumption of machines by 2, while emissions have been multiplied by 4 or 5: so far with what we observe, technology is not a silver bullet to reduce the problem. It is more the cause of the problem by enabling us to do always more and more, with our clumsy, human ways and therefore disrupting nature always more and more. What are your answers?

slothtrop 4y ago
We should reiterate that this is a discussion about the outcome of nuclear fusion, which if scaled up, would be poised to greatly disrupt CO2 emissions. This means that the imminent concern in the capacity of sustainability (exacerbation of climate change) is largely addressed, save for the carbon capture / cooling aspect we will want. We're depleting resources, and we're also still growing. If we're scrutinizing a future with a non-growing population, it makes no sense to assume the same level of depletion. It's a function of demand. Much of new land encroachment isn't for any novel products, it's to increase the output of meat production to satisfy demand (in South America at least, in the U.S. that land-use has not been growing). This also doesn't take into account technological innovation. > This factor is much more powerful than population growth. The rich are too few in number and they're primarily rich by virtue of everyone else's consumption. Notwithstanding that their own practices can be very damaging, it doesn't meet that scale. > It is more the cause of the problem by enabling us to do always more and more, with our clumsy, human ways and therefore disrupting nature always more and more. This is purely philosophical. There's no evidence that a zero-carbon world with improved energy efficiency would necessarily lead to environmental destruction.
- felixmeziere 4y ago
  I don't feel that you have tried to answer my questions, but let's keep pretending this is a conversation and I will react to your points. > This means that the imminent concern in the capacity of sustainability (exacerbation of climate change) is largely addressed, save for the carbon capture / cooling aspect we will want. This seems to show that you have a climate-only lens to look at the problem, even though the point that fusion would greatly disrupt CO2 emissions is 100% correct. The imminent concern is not just exacerbation of climate change. 1) This lens is incomplete because even if we completely stopped emitting CO2 right now we would still go to a destabilisation of the physical world around us due to all the other planetary boundaries being crossed https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound.... For example food supply would be disrupted by the artificialization of soils and disruption of the Phosphorus Cycle, many if not most food chains on which we depend will collapse due to the fact that we are killing or consuming most animal species, among which vital insects (the 6th mass extinction has started and is much faster than previous mass extinctions), water supply will be disrupted more and more etc. 2) It's also incomplete because it doesn't account for the other end of the problem : the depletion of ressources. Fusion means we can extract more and more resources, deeper and deeper, creating an even more unbalanced system if it's not done in a way were resources can regenerate themselves at the same rate we extract them. With what we have done every time we got additional energy so far, it is likely that getting fusion will increase pressure on planetary boundaries that are not CO2 emissions : you fix a problem by worsening the others. > it makes no sense to assume the same level of depletion. It's a function of demand. Good point. It's a function of demand, therefore it makes sense to assume the same level of depletion will increase, since more and more people will get access to middle-class (or more) lifestyle, which is the main driver of demand for resources (as opposed to population growth, which is less of a driver if it's population growth in countries without a middle class). > This also doesn't take into account technological innovation. As I said this could be a factor that helps with depleting less resources but so far we have observed the impact technology has been to dramatically increase ressource use and waste overall, not reduce them. > The rich are too few in number and they're primarily rich by virtue of everyone else's consumption. Notwithstanding that their own practices can be very damaging, it doesn't meet that scale. We are talking about middle classes here, which are massive and meant to become even more massive. It is also true that the richer you are the more you emit but that's a side phenomenon to understand why the amount of middle-class matters. > There's no evidence that a zero-carbon world with improved energy efficiency would necessarily lead to environmental destruction. Then you haven't read or studied resources like https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound... to begin with a simple/mainstream one for example, you haven't looked at the impact of mining and the orders of magnitude of resources we would need for a world where societies keep having the same behaviour as today, with just the "carbon-free" component added. Anyway this is a bet: there is no proof it would work either, and if it does not the population will completely collapse. Which way do you want to try? An organised de-growth (in terms of GDP, not total wealth if we account for the destruction of nature) were we know we can make it at the expense of less comfort and consumerism, or try to keep growing and just become net zero carbon, with the hope that we can make it, to the risk of collapsing and making the earth uninhabitable? One more resource you can look at in case you didn't know about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth#:~:text=The%20Limits%20to%20Growth%20(LTG,the%20earth%20and%20human%20systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth#:~:text=T... Being obsessed with carbon creates blindspots with respect to all the other planetary limits, our oceans are being emptied of life because of what we have done so far with abundant energy. The earth system is being destabilised in many other ways than just climate change. We need a global systemic solution, not to fix the problems one by one separately, because by doing that you will often make other problems worse by fixing one. I'm not saying we don't need more abundant energy, I'm saying we need to change our philosophy, the way we organise ourselves and what we do with it first.

