7 ms·

Doesn't matter how good the tech gets, you'll eventually run out of resources to build them. Between topsoil depletion, fresh water scarcity, usable sand and p

Doesn't matter how good the tech gets, you'll eventually run out of resources to build them. Between topsoil depletion, fresh water scarcity, usable sand and precious metal scarcity, and ocean acidification leading to an eventual possible extinction of all edible seafood, it's looking like we aren't going to be able to just keep building new tech to keep supporting our current population, especially at the rampant level of consumption companies have been training them on (nevermind a perpetually increasing population). And likely we're going to start running out of these things (and others) in certain locations, and eventually everywhere, if we don't find the will to completely reverse course (and it's clear there's been no real will to do so by those in charge). Conversion to electric cars and solar panels just improves the CO2 problem, it doesn't address the rest. I like Vitalik and own Ethereum and I love technology, but I still don't see anything that's likely to resolve the fundamental problem that we're just using resources way, way faster than they can be replaced on this finite planet, and eventually it's going to catch up to us, short of some form of major human cataclysm (like a super pandemic or something) that happens before resources start running out.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago
May as well just pack up the human race and give up right now if thats the attitude. Earth wont be around forever, and currently our only ticket off is increasing our technology and power consumption.
ctoth 3y ago
Sounds like an even better reason to start working on space travel! The Universe is really, really, really, really, really, really, and even more really than you can probably count big! I guess this is what the bible meant when it said: "the meek will inherit the earth"
poszlem 3y ago
This all falls apart as soon as you look into the night sky and see that, no, we are actually not running out of resources any time soon.
- boringg 3y ago
  Cost to extract and re-create what planet earth creates from biology from which benefits and is essential for humanity isn't achievable in space. You can get rare metals and materials but the insects and organic materials essential for life aren't out there in any reasonable way .. unless you know of a planet that has those ecosystem services.
  - tech_ken 3y ago
    Plus you've got to deal with the biological offensive you're going to be exposing yourself to. Imagine a whole planet of microorganisms against which we have no immunity or medical experience. Do we even have an antibiotic that would be effective against the new lifeplans we'd encounter? The Spanish colonizers of the Americas died in droves, and likewise the indigenous population; all this from bacteria in lineages which our bodies were familiar with! Now imagine what you're going to experience on a fictional planet with an ecosystem that could support our bodies. We'd be living in hazmat suits for generations, or would have to burn the planet to ash and start fresh.
- tuyiown 3y ago
  I suspect we might need a little bit of the pesky «logistics» thing between us and the stars.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  Are you sure humanity is going to get there, and survive, before they run out of resources to build what's needed for such a thing here on Earth? Also even if we do that, there's only a tiny fraction of the people on Earth that will be able to go on that journey. Most of the people born here are definitely stuck here. There are predictions that some of these things could start happening as early as 2050 (specifically the extinction of edible seafood one), and most of what I mentioned maybe happening by 2100. Is the majority of people here still alive at that time going to be off this planet then?
- jjulius 3y ago
  ... uhh, sure, if you can get to the planet a resource is on, harvest it, and bring it back before we run out of it here.
monero-xmr 3y ago
That is the Malthusian take. The Club of Rome famously announced in "Limits to Growth" that we were going to run out of resources, and it caused great anxiety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome They were totally wrong on every point. All of their predictions failed. It's because technology constantly adapts. If some resource is low, alternatives are found. Productivity increases. Price signals tell entrepreneurs what to work on and produce more of. We will never run out of anything. Regarding CO2, it pains me greatly that people actually think a few degrees change in temperature will destroy the earth. The earth has been much warmer and much colder. Mesopotamia used to be paradise, now it's a desert. Regions change. Humans adapt. This is no reason to do something extreme, or live with existential grief. For people that live in constant anxiety about all the things politicians and the news tell you about, I recommend this book, what can it hurt giving it a read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vision_of_the_Anointed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vision_of_the_Anointed
willio58 3y ago
I’m under the impression that we’ve been experienced like 1% of the detrimental effects of climate change and real change won’t occur until mass deaths start to actually happen. Either that or we’ll reach a point where the effects start to actually affect the rich (billionaires) in a way that causes them to start lobbying in a way that actually benefits the climate rather than doing so only for show. But yeah, there just doesn’t seem to be enough incentive yet unfortunately. But if, say, there were mass protests world-wide there could be action from governments and companies. The problem is people just don’t care that much, but when millions are dead we might start caring.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  The problem with waiting is that there are potential tipping points where the Earth itself begins releasing carbon. It's entirely possible (perhaps even likely; my impression is that the scientists don't really know, but are terrified by the possibilites already) that by the time we see what you consider real consequences, the process will have runaway far beyond humanity's ability to control.
slibhb 3y ago
The idea that we're at some fundamental limit where we can't keep building technology without destroying the environment seems wrong. Besides solar power, there's plenty of room for alternate, environmentally friendly technologies to address the problems you mention. I can't help but think the actual motivation behind your attitude is not environmentalism but a pessimism about technology that amounts to an extreme form of conservatism. At worst it's a kind of misanthropy. Technology isn't always good but we should keep building it. I'm not sure how much pressure we should be applying to the brake. Definitely some, but not as much as you're advocating.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > I can't help but think the actual motivation behind your attitude is not environmentalism but a pessimism about technology that amounts to an extreme form of conservatism. Care to elaborate on this speculation? Sounds more like a harbinger of collectivist austerity to me.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  Again I love technology. I probably have more of it in my house than most people. I'm literally surrounded by two laptops and a desktop right now (with two other laptops in the room). Hell, I just bought a force feedback steering wheel yesterday, and it's super fun (I shouldn't have bought it considering what I'm saying here, but I did). I would love if there was a technological solution to these things, and the human will to do so. I don't even want people to stop searching for technological solutions, it just doesn't seem like it will ever be enough considering human nature. I also suspect that throwing more technology at the problem might just add more problems, like taking a shot to lose weight that ends up giving you pancreatic cancer a few years later (based on an actual warning label on an Ozempic-like sample my doctor gave me once). Edit: Part of the reason I have so many laptops is my job requires it, and one of those extra laptops is 8 years old and I haven't recycled it yet. Whenever I change jobs I'll have to return 2 of those laptops.
  - throwitaway222 3y ago
    