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This is a pretty interesting article but the conclusion is literally insane: > For all these reasons, rather than keeping weapons out of the sustainability dis
by tticvs 3y ago
This is a pretty interesting article but the conclusion is literally insane:
> For all these reasons, rather than keeping weapons out of the sustainability discussion – they should be our focus. If we cannot imagine low-tech warfare, we cannot imagine a low-tech, sustainable, and fair society. Switching to low-tech weapons sounds unrealistic because it would require global cooperation, but the same holds for lowering the emissions from fossil fuels. Switching to low-tech weapons sounds unrealistic because it involves “uninventing” things, but this also applies to many other problematic everyday products.
> Indeed, military technology is one of the few domains in which we have collectively decided not to use certain technologies. Humanity has banned many types of weapons in warfare, such as chemical and biological weapons, blinding laser weapons, and poisoned bullets. Meanwhile, no country has succeeded in outlawing SUVs, although their danger to other road users and the environment is well-known. As weird as it sounds, military technology leads by example
- Lacerda69 3y agoAs they say, war is the father of all things
- jareklupinski 3y agoi made a synthesizer once using absolutely no ill-will towards anyone
- fastball 3y agoAlso, the same actually doesn't apply to lowering emissions. You can get humanity to lower emissions by introducing technologies which are just better than the fossil fuel alternatives. This in turn should not require global cooperation. But for some reason this strategy does not seem well-liked amongst climate change activists.
- tticvs 3y agoAlmost as if their real goal isn't to lower emissions...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nonethewiser 3y ago> Meanwhile, no country has succeeded in outlawing SUVs All sorts of vehicles are banned from roads. Not banning SUVs doesn’t indicate that were unable to ban SUVs because of some lack of ability to regulate vehicle types on roads.
- brazzy 3y agoRead "unable" as "lack of political will", the conclusions are the same.
- nonethewiser 3y agoPrecisely. There is a lack of political willpower, not regulatory ability.
- osigurdson 3y agoPerhaps more lack of interest on the part of the body politic. Lots of people have / like SUVs so don't want to see them banned.
- nonethewiser 3y agoAbsolutely. SUVs are popular. They are the best selling vehicle type. Should be self evident that people generally dont want to ban them.
- Xylakant 3y agoThere's a line of reasoning that argues that chemical/biological weapons have not been banned because they're inhumane, but rather because they're costly and ineffective against a technologically advanced peer. Few things you can achieve with a chemical bomb against an advanced adversary cannot be better achieved with a nuclear bomb, while steamrolling an inferior adversary is easily possible using conventional means. See https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch... for a longer discussion. If one subscribes to that view, there's no argument that this was a collective decision for humanities sake, but rather a cost/benefit analysis by the military.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoThere are also global, collective, restrictions on the bomb though?
- brazzy 3y agoNuclear, you mean? Sure, but you can make the same argument about a cost/benefit analysis, they're more efficient as a threat or deterrent than in actual use.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago> they're more efficient as a threat or deterrent than in actual use. Why do you believe so?
- htrp 3y agoBetter example is landmines.
- shawabawa3 3y agoWe've banned the use of landmines globally? Someone should tell Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landmines_in_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landmines_in_Ukraine
- cnity 3y agoI think there is some interesting truth to this line of thinking, though it is misguided. To some degree, a diesel ship is not an all-out improvement over a sailboat. It outsources much of its cost to the environment. In this manner it is a tradeoff.
- sornaensis 3y agoIf you investigate all banned weapons though, you'll find it's more to do with practicality+cost+optics than some high minded agreement. Wars fought today are still brutal, and people use anything that will get them ahead. So e.g. chemical and biological weapons are pretty poor performers when you put them up against conventional weapons. For one thing, both can backfire greatly if for example they are improperly handled behind the frontlines. Weapons need to be stable and easy to handle and able to deal with fuckups without killing your own people. They also are expensive as hell, it costs a lot more (and is probably harder) to find competent people willing to make these types of weapons, and per dollar, they don't kill as many people as conventional bombs do. (See: World War 1) So, they are 'banned', but mostly because they aren't very effective. When you look at so-called chemical weapons that are in use, they are usually used for temporary area denial, are stable, not that lethal, if at all, and easy to produce: white phosphorus, CN and CS gas, etc. The US of course calls white phosphorus for 'illumination' but the people firing it know what they're using it for. So when they do beat out the alternatives, they get used anyway. Laser weapons are being developed but they are basically just not there yet. Batteries are heavy and the usefulness seems pretty limited to shooting down incoming drones/missiles possibly. Just using anti-missile missiles or just a stream of bullets is still cheaper and more reliable. Again, if you can see and hit someone in the eyes with a laser, why not just shoot them with a normal bullet? The economics don't make sense. Poisoned bullets I haven't really heard of, I'm not sure what kind of poison would survive being coated onto a bullet and fired out of a gun, or how making a really expensive nerve agent bullet and then shooting someone with it is better or more sensible than just shooting them with a regular bullet so I can't really comment. Expanding ammo was 'banned' but again, it was essentially replaced with spitzer style rifle bullets that are more accurate and effective anyway, and can have a similar result on impact. tldr it's not a good comparison to call these things actually banned in a meaningful sense.
- civilitty 3y agoA good complementary example is cluster munitions. They’re banned but the big players like Russia and the US never signed those treaties because they found the cluster munitions too useful, while signing plenty of chemical and biological weapons bans because they weren’t very useful.
- CalRobert 3y agoI loathe SUV's more than anyone I know but I think it's fair to acknowledge that we _have_ banned and/or regulated entire classes of vehicle. You need a commercial driver's license over 11,794 kg https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/registration/commercial-drivers-license/drivers https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/registration/commercial-drivers-li... (which feels bonkers compared to the 3,500 kg in Europe) for instance. Of course, safety is important, so you also are forbidden from operating electric scooters on many public roads.
- mc32 3y agoPeople need to rent/hire U-hauls to move. If that required a diff class of license it would suck for people who move —which is most people. Like I can move things myself. I don’t want to hire movers or a driver. I want to do things on my schedule.
- snypher 3y ago? Just call a contractor, same as electrical, plumbing etc.
- bluGill 3y agoI do all that myself as well. The work is not hard. It just takes some effort to learn.
- mutex_man 3y agoI can get a u-haul for under $100 and move myself if it's same city, only a few hundred if it's between. My move from Florida to DC was ~$700 total. Quotes for movers were easily 4x that cost.
- staringback 3y agoThis is definitely not supporting that point you wanted to make....
- CalRobert 3y agoSure but I rented a moving truck just fine - https://www.vanrentals.ie/ https://www.vanrentals.ie/.
- hliyan 3y agoIf this is taken a bit further, we might end up with the conclusion that it is better to not fight physically at all, instead opting to fight on paper and voluntarily administering some level of damage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon
- progne 3y ago> Switching to low-tech weapons sounds unrealistic because it would require global cooperation Imagine a version of game theory in which a defector gets a huge, overwhelming advantage, but everyone declines to defect because they just have so much integrity and a vision of a better world. Now imagine how different the universe would have to be for that to work.
- robertlagrant 3y agoIt, like most utopias, mostly just requires unlimited and undeniable resources to obviate most reasons for competition.