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Unfortunately, a lot of climate activists’ primary goal is not stopping climate change but rather advocating for degrowth. They are thus vehemently opposed to a

Unfortunately, a lot of climate activists’ primary goal is not stopping climate change but rather advocating for degrowth. They are thus vehemently opposed to any solutions that don’t involve massive reductions in consumption. This is not only politically untenable (it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions) but also alienates the majority of people from the cause, who might otherwise support it. Hopefully degrowth advocates’ voices will be drowned out by abundant supplies of cheap GHG emission-free energy.

zztop44 4y ago
I’ve got a horrid feeling you’re waiting for this precise question, but any source on degrowth being the aim of a “lot” of climate activists to the extent that it’s vaguely mainstream (as opposed to just being a minor current, which I’m aware exists)
- practice9 4y ago
  It doesn’t help that most visible activists don’t have clear and measurable goals
  - esteth 4y ago
    I don’t know about that: the major activist groups in the uk which get news attention are just stop oil, who want the government to stop issuing new oil and gas licenses, and insulate Britain, who want the government to install insulation in all state-owned housing. Those are both concrete, measurable goals
  - collyw 4y ago
    How dare you! Listen to the scientists! No not those scientists!
    - philosopher1234 4y ago
      All those earth lovers are so lame. I’ll burn as much oil as I want
  - zztop44 4y ago
    I mean I feel like the most visible “activists” are in egypt right now clearly calling for the measurable goal of keeping warming under 1.5 degrees?
- leethargo 4y ago
  At least degrowth is mentioned (a lot) in the latest IPCC report: https://timotheeparrique.com/degrowth-in-the-ipcc-ar6-wgiii/ https://timotheeparrique.com/degrowth-in-the-ipcc-ar6-wgiii/
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  Environmentalist groups often oppose construction of solar and wind farms [0]. The Sunrise Movement has explicitly advocated for degrowth policies (e.g. [1], with some in the movement claiming it does not go far enough [2]). [0] https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/americas-top-environmental-groups https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/americas-top-environmental... [1] https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1328770319843287041?lang=en https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1328770319843287041?l... [2] https://medium.com/@xxcapsxx1964/to-the-sunrise-movement-fc6879e35538 https://medium.com/@xxcapsxx1964/to-the-sunrise-movement-fc6...
  - zztop44 4y ago
    [0] is classic NIMBYism not degrowth as an aim (I hope you can acknowledge those are different things). [1] is a tweet just saying that capitalism won’t solve the climate crisis, which I hope you can also distinguish from advocating degrowth as an objective (capitalism and economic growth are not synonymous). And [2] is an individual volunteer posting something to the public internet under their own initiative, which (absolutely no disrespect to them) does not make the mainstream of the climate movement.
SQueeeeeL 4y ago
If we were serfs owned by a Baron, we would imagine it was politically untenable that the Baron would ever give us freedom, and yet the liberation of the serfs happened. Never let a narrow view of "human nature" cause you to forget the number of times people have transcended negative situations and created better ones
leethargo 4y ago
So, you're saying, hopefully we will soon have "abundant supplies of cheap GHG emission-free energy" and no other resource scarcity to support that infrastructure? I count myself as sympathetic (but also skeptical) towards the degrowth movement. I don't interpret it as saying that we should (only) reduce consumption and ignore progress in the form of efficiency/decoupling. Rather, the message seems that doing both, simultaneously, is easier/faster/cheaper overall.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  Degrowth necessarily implies population control - you can't reduce sum consumption if population keeps growing, as there is a lower bound on the amount of consumption a single person can live off. And population control necessarily implies government control of reproduction, which sets a precedent for controlling other aspects of people's lives. I am not sympathetic towards the degrowth movement, since the "solutions" they provide create more problems than they solve. Killing all humans would also solve the climate problem, but it doesn't make it a good decision.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    My god, two incredible leaps in such a short post! You drive a 3-ton SUV, burn coal for electricity, and produce literal mountains of plastic crap in China which get shipped around the world. Don't worry pal, there's plenty to cut back before you need to roll out the forced sterelisation. Second, the population of the developed world is already declining. The population of the world is on track to plateau in the coming decades. Your caricature is just silly.
    - bheadmaster 4y ago
      I'm not your pal, buddy. > Your caricature is just silly. Funny, I feel the same way about yours. Sure, everyone in the world is driving SUVs, flying private jets, and building nuclear reactors in their backyard. Let's stop people from consuming - force everyone to be vegan and eat the bugs! People consuming are the problem - not the military-industrial complex spending enormous amounts of energy on things that have nothing to do with consumption and spends an order of magnitude more energy than all human consumption combined!
lm28469 4y ago
