6 ms·

> Clearly, it is in humanity's best interest to... Herein lies the problem. What happens to the environment is not governed by "humanity's best interest", it's

• littleweep 3y ago
  I guess until govts realize enviromental security is national security...
• JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > t's governed by whomever has the most power and the biggest stick. These entities act in their own best interest Everyone acts in their own interests. The gilets jaunes were a grassroots protest against a gas tax increase. You see similar gas-station sticker-shock pressure exerted by voters in the United States. There are coordination problems to climate change. But it's less a prisoner's dilemma than a time-horizon problem: the fruits of a green transition won't yield for decades. (Economies of scale help with this. Geopolitical decoupling gets in the way of that--this is the only domain where I see the prisoner's dilemma that you allude to.)
  • dopidop 3y ago
    Digression : The Gillet jaune started this way. Very true. But also self organise to be something vastly different pretty quickly. Maybe 20 days into that months long movement ( it’s not officially over; like Korea war … )
• lastofthemojito 3y ago
  > At the executive level of either organization one would be laughed out of the room for suggesting environmental issues should take priority over national security Supposedly some folks are starting to frame climate issues as threats to national security. It may just be lip service so far, but we're now seeing "Meet the Climate Crisis" listed as one of the top 5 priorities for the US Department of Defense: https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3316641/secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-iii-message-to-the-force/ https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/331664...
  • ipnon 3y ago
    “Hell hath no wrath like a national security apparatus threatened,” I think that’s how it goes. Once USG, or Wall Street even, is threatened nothing is really off the table.
  • bombcar 3y ago
    I’m always extremely suspicious of “we care about climate charge” arguments that always argue for exactly what the group has always wanted to do.
    • RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
      The Green Party comes to mind. They pushed for the shuttering of German nuclear plants and ended up increasing CO2 emissions.
      • PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        They pushed for the shuttering of something they considered (and consider) an existential risk to life on the planet, and believed that movement towards renewable electricity generation would occur relatively quickly (which is now starting to happen, but did not happen as fast as they believed it would). You can call it a failure of judgement, but it's not what was claimed in the GP.
        • 3y ago
• account-5 3y ago
  > Repeat ad infitium. Unlikely since these entities all end when the environment is fucked. I don't know the Latin for: approx next 100 years.
• gmuslera 3y ago
  Another flavor of the Tragedy of the Commons. Everyone optimized by their local, short term priorities.
  • PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    And another opportunity for me to point out that there is no such thing as the Tragedy of the Commons. Garrett Hardin, who popularized the term, has walked it back, and others, as long ago as the 1990s, have pointed out with a wealth of evidence that the popular conception of "the Commons" never actually existed. More or less all "pooled" resources in human cultures have historically been carefully managed by a variety of cultural, social, political and economic systems. The so-called "Tragedy of the Commons" happens not because typical individuals over-use the resource, but because specific individuals violate norms, actively work to dismantle management processes and willfully work to utilize the resource for their own benefit to the detriment of others.
• mc32 3y ago
  Hmmm, I think if we had similar (but roving, pastoral, etc) neolithic with population we do today (ok, doubtfully possible, but whatever carrying capacity), we'd never the less have resource fouling, resource depletion and we'd be sending soot into the atmosphere.
• apsec112 3y ago
  The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions isn't military, it's for ordinary consumer uses like heating, cooling, driving, and farming meat. No matter what the form of government, lots of people will object very strongly if the solution to climate change is not having central heating, cars, hot water, or beef for dinner.
  • ribosometronome 3y ago
    Does renewable power and hydrogen/electric vehicles not solve essentially all of what you listed, save beef?
    • gravitronic 3y ago
      There's other significant issues, such as concrete. Read Bill Gates' "how to avoid a climate disaster" for a complete rundown, with receipts.
    • Tanoc 3y ago
      Nope. The way we build things from the ground up has to change. Literally build things. Flat topped buildings made out of steel and concrete surrounded by pavement generate tons of heat that doesn't get dissipated, which cascades into creating high pressure air bubbles around towns and cities that prevent rain from approaching. That cascades even further into affecting weather and creating droughts, because all the pavement prevents water from being absorbed by the ground and entering the water table. That water creates flash floods since the ground underneath the pavement is too dry to absorb it, creating a vicious cycle where the water table drops even further and the soil compacts and becomes even more hydrophobic. We have to stop building parking lots everywhere, stop building flat top highrises, stop using concrete and steel, build everything with roofs designed to absorb heat and transfer it into the ground instead of radiate it, tear up a good chunk of the highways, parking lots, and surface streets, plant tons of trees and broad leaf greenery to shield from heat with shade and absorb it, and refill the water tables by pumping water back into the ground. All of which costs a ton of money. And what we should do, damn the financial cost and those who decry it. Slapping a Mickey Mouse Band-Aid onto a gaping wound that needs seventy two stitches is the equivalent of what people suggest when they say "Well I'll just use renewable energy."
• yoyohello13 3y ago
  I recently came across a game theory term called "Moloch" in which individual incentives lead to negative outcomes for all parties involved. Nobody individually wants the negative outcome, but it's extremely difficult to break out of the cycle.
  • svachalek 3y ago
    I've also just learned this recently. See "Meditations on Moloch" for the original essay. It explains so much but it's also very depressing -- it's hard to imagine how any ordinary person has a prayer of changing the system when so many elements of it are primed to both produce terrible outcomes and to resist change. It's possible that you could design a new system of government deliberately designed to counter some of these natural tendencies, to change the rules of the game to reward beneficial outcomes better than selfish ones. But I don't know you'd ever get such a thing in place when the people who can make that kind of change are the ones with the most to lose.
    • Smoosh 3y ago
      It is interesting that the Great Filter Theory usually concerns itself with issues such as nuclear weapons, or disease, but not the failure to overcome greed and self-interest, which, let's face it, is how the modern world is structured.
    • nostrademons 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure SlateStarCodex coined the term, in reference to game theory. It's originally from an Alan Ginsberg poem, and I've never seen it anywhere else in game theory literature. The game-theoretical term is a "Nash equilibrium", which is the state that reality ends up in if every participant follows their own incentives (i.e. no participant can improve their individual outcome by altering their decisions). It is possible - even very common in many real-life games - to end up with a negative Nash equilibrium. The classic example is the Prisoner's Dilemma, where the globally-optimal solution is for neither player to defect, but each individual improves their own outcome by defecting, and so what actually happens is that both suspects confess. It's also possible to achieve a positive Nash equilibrium out of morally-abhorrent individual choices. Mutually-assured destruction is a good example. The game is setup so that if either superpower launches their missiles, humanity ends. Therefore, both superpowers have an incentive to avoid nuclear war, and we're still here.
• hinkley 3y ago
  And even that's not true. It's governed by the eyeballs of whoever has the most power and the biggest stick. We don't, for instance, know what the actual rates of theft is in a civilization because we cannot accurately discern lost belongings from stolen belongings. Anyone who tells you they think they know the number is absolutely full of shit. A truly crafty thief makes you think you lost something, used it up, or threw it away. In which case there is no report, because as far as you know nothing happened. The better the criminals, the bigger the disparity between the reality of theft and the perception of theft. I can't beat you with a stick if you're dumping toxins somewhere I can't see. And it's no good beating your successors once you're dead, or you once you're very old, because there is no lesson to learn there except that you can get away with bad things for 30 years, so time your crimes accordingly.