4 ms·

This article perfectly encapsulates the current insanity that's infecting the young generation. To be honest it almost got me too. Global warming can be solved

This article perfectly encapsulates the current insanity that's infecting the young generation. To be honest it almost got me too. Global warming can be solved. We're already transitioning to green energy at an amazing pace. Geo engineering is a solution in the meantime (which she dismisses completely without reason "which could either cool the planet or kill us all even faster."). Once we've built out an over capacity of solar and wind we can think about carbon capture and storage. The real crisis is that people are not having kids, and unless you hate humanity you probably want there to be one in the future. We're all trending to be South Korea which now has a birthrate of 0.7. Zero point seven! Every thirty years a school class would go from 30 students to 10! South Korea is dying, and so is the rest of the developed world, albeit at a slower pace, so far. The solution: AGI, robotics and longevity are all things that the doomers are actively opposed to.

vsareto 3y ago
>The real crisis is that people are not having kids People aren't having kids because of the cost and the stress of living when combined with the cost and stress of raising kids sums to something too high for parents to bear. Capitalists want you to ignore that calculation and simply sacrifice your health and time for the next generation while paying a sky-high cost of living that it created that requires both parents to be working. The economic conditions for life to thrive are becoming dim, and it's becoming rather obvious even to people who suck at valuing their time and worth. And climate change is a threat layered on top of that. >The solution: AGI, robotics and longevity are all things that the doomers are actively opposed to. These things will only go to the rich too, so not-rich people don't see it as a solution.
piva00 3y ago
> Geo engineering is a solution in the meantime (which she dismisses completely without reason "which could either cool the planet or kill us all even faster.") Geo engineering has exactly the same issue as ecosystem engineering, when we tried that without understanding the systems in play we simply create a gigantic game of whack-a-mole, with rats, cats, rabbits, so on and so forth. We don't understand enough to be confident we are able to do geo engineering without massive unforeseen consequences. It's such a complex system, with interactions that we are not equipped to predict (or even have a good comprehension), that the thought we can "just geo engineer in the meantime" is, to me, of incredible naïvety... It's a belief in technology completely unfounded, as if technology is magic, borderline deus ex machina. Just because we can create some technology does not mean we do understand the consequences of applying said technology on a global scale to mess up with climate systems, we simply don't know what might happen. Are you willing to bet the future of your children, grandchildren, etc. on unproven technology? I'm not. Geo engineering is not going to save us, stop believing in magic.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  > Are you willing to bet the future of your children, grandchildren, etc. on unproven technology? mon ami there is no choice. no amount of solar is going to magically meet our needs -- nuke or bust, basically -- and unless the human population gets cut in half, like, tomorrow, nothing is going to stop the impacts of climate change, that are now on a runaway train.
ibejoeb 3y ago
People are having heaps of kids. The population is increasing. Births continue to outpace deaths.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  Not in the West. Most Western countries would be losing population if it weren't for the effects of immigration. It's not even really true in China these days (in fact, China is looking at demographic collapse). India's population is still increasing, but only at a rate of about 0.81% per annum, compared to 2% or more through most of the 20th Century. Many expect it to continue to decline and go negative sometime in the next few decades. The so-called "Population Bomb" has turned out to be a dud almost everywhere.
  - ibejoeb 3y ago
    So? They're having eight kids per woman in the majority of Africa. To say "unless you hate humanity you probably want there to be one in the future," with the implication that we're running out of humans, is some alternate reality.
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      > So? > They're having eight kids per woman in the majority of Africa. First off, that's not true. The mean fertility in Africa is 4.2, not 8 or anything like it (8 may be the case in some areas, but not the "majority"). Secondly, China, India, and even Europe and the United States had very high fertility rates in the past. Now they don't.
CalRobert 3y ago
Perhaps it will make sense to worry about depopulation when we've had several decades of reductions in human population. Would it be a bad thing if the world had 2 billion people in the year 2300? Would it be better to have a slow reduction in population because the TFR was below 2 for a couple centuries, or a crash when we exceed our planet's carrying capacity? Hand-waving about "geoengineering will fix it" doesn't seem like a good faith argument, given that it has been described as very risky by well informed people.

vsareto 3y ago

>The real crisis is that people are not having kids People aren't having kids because of the cost and the stress of living when combined with the cost and stress of raising kids sums to something too high for parents to bear. Capitalists want you to ignore that calculation and simply sacrifice your health and time for the next generation while paying a sky-high cost of living that it created that requires both parents to be working. The economic conditions for life to thrive are becoming dim, and it's becoming rather obvious even to people who suck at valuing their time and worth. And climate change is a threat layered on top of that. >The solution: AGI, robotics and longevity are all things that the doomers are actively opposed to. These things will only go to the rich too, so not-rich people don't see it as a solution.

piva00 3y ago

> Geo engineering is a solution in the meantime (which she dismisses completely without reason "which could either cool the planet or kill us all even faster.") Geo engineering has exactly the same issue as ecosystem engineering, when we tried that without understanding the systems in play we simply create a gigantic game of whack-a-mole, with rats, cats, rabbits, so on and so forth. We don't understand enough to be confident we are able to do geo engineering without massive unforeseen consequences. It's such a complex system, with interactions that we are not equipped to predict (or even have a good comprehension), that the thought we can "just geo engineer in the meantime" is, to me, of incredible naïvety... It's a belief in technology completely unfounded, as if technology is magic, borderline deus ex machina. Just because we can create some technology does not mean we do understand the consequences of applying said technology on a global scale to mess up with climate systems, we simply don't know what might happen. Are you willing to bet the future of your children, grandchildren, etc. on unproven technology? I'm not. Geo engineering is not going to save us, stop believing in magic.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
> Are you willing to bet the future of your children, grandchildren, etc. on unproven technology? mon ami there is no choice. no amount of solar is going to magically meet our needs -- nuke or bust, basically -- and unless the human population gets cut in half, like, tomorrow, nothing is going to stop the impacts of climate change, that are now on a runaway train.

ibejoeb 3y ago

People are having heaps of kids. The population is increasing. Births continue to outpace deaths.

Turing_Machine 3y ago
Not in the West. Most Western countries would be losing population if it weren't for the effects of immigration. It's not even really true in China these days (in fact, China is looking at demographic collapse). India's population is still increasing, but only at a rate of about 0.81% per annum, compared to 2% or more through most of the 20th Century. Many expect it to continue to decline and go negative sometime in the next few decades. The so-called "Population Bomb" has turned out to be a dud almost everywhere.
- ibejoeb 3y ago
  So? They're having eight kids per woman in the majority of Africa. To say "unless you hate humanity you probably want there to be one in the future," with the implication that we're running out of humans, is some alternate reality.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > So? > They're having eight kids per woman in the majority of Africa. First off, that's not true. The mean fertility in Africa is 4.2, not 8 or anything like it (8 may be the case in some areas, but not the "majority"). Secondly, China, India, and even Europe and the United States had very high fertility rates in the past. Now they don't.

CalRobert 3y ago

Perhaps it will make sense to worry about depopulation when we've had several decades of reductions in human population. Would it be a bad thing if the world had 2 billion people in the year 2300? Would it be better to have a slow reduction in population because the TFR was below 2 for a couple centuries, or a crash when we exceed our planet's carrying capacity? Hand-waving about "geoengineering will fix it" doesn't seem like a good faith argument, given that it has been described as very risky by well informed people.