> degrowth > it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions What about sustainable growth focused on actual quality of life and not on perpetuating a system that produce/consume useless cheap low quality gadgets and services for the sole purpose of keeping the population at work 8 hours a day until they hit 65/67 years old (age by the time 25% of the poorest are already dead) The fact that we (may have) decoupled growth and co2 doesn't mean all growth is progress or that all growth is desirable.
- collyw 4y ago
  How would you measure "sustainable growth focused on actual quality of life"? Generally economic growth goes hand in hand with an objective increase in quality of life, though as i just mentioned, the ways of measuring that are via poor proxies at best.
  - wizzwizz4 4y ago
    > though as i just mentioned, the ways of measuring that are via poor proxies at best. Goodhart's law comes to mind: > Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes. I don't think we should measure it – at least, not obsessively. We should research and study it, and put in place measures that should theoretically work, and pay attention to whether what we're doing is working, but we shouldn't look at the measurements and go "this is making the numbers go down; we must be doing something wrong!" without at least double-checking that the numbers make sense.
    - collyw 4y ago
      As I pointed out the most obvious way to to that at present is by increasing peoples wealth.
- chii 4y ago
  > for the sole purpose of keeping the population at work 8 hours a day until they hit 65/67 years old it isn't the purpose, but a side effect.
kaskakokos 4y ago
Reading the article leaves me with a taste of self-delusion as a society. I mean, we take 3 pollution parameters very limited in time and space, we see how they decrease, and we open the bottle of champagne to celebrate... If we don't look at the big picture, we are fooling ourselves, and in my opinion only degrowth will save us, just keep in mind that previous societies that consumed fewer resources collapsed for exhaustion of resources in relatively short periods of time (but long in human terms). Is it difficult to convince people of degrowth? Absolutely. But we either degrow or we will be degrowth.
- mpweiher 4y ago
  So instead we take no parameters, no data whatsoever, and predict absolutely certain doom. Hmm.
  - kaskakokos 4y ago
    Or... we can use the information that experts collect and share: https://www.ipcc.ch/ https://www.ipcc.ch/ * I edit to copy paste an extract of the report: Emissions reductions in CO2 from fossil fuels and industrial processes (CO2-FFI), due to improvements in energy intensity of GDP and carbon intensity of energy, have been less than emissions increases from rising global activity levels in industry, energy supply, transport, agriculture and buildings
andrepd 4y ago
>(it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions) Why do you say degrowth = lower quality of life? Let me give you a simple and practical example: an American living in a suburb takes her gas-guzzler 3-ton SUV to go shopping or to the park, stands in traffic in a 4-lane freeway for one hour. A Dutch living in a suburb takes her bike to go shopping or to the park, rides it through a nice street for 10 minutes. The former consumed much more resources than the latter. Who has the better quality of life?
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  It doesn’t matter what you or I think; what matters is that the American living in a single family house driving a big car will perceive anything else as a reduction in quality-of-life and vehemently oppose it. Also, not even the worst suburbs require you to regularly wait in traffic for an hour to go to the supermarket or a park. These are usually 10 minute drives away. And if it’s raining, or too cold, or too hot out, I would gladly take the (electric) SUV over the bike.
- refurb 4y ago
  Who has the better quality of life? I don't know, isn't "quality of life" a personal, subjective measure? The best example I can give is Singapore. Fantastic public transit, high vehicle import taxes (like 100%) and a system where you need a separate permit to own a care that costs >$100,000 for 10 years. And yet no lack of people who buy cars. The people I worked with there all owned cars. They could certainly get around without one, but they wanted one, despite the alternatives.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    The US has about 6× more cars per capita than Singapore.
    - refurb 4y ago
      Sure, but clearly the demand is still there despite the alternatives!
rjmunro 4y ago
Why is a reduction in consumption a "massive quality of life reduction"? For example reducing your working hours / increasing vacation time is a quality of life improvement, and a reduction in economic activity.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  Those are different things: working does not necessarily increase consumption. (Having more money generally does, though.)
sveme 4y ago
Degrowth isn't just about climate change. The problem with the overconsumption of earth's resources still persist. Unless we have a fully cyclical economy, I don't see how we can really decouple growth and the depletion of earth's resources.
- mpweiher 4y ago
  Source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon–Ehrlich_wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon–Ehrlich_wager
  - sveme 4y ago
    Common sense. Just a single earth and all. Your example is concerned with a single forecast. If we started asteroid mining, we would obviously increase earth's resources. Otherwise, resources on earth are limited.
    - mpweiher 4y ago
      "Common sense is neither common nor sense" https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/201107/common-sense-is-neither-common-nor-sense https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/2011... > single forecast. Nope, it was a bundle of forecasts that the participants, including the one who had your position, considered representative. Of course your position happens to be based on...nothing. Except the idea that the earth is not infinite. Well guess what, the lifespan of the solar system is also not infinite. So that's a wash.