slothtrop 4y ago

We should reiterate that this is a discussion about the outcome of nuclear fusion, which if scaled up, would be poised to greatly disrupt CO2 emissions. This means that the imminent concern in the capacity of sustainability (exacerbation of climate change) is largely addressed, save for the carbon capture / cooling aspect we will want. We're depleting resources, and we're also still growing. If we're scrutinizing a future with a non-growing population, it makes no sense to assume the same level of depletion. It's a function of demand. Much of new land encroachment isn't for any novel products, it's to increase the output of meat production to satisfy demand (in South America at least, in the U.S. that land-use has not been growing). This also doesn't take into account technological innovation. > This factor is much more powerful than population growth. The rich are too few in number and they're primarily rich by virtue of everyone else's consumption. Notwithstanding that their own practices can be very damaging, it doesn't meet that scale. > It is more the cause of the problem by enabling us to do always more and more, with our clumsy, human ways and therefore disrupting nature always more and more. This is purely philosophical. There's no evidence that a zero-carbon world with improved energy efficiency would necessarily lead to environmental destruction.

felixmeziere 4y ago
I don't feel that you have tried to answer my questions, but let's keep pretending this is a conversation and I will react to your points. > This means that the imminent concern in the capacity of sustainability (exacerbation of climate change) is largely addressed, save for the carbon capture / cooling aspect we will want. This seems to show that you have a climate-only lens to look at the problem, even though the point that fusion would greatly disrupt CO2 emissions is 100% correct. The imminent concern is not just exacerbation of climate change. 1) This lens is incomplete because even if we completely stopped emitting CO2 right now we would still go to a destabilisation of the physical world around us due to all the other planetary boundaries being crossed https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound.... For example food supply would be disrupted by the artificialization of soils and disruption of the Phosphorus Cycle, many if not most food chains on which we depend will collapse due to the fact that we are killing or consuming most animal species, among which vital insects (the 6th mass extinction has started and is much faster than previous mass extinctions), water supply will be disrupted more and more etc. 2) It's also incomplete because it doesn't account for the other end of the problem : the depletion of ressources. Fusion means we can extract more and more resources, deeper and deeper, creating an even more unbalanced system if it's not done in a way were resources can regenerate themselves at the same rate we extract them. With what we have done every time we got additional energy so far, it is likely that getting fusion will increase pressure on planetary boundaries that are not CO2 emissions : you fix a problem by worsening the others. > it makes no sense to assume the same level of depletion. It's a function of demand. Good point. It's a function of demand, therefore it makes sense to assume the same level of depletion will increase, since more and more people will get access to middle-class (or more) lifestyle, which is the main driver of demand for resources (as opposed to population growth, which is less of a driver if it's population growth in countries without a middle class). > This also doesn't take into account technological innovation. As I said this could be a factor that helps with depleting less resources but so far we have observed the impact technology has been to dramatically increase ressource use and waste overall, not reduce them. > The rich are too few in number and they're primarily rich by virtue of everyone else's consumption. Notwithstanding that their own practices can be very damaging, it doesn't meet that scale. We are talking about middle classes here, which are massive and meant to become even more massive. It is also true that the richer you are the more you emit but that's a side phenomenon to understand why the amount of middle-class matters. > There's no evidence that a zero-carbon world with improved energy efficiency would necessarily lead to environmental destruction. Then you haven't read or studied resources like https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound... to begin with a simple/mainstream one for example, you haven't looked at the impact of mining and the orders of magnitude of resources we would need for a world where societies keep having the same behaviour as today, with just the "carbon-free" component added. Anyway this is a bet: there is no proof it would work either, and if it does not the population will completely collapse. Which way do you want to try? An organised de-growth (in terms of GDP, not total wealth if we account for the destruction of nature) were we know we can make it at the expense of less comfort and consumerism, or try to keep growing and just become net zero carbon, with the hope that we can make it, to the risk of collapsing and making the earth uninhabitable? One more resource you can look at in case you didn't know about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth#:~:text=The%20Limits%20to%20Growth%20(LTG,the%20earth%20and%20human%20systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth#:~:text=T... Being obsessed with carbon creates blindspots with respect to all the other planetary limits, our oceans are being emptied of life because of what we have done so far with abundant energy. The earth system is being destabilised in many other ways than just climate change. We need a global systemic solution, not to fix the problems one by one separately, because by doing that you will often make other problems worse by fixing one. I'm not saying we don't need more abundant energy, I'm saying we need to change our philosophy, the way we organise ourselves and what we do with it first.