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The catch is it’s not really progress if it’s not sustainable. It’s like living on debt, it ends up in bankruptcy. Are we really correctly investing the ecologi

The catch is it’s not really progress if it’s not sustainable. It’s like living on debt, it ends up in bankruptcy. Are we really correctly investing the ecological debt for a sustainable better future, or are we just burning through it for short term "progress" and leaving a ruined earth after? > But it's what we do. Always have. Always will. You can’t extrapolate from the past because never before in history we had the capacity to have impacts at that scale (e.g. atomic bomb). We are in uncharted territories.

geodel 3y ago
Exactly right. Even that verified improvement is limited to very small part of the world
hcurtiss 3y ago
But depending on how you define it, our species has never been "sustainable." The very first house clobbered the meadow and mice beneath it, and that one meadow was forever "lost." Yet, we keep finding resources, and alternatives to those resources, and more efficient means of using both. We have been using nonrenewable resources for hundreds (tens of thousands?) of years, and yet we keep finding more. Ehrlich famously lost his bet, and dramatically so! On every objective measure, we live in the very best moment in the history of humanity, and while there will be ups and downs, there is every reason to believe that will be just as true ten years from now and a hundred years from now. I'm always amused by the doomsaying Malthusians. They're always so confidently wrong.
- Turskarama 3y ago
  The difference here is that for the first time ever we are causing ecological damage on a _global_, rather than local scale. If you cut down a few trees to build a house then 50 years later the forest will reclaim the land. If you instead cut down the entire forest then that can't happen. >We have been using nonrenewable resources for hundreds (tens of thousands?) of years, and yet we keep finding more. Multiple civilisations in the past have collapsed at least in part due to resource shortages. Again though, because none of these civilisations were _global_ the collapse was local and could be recovered from using outside resources.
  - hcurtiss 3y ago
    And, barring an eco-religious return to the dark ages, we will soon be an interplanetary species. That sounds fantastic now, but so also did AI fifty years ago. And the moon fifty years before that.
    - Turskarama 3y ago
      "Soon" doing a lot of work there. The majority of people vastly underestimate how hard it is to actually build a _productive_ colony (as opposed to a scientific outpost) on another planet/moon/asteroid. Seriously, we can't even consistently land on the moon but everyone is convinced we're going to have space mines operating by the end of the century. Keep dreaming. The rate of technological progress has if anything _slowed down_ in the last 50 years. Compare the difference if you look at the 40s vs the 60s, then the 2000s vs the 2020s.
mgfist 3y ago
Flip side of that catch is that we're the first generation that can create an emissions free society. It's never been needed before, and it's never been possible before.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  Huh? all of pre-Medieval society was relatively emissions free and infinitely sustainable
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    It also ran on slavery, pillaging, and war. YMMV
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      And child abuse and paedophilia. But i do not see how thats relevant
  - vaccarium 3y ago
    Ancient Romans did enough pollution to affect the climate. https://www.earth.com/news/roman-activities-cooled-climate/ https://www.earth.com/news/roman-activities-cooled-climate/
pfdietz 3y ago
To first order, the sustainability problem is the fossil fuel problem. And we're on the way to solving that.
GolfPopper 3y ago
A great term along these lines that I recently stumbled across: extinction debt.[1] "In ecology, extinction debt is the future extinction of species due to events in the past. The phrases dead clade walking and survival without recovery express the same idea." 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_debt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_debt

geodel 3y ago

Exactly right. Even that verified improvement is limited to very small part of the world

hcurtiss 3y ago

But depending on how you define it, our species has never been "sustainable." The very first house clobbered the meadow and mice beneath it, and that one meadow was forever "lost." Yet, we keep finding resources, and alternatives to those resources, and more efficient means of using both. We have been using nonrenewable resources for hundreds (tens of thousands?) of years, and yet we keep finding more. Ehrlich famously lost his bet, and dramatically so! On every objective measure, we live in the very best moment in the history of humanity, and while there will be ups and downs, there is every reason to believe that will be just as true ten years from now and a hundred years from now. I'm always amused by the doomsaying Malthusians. They're always so confidently wrong.

Turskarama 3y ago
The difference here is that for the first time ever we are causing ecological damage on a _global_, rather than local scale. If you cut down a few trees to build a house then 50 years later the forest will reclaim the land. If you instead cut down the entire forest then that can't happen. >We have been using nonrenewable resources for hundreds (tens of thousands?) of years, and yet we keep finding more. Multiple civilisations in the past have collapsed at least in part due to resource shortages. Again though, because none of these civilisations were _global_ the collapse was local and could be recovered from using outside resources.
- hcurtiss 3y ago
  And, barring an eco-religious return to the dark ages, we will soon be an interplanetary species. That sounds fantastic now, but so also did AI fifty years ago. And the moon fifty years before that.
  - Turskarama 3y ago
    "Soon" doing a lot of work there. The majority of people vastly underestimate how hard it is to actually build a _productive_ colony (as opposed to a scientific outpost) on another planet/moon/asteroid. Seriously, we can't even consistently land on the moon but everyone is convinced we're going to have space mines operating by the end of the century. Keep dreaming. The rate of technological progress has if anything _slowed down_ in the last 50 years. Compare the difference if you look at the 40s vs the 60s, then the 2000s vs the 2020s.

mgfist 3y ago

Flip side of that catch is that we're the first generation that can create an emissions free society. It's never been needed before, and it's never been possible before.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
Huh? all of pre-Medieval society was relatively emissions free and infinitely sustainable
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  It also ran on slavery, pillaging, and war. YMMV
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    And child abuse and paedophilia. But i do not see how thats relevant
- vaccarium 3y ago
  Ancient Romans did enough pollution to affect the climate. https://www.earth.com/news/roman-activities-cooled-climate/ https://www.earth.com/news/roman-activities-cooled-climate/

pfdietz 3y ago

To first order, the sustainability problem is the fossil fuel problem. And we're on the way to solving that.

GolfPopper 3y ago

A great term along these lines that I recently stumbled across: extinction debt.[1] "In ecology, extinction debt is the future extinction of species due to events in the past. The phrases dead clade walking and survival without recovery express the same idea." 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_debt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_debt