pyrale 4y ago
> abundant supplies of cheap GHG emission-free energy Feel free to research that in your free time. In the current state of the world we can't really wait for you to find it before we make a change.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  It's not hard to find. I had to close my curtains to prevent it from glaring off my monitor.
vouaobrasil 4y ago
I am not opposed to any solution that doesn't involve a reduction in consumption. However, I do advocate for degrowth and reduction. Consuming less actually has a lot of net benefits for life. In this regard I think it's good to present some optional ideas and their possible benefits for the average person: * Buying a more modest apartment or house can mean working less or retiring sooner * Close social media account, etc -- this means more quality time with friends and family. * Travelling less and appreciating the nice things near where you live (assuming you have them, not everyone does) * Use as little technology as possible. If there's some new fancy app, phone, or gadget, don't buy it or use it. This will reduce information overload and stress. And if done en masse, it would also start to dry up the revenue streams of large tech companies
- bittercynic 4y ago
  >...can mean working less or retiring sooner I think this is very central to the discussion, and one where many of us are utterly unable to comprehend the other side. Many people see (what I consider) excessive work as virtuous, and think you're committing a terrible sin if you don't work as much as possible. And if you're working all the time anyway, you may as well enjoy the spoils. When I look at that attitude it seems like some twisted version of the protestant work ethic mixed up with hyper-capitalism, and it seems to contribute to the person's own misery and cause misery for surrounding people. To them, I'm sure I appear to be a lazy bum. Loafing around and wasting my life, not contributing as much as I could to "the economy". Is one way objectively better than the other? I don't know, but I'm sure I prefer my way.
- Adiqq 4y ago
  > Buying a more modest apartment or house can mean working less or retiring sooner Additionally there should be some self-sustainability in community. I wouldn't mind, if apartament was connected to power grid that includes solar panels and batteries owned by this community, which effectively would lower my energy costs. I also think that many people wouldn't mind owning some affordable space nearby for your activities. Maybe some greenhouse, park or garden, maybe just some basement for small storage space for your online shop, maybe just regular shop or some cafeteria, maybe some workshop or server room, maybe just office, maybe some pool.
ohiovr 4y ago
We are at the peak of civilization. A new perfect energy source that was abundant would probably eliminate the carbon boogyman. But the energy, being abundant would only accelerate the ease of our materialistic society we live in to plunder every last square inch of the Earth to put delicacies in our mouths and rape the earth of all precious things. I used to believe in fusion energy and I am closer to a solution. But no way am I going to reveal it to the people now. There will be no double peak. This is it.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  The best time for fusion energy is 30 years from now
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
What some activists miss is that to actually stop climate change, we need to accelerate the growth of developing countries. During development, emissions grow, and then decline; By accelerating the development process, we can reduce the duration developing countries spend in the window of high emissions. This can be done without that much more effort from developing countries, except for absorbing the cost of renewables, the development of the tech, along with contributing technical know-how.
erlich 4y ago
> degrowth / massive reductions in consumption Although it can appear a bit disingenuous for activists to disguise their primary goal...their primary goal can be valid if taken from their perspective... Population will be 10bn by 2100. Then there's 2200, 2300, 2400, etc. The need for degrowth does seem inevitable eventually does it not? From a middle-class perspective: everything is about ambition, climbing the corporate ladder, wealth building, and then hoping for your children to exceed you in these aspects also. Addiction to growth. Many of these people are not okay with being a high achievers and not being rewarded for it - i.e. capitalism. Activists are usually lower income with fixed horizons/needs of income/status/lifestyle. So it's easier for them to identify with the average global citizen...who is already very poor. - 3bn live on < 2USD per day - median world income = 850USD - avg world income = 7000USD The activists are identifying as "world citizens", whereas Westerners identify with their income bracket in their wealthy country of choice. > cheap GHG emission-free energy. The reality is that even if climate change is resolved, there will still be a push for degrowth until the end of time...unless we find a new planet to inhabit.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
In terms of direct thermal heating from waste heat, we are almost precisely where we were when global warming was first raised as a problem. Climate change is just the first of many problems, and claiming that consuming more makes life better is the same logic as finding a starving man, seeing him improve with three square meals, and then concluding everyone should have a gallon a second of saturated sugar syrup pumped directly into their gut.

