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I'm getting the feeling our planet can't really handle a lot more of this "economic growth". At least not the way we've been doing it for the last 200 years.

• mikrl 3y ago
  The planet will be fine, it survived asteroids and much worse. Even if everyone starts lobbing nuclear weapons at each other, cockroaches and many plants will persevere among the ruins, the untended fields, the forests and hills. Humanity though? Hoo boy, are we really in for it.
  • avgcorrection 3y ago
    Are you addressing this comment to the cockroaches? If not then this obtuseness is not particularly witty.
    • RobotToaster 3y ago
      On the internet, nobody knows you're a cockroach.
      • bpiche 3y ago
        Or a dog :)
      • pelagicAustral 3y ago
        I know this is besides the point, but I've always been so happy that there are no cockroaches where I live... In fact so happy that I write comments like this, just so people know.
        • mrpopo 3y ago
          Cockroaches are not a welcome addition into your house's ecosystem, but they are still very useful in the global ecosystem, same as mosquitoes, etc. There are waste products that only cockroaches digest, there are plants that only mosquitoes pollinate, etc.
        • Brusco_RF 3y ago
          Do you live in Antarctica?
          • pelagicAustral 3y ago
            Very close indeed, about an hour away.
      • mikrl 3y ago
        Soon! Soon the twolegs will irradiate everything and our time will come! chitters maniacally
    • mikrl 3y ago
      The parent was confusing ‘the planet’ with ‘humanity’ which is (IMO) more egregiously obtuse.
      • avgcorrection 3y ago
        No one is confusing the two because “saving the planet” is always meant as in “saving the planet as a hospitable environment for humans and/or animals” (a bit of a mouthful, no?). Literally no one cares about the rock called the Earth for its own sake. You might as well go and argue that some particular person from Africa can't be called “black” because his skin pigmentation is brown. That's equally productive.
        • lotsofpulp 3y ago
          > You might as well go and argue that some particular person from Africa can't be called “black” because his skin pigmentation is brown. What if the person from Africa has brown skin pigmentation and are descendants of people from India? I had a friend in college like that who fit those qualities, but I am pretty sure he would experience backlash if he referred to himself as a black person (in the US).
          • avgcorrection 3y ago
            ... You can assume that I meant a native African person. ;)
        • eckmLJE 3y ago
          I disagree. There are plenty of folks who would rather see the natural world preserved for its own sake, even at the expense of human growth and survival. And plenty of folks dismissing environmentalists as treehuggers who love nature more than humanity, who don't get that preserving the natural world is a prerequisite to human survival. I think the distinction is important.
          • avgcorrection 3y ago
            > There are plenty of folks who would rather see the natural world preserved for its own sake, even at the expense of human growth and survival. Because of what...geology? The Earth itself? (No.) You might have missed the “and/or animals” part. My comment already addresses those who are more concerned (as in preoccupied) with non-human life. But I guess I should have mentioned plants as well. Mea fucking culpa.
  • Aunche 3y ago
    Humans are the cockroaches of large mammals. We're tropical apes that managed to survive in the some of the coldest places without anything that resembles modern technology.
• dimitrios1 3y ago
  In the past you had reckless manufacturing and extracting -- chemical spills and dumping, burning of an incredible amount of coal, deforestation, etc. But it was tapered by fewer people overall with disposable income, and the lack of throwaway culture and waste, less plastic, etc. Now we have more efficient processes with less waste, we have renewable sources of forestation, renewable energy sources, less coal, less chemical spills and dumping, but every body can afford and have the things that were once considered luxuries. Everyone has an HVAC now. Everyone purchases tons upon tons of little plastic pieces of shit and throws them in the trash. If you have a blueberry with a little bit of mold on it, now you throw away the pack. You have to fight for the right to repair your cheap plastic shit with silicon parts in it. You are expected to replace your plastic shit every 1-2 years with more plastic shit. We drink water and soda out of plastic bottles in absurd amounts. We use more electricity than ever before. There has to be a balance somewhere. We have to have a culture shift at some point.
  • wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Interesting that you focus on the consumer side over the production side to blame. And what drives culture shifts?
    • slothtrop 3y ago
      Consumers respond to incentives. I wouldn't "blame" them either, but I would expect consumer behavior to adjust to taxes or revoking subsidies for certain goods. If it were down to wagging a finger, yeah, that's for the birds. The only thing that serves is feeding the clickbait money machine inflaming a culture war. We already know that if some alternatives are on the market (electric vehicles, plant-based boxed crap), people will buy them. A large percentage of consumers buys plant-based products despite not being vegan or caring to be.
      • wahnfrieden 3y ago
        Consumer purchasing shifting toward more correct purchases isn’t a solution at all. Your examples are essentially luxury market items that don’t scale to humanity with questionable net impact
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• elil17 3y ago
  I do think there are ways some economies could grow which would be good for both people and the planet. For example, if agricultural productivity in the worlds poorest countries increased a lot (for example, through improved availability of fertilizer or modern seeds), it could serve to reduce deforestation in those regions by reducing the demand for more farmland. That sort of economic growth would help lift people out of extreme poverty.
  • pif 3y ago
    > it could serve to reduce deforestation in those regions by reducing the demand for more farmland Only if the food surplus gets used to improve the life of people, without increasing population size!
    • elil17 3y ago
      Population size typically levels off as regions get wealthier - that’s a pretty well documented phenomenon as I understand it.