zztop44 4y ago

I’ve got a horrid feeling you’re waiting for this precise question, but any source on degrowth being the aim of a “lot” of climate activists to the extent that it’s vaguely mainstream (as opposed to just being a minor current, which I’m aware exists)

practice9 4y ago
It doesn’t help that most visible activists don’t have clear and measurable goals
- esteth 4y ago
  I don’t know about that: the major activist groups in the uk which get news attention are just stop oil, who want the government to stop issuing new oil and gas licenses, and insulate Britain, who want the government to install insulation in all state-owned housing. Those are both concrete, measurable goals
- collyw 4y ago
  How dare you! Listen to the scientists! No not those scientists!
  - philosopher1234 4y ago
    All those earth lovers are so lame. I’ll burn as much oil as I want
- zztop44 4y ago
  I mean I feel like the most visible “activists” are in egypt right now clearly calling for the measurable goal of keeping warming under 1.5 degrees?
leethargo 4y ago
At least degrowth is mentioned (a lot) in the latest IPCC report: https://timotheeparrique.com/degrowth-in-the-ipcc-ar6-wgiii/ https://timotheeparrique.com/degrowth-in-the-ipcc-ar6-wgiii/
MontyCarloHall 4y ago
Environmentalist groups often oppose construction of solar and wind farms [0]. The Sunrise Movement has explicitly advocated for degrowth policies (e.g. [1], with some in the movement claiming it does not go far enough [2]). [0] https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/americas-top-environmental-groups https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/americas-top-environmental... [1] https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1328770319843287041?lang=en https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1328770319843287041?l... [2] https://medium.com/@xxcapsxx1964/to-the-sunrise-movement-fc6879e35538 https://medium.com/@xxcapsxx1964/to-the-sunrise-movement-fc6...
- zztop44 4y ago
  [0] is classic NIMBYism not degrowth as an aim (I hope you can acknowledge those are different things). [1] is a tweet just saying that capitalism won’t solve the climate crisis, which I hope you can also distinguish from advocating degrowth as an objective (capitalism and economic growth are not synonymous). And [2] is an individual volunteer posting something to the public internet under their own initiative, which (absolutely no disrespect to them) does not make the mainstream of the climate movement.

SQueeeeeL 4y ago

If we were serfs owned by a Baron, we would imagine it was politically untenable that the Baron would ever give us freedom, and yet the liberation of the serfs happened. Never let a narrow view of "human nature" cause you to forget the number of times people have transcended negative situations and created better ones

leethargo 4y ago

So, you're saying, hopefully we will soon have "abundant supplies of cheap GHG emission-free energy" and no other resource scarcity to support that infrastructure? I count myself as sympathetic (but also skeptical) towards the degrowth movement. I don't interpret it as saying that we should (only) reduce consumption and ignore progress in the form of efficiency/decoupling. Rather, the message seems that doing both, simultaneously, is easier/faster/cheaper overall.

bheadmaster 4y ago
Degrowth necessarily implies population control - you can't reduce sum consumption if population keeps growing, as there is a lower bound on the amount of consumption a single person can live off. And population control necessarily implies government control of reproduction, which sets a precedent for controlling other aspects of people's lives. I am not sympathetic towards the degrowth movement, since the "solutions" they provide create more problems than they solve. Killing all humans would also solve the climate problem, but it doesn't make it a good decision.
- andrepd 4y ago
  My god, two incredible leaps in such a short post! You drive a 3-ton SUV, burn coal for electricity, and produce literal mountains of plastic crap in China which get shipped around the world. Don't worry pal, there's plenty to cut back before you need to roll out the forced sterelisation. Second, the population of the developed world is already declining. The population of the world is on track to plateau in the coming decades. Your caricature is just silly.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    I'm not your pal, buddy. > Your caricature is just silly. Funny, I feel the same way about yours. Sure, everyone in the world is driving SUVs, flying private jets, and building nuclear reactors in their backyard. Let's stop people from consuming - force everyone to be vegan and eat the bugs! People consuming are the problem - not the military-industrial complex spending enormous amounts of energy on things that have nothing to do with consumption and spends an order of magnitude more energy than all human consumption combined!

lm28469 4y ago

> degrowth > it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions What about sustainable growth focused on actual quality of life and not on perpetuating a system that produce/consume useless cheap low quality gadgets and services for the sole purpose of keeping the population at work 8 hours a day until they hit 65/67 years old (age by the time 25% of the poorest are already dead) The fact that we (may have) decoupled growth and co2 doesn't mean all growth is progress or that all growth is desirable.

collyw 4y ago
How would you measure "sustainable growth focused on actual quality of life"? Generally economic growth goes hand in hand with an objective increase in quality of life, though as i just mentioned, the ways of measuring that are via poor proxies at best.
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  > though as i just mentioned, the ways of measuring that are via poor proxies at best. Goodhart's law comes to mind: > Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes. I don't think we should measure it – at least, not obsessively. We should research and study it, and put in place measures that should theoretically work, and pay attention to whether what we're doing is working, but we shouldn't look at the measurements and go "this is making the numbers go down; we must be doing something wrong!" without at least double-checking that the numbers make sense.
  - collyw 4y ago
    As I pointed out the most obvious way to to that at present is by increasing peoples wealth.
chii 4y ago
> for the sole purpose of keeping the population at work 8 hours a day until they hit 65/67 years old it isn't the purpose, but a side effect.