  • moritzwarhier 3y ago
    This would indeed help raise the living standards of people who are currently starving, which I would support. But there is another very well documented phenomenon (citing your answer to a sibling comment): people's consumption of natural resources, emission of pollutants and overall ecological footprint drastically increases with rising wealth. This more than makes up for any leveling in population growth. And I want to make clear that I am not against more wealth for people who are starving. Because another topic is that wealth is not evenly distributed, and mostly fuels excesses and further environmental destruction when inequality is high. Many people cite statistics claiming that the per-capita emissions (just an exemplary quantity, there's more to the environment than CO2 emissions of course) would be falling in rich western countries over the last years or even decades. AFAIK, even for "model countries" with low population density and comparatively good environmental legislation, such as Denmark, these numbers are based on basically lying with statistics. Prime example being the outsourcing of all environmental damage while keeping the gains in the country. Introductory reading (that's where I took the Denmark example from): https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/ https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/
• slothtrop 3y ago
  Why the quotation marks? The good news is that technological innovation is reeling back emissions and land encroachment, the bad is that growth in developing countries is outpacing innovation such that the demand for fossil fuels is still in an upward trajectory. Quality of life is improving, at a cost. East Asia won't grow this fast forever, but we're in a position of requiring some imminent intervention. I expect to see more policy moves in the near future as nuclear and viable carbon-capture won't come quickly enough, and rich people don't want shit weather and paying out billions in damages every year either. Slowing down won't happen because we can't ask other countries not to improve their quality of life, and even if we did, they wouldn't listen. That's where the extra demand is coming from. Domestically you could put a small dent by disincentivizing purchases of SUVs or whatever.
• xwdv 3y ago
  The problem is getting people to settle for less. We have an entire generation that expected to own single family homes, travel frequently, have new outfits every season, new car ever few years and live lavish lifestyles they see in the media. How do we put the genie back in the bottle and get people to accept a smaller, maybe generational home? And maybe only travel out of the country a handful of times in their life? And buy a good pair of clothes and shoes and make it last for a decade? Maybe forgo owning a car all their life? How do you get entitled people to live more humbly putting less pressure for economic growth at all costs?
  • bequanna 3y ago
    No. This kind of zero sum thinking is rightfully rejected by most in the US. We don’t need to live with less, we just need to do a better job. More efficiency, lower footprint. We need to do better, not do less.
    • xwdv 3y ago
      This comment exactly what I’m talking about. Eventually someone will have to live with less. The lifestyle I described above is not too far from what life was like over a hundred years ago. There is no efficient way out of the problem. Any efficiency gains will be used to pursue even more growth, not simply sustain what we have now. Accept less.
    • Ekaros 3y ago
      Living with less is exactly being more efficient. Wasting less, replacing stuff less often is using real goods more efficiently.
    • mym1990 3y ago
      Can you expand on the 'do a better job' part? Is that a 'we need to do a better job driving big trucks around for pointless reasons' or 'do a better job of flying jets around more efficiently'? It's very obvious that you think everyone around you is an idiot, so can you please expand on your ideas for those of us too dim to understand?
  • 3y ago
• bequanna 3y ago
  This is the same nonsense as the “population bomb” doomerism of the 60s. Unless we nuke ourselves into oblivion, humanity will preserve and thrive. Today is the greatest time in the history of our species to be alive.
  • thatwasunusual 3y ago
    > Unless we nuke ourselves into oblivion [...] Don't jinx it, please.
  • mym1990 3y ago
    Not a great time for other species though. Also, just because today is good, doesn't mean tomorrow will be. You could be singing your favorite song rolling through an intersection on a beautiful day, plenty can still go wrong. Some caution didn't hurt anyone.
    • bequanna 3y ago
      Caution isn’t the same as spreading unfounded panic.
      • wyre 3y ago
        The panic isn’t unfounded. There is work being done every day that shows we our on our way to collapse. To think otherwise is equivalent to climate denial.
      • mym1990 3y ago
        I'm glad we're on the same page, thanks for bringing nothing to the conversation with your comment.
  • Ekaros 3y ago
    And we cannot even nuke ourselves to oblivion. It simply just won't happen unless we really really really work at it. Our civilisations maybe, but not everyone.
• mym1990 3y ago
  The planet should be able to handle a lot more economic growth if gone about a different way, and if there is a more even distribution of wealth(I am not against billionaires per se but a lot can be done for the lower 50%). If 250 years after the industrial revolution humans have no other way to develop quickly other than pumping coal, whats the point of innovation?
  • modo_mario 3y ago
    Do you think the planet can 'handle' the current state without growth? (If someone gives the millionth "the planet will be fine, humanity...." comment they should seriously reconsider their online presence) I feel like we 're nowhere close to getting our current resource extraction and pollution to anything resembling sustainable rate on many fronts and it's constantly growing. Cutting let's say the average americans co2 output 8fold for example whilst maintaining harder to ditch outputs such as haber-bosh and having economic growth at the same time seems far off.
    • mym1990 3y ago
      Your first statement makes no sense in regards to what I said. I particularly said economic growth would be fine if it was gone about in sustainable ways. What does 'current state without growth mean'? The current state has growth, so if you're proposing a state of no growth, it would be a completely different situation. If you interpreted my comment as saying 'the planet is fine, humanity is fine', I would re-read it a few times, think about it for 5 minutes, and then make a comment. Capitalism itself cannot thrive when production/consumption slows down, even in terms of GDP, a -2% growth or worse is considered catastrophic to the economy. So no, I don't think we are going down a good path if the only way to stay afloat is to keep pumping out more crap.
      • modo_mario 3y ago
        I find that given the current economy is already so ridiculously far off from sustainable that there's no realistic way we can keep pumping out more crap and at the same time be sustainable.