kaskakokos 4y ago

Reading the article leaves me with a taste of self-delusion as a society. I mean, we take 3 pollution parameters very limited in time and space, we see how they decrease, and we open the bottle of champagne to celebrate... If we don't look at the big picture, we are fooling ourselves, and in my opinion only degrowth will save us, just keep in mind that previous societies that consumed fewer resources collapsed for exhaustion of resources in relatively short periods of time (but long in human terms). Is it difficult to convince people of degrowth? Absolutely. But we either degrow or we will be degrowth.

mpweiher 4y ago
So instead we take no parameters, no data whatsoever, and predict absolutely certain doom. Hmm.
- kaskakokos 4y ago
  Or... we can use the information that experts collect and share: https://www.ipcc.ch/ https://www.ipcc.ch/ * I edit to copy paste an extract of the report: Emissions reductions in CO2 from fossil fuels and industrial processes (CO2-FFI), due to improvements in energy intensity of GDP and carbon intensity of energy, have been less than emissions increases from rising global activity levels in industry, energy supply, transport, agriculture and buildings

andrepd 4y ago

>(it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions) Why do you say degrowth = lower quality of life? Let me give you a simple and practical example: an American living in a suburb takes her gas-guzzler 3-ton SUV to go shopping or to the park, stands in traffic in a 4-lane freeway for one hour. A Dutch living in a suburb takes her bike to go shopping or to the park, rides it through a nice street for 10 minutes. The former consumed much more resources than the latter. Who has the better quality of life?

MontyCarloHall 4y ago
It doesn’t matter what you or I think; what matters is that the American living in a single family house driving a big car will perceive anything else as a reduction in quality-of-life and vehemently oppose it. Also, not even the worst suburbs require you to regularly wait in traffic for an hour to go to the supermarket or a park. These are usually 10 minute drives away. And if it’s raining, or too cold, or too hot out, I would gladly take the (electric) SUV over the bike.
refurb 4y ago
Who has the better quality of life? I don't know, isn't "quality of life" a personal, subjective measure? The best example I can give is Singapore. Fantastic public transit, high vehicle import taxes (like 100%) and a system where you need a separate permit to own a care that costs >$100,000 for 10 years. And yet no lack of people who buy cars. The people I worked with there all owned cars. They could certainly get around without one, but they wanted one, despite the alternatives.
- andrepd 4y ago
  The US has about 6× more cars per capita than Singapore.
  - refurb 4y ago
    Sure, but clearly the demand is still there despite the alternatives!

rjmunro 4y ago

Why is a reduction in consumption a "massive quality of life reduction"? For example reducing your working hours / increasing vacation time is a quality of life improvement, and a reduction in economic activity.

rippercushions 4y ago
Those are different things: working does not necessarily increase consumption. (Having more money generally does, though.)

sveme 4y ago

Degrowth isn't just about climate change. The problem with the overconsumption of earth's resources still persist. Unless we have a fully cyclical economy, I don't see how we can really decouple growth and the depletion of earth's resources.

mpweiher 4y ago
Source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon–Ehrlich_wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon–Ehrlich_wager
- sveme 4y ago
  Common sense. Just a single earth and all. Your example is concerned with a single forecast. If we started asteroid mining, we would obviously increase earth's resources. Otherwise, resources on earth are limited.
  - mpweiher 4y ago
    "Common sense is neither common nor sense" https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/201107/common-sense-is-neither-common-nor-sense https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/2011... > single forecast. Nope, it was a bundle of forecasts that the participants, including the one who had your position, considered representative. Of course your position happens to be based on...nothing. Except the idea that the earth is not infinite. Well guess what, the lifespan of the solar system is also not infinite. So that's a wash.

pyrale 4y ago

> abundant supplies of cheap GHG emission-free energy Feel free to research that in your free time. In the current state of the world we can't really wait for you to find it before we make a change.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
It's not hard to find. I had to close my curtains to prevent it from glaring off my monitor.

vouaobrasil 4y ago

I am not opposed to any solution that doesn't involve a reduction in consumption. However, I do advocate for degrowth and reduction. Consuming less actually has a lot of net benefits for life. In this regard I think it's good to present some optional ideas and their possible benefits for the average person: * Buying a more modest apartment or house can mean working less or retiring sooner * Close social media account, etc -- this means more quality time with friends and family. * Travelling less and appreciating the nice things near where you live (assuming you have them, not everyone does) * Use as little technology as possible. If there's some new fancy app, phone, or gadget, don't buy it or use it. This will reduce information overload and stress. And if done en masse, it would also start to dry up the revenue streams of large tech companies

bittercynic 4y ago
>...can mean working less or retiring sooner I think this is very central to the discussion, and one where many of us are utterly unable to comprehend the other side. Many people see (what I consider) excessive work as virtuous, and think you're committing a terrible sin if you don't work as much as possible. And if you're working all the time anyway, you may as well enjoy the spoils. When I look at that attitude it seems like some twisted version of the protestant work ethic mixed up with hyper-capitalism, and it seems to contribute to the person's own misery and cause misery for surrounding people. To them, I'm sure I appear to be a lazy bum. Loafing around and wasting my life, not contributing as much as I could to "the economy". Is one way objectively better than the other? I don't know, but I'm sure I prefer my way.
Adiqq 4y ago
> Buying a more modest apartment or house can mean working less or retiring sooner Additionally there should be some self-sustainability in community. I wouldn't mind, if apartament was connected to power grid that includes solar panels and batteries owned by this community, which effectively would lower my energy costs. I also think that many people wouldn't mind owning some affordable space nearby for your activities. Maybe some greenhouse, park or garden, maybe just some basement for small storage space for your online shop, maybe just regular shop or some cafeteria, maybe some workshop or server room, maybe just office, maybe some pool.

ohiovr 4y ago

We are at the peak of civilization. A new perfect energy source that was abundant would probably eliminate the carbon boogyman. But the energy, being abundant would only accelerate the ease of our materialistic society we live in to plunder every last square inch of the Earth to put delicacies in our mouths and rape the earth of all precious things. I used to believe in fusion energy and I am closer to a solution. But no way am I going to reveal it to the people now. There will be no double peak. This is it.

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
The best time for fusion energy is 30 years from now

PartiallyTyped 4y ago

What some activists miss is that to actually stop climate change, we need to accelerate the growth of developing countries. During development, emissions grow, and then decline; By accelerating the development process, we can reduce the duration developing countries spend in the window of high emissions. This can be done without that much more effort from developing countries, except for absorbing the cost of renewables, the development of the tech, along with contributing technical know-how.

erlich 4y ago

> degrowth / massive reductions in consumption Although it can appear a bit disingenuous for activists to disguise their primary goal...their primary goal can be valid if taken from their perspective... Population will be 10bn by 2100. Then there's 2200, 2300, 2400, etc. The need for degrowth does seem inevitable eventually does it not? From a middle-class perspective: everything is about ambition, climbing the corporate ladder, wealth building, and then hoping for your children to exceed you in these aspects also. Addiction to growth. Many of these people are not okay with being a high achievers and not being rewarded for it - i.e. capitalism. Activists are usually lower income with fixed horizons/needs of income/status/lifestyle. So it's easier for them to identify with the average global citizen...who is already very poor. - 3bn live on < 2USD per day - median world income = 850USD - avg world income = 7000USD The activists are identifying as "world citizens", whereas Westerners identify with their income bracket in their wealthy country of choice. > cheap GHG emission-free energy. The reality is that even if climate change is resolved, there will still be a push for degrowth until the end of time...unless we find a new planet to inhabit.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

In terms of direct thermal heating from waste heat, we are almost precisely where we were when global warming was first raised as a problem. Climate change is just the first of many problems, and claiming that consuming more makes life better is the same logic as finding a starving man, seeing him improve with three square meals, and then concluding everyone should have a gallon a second of saturated sugar syrup pumped directly into their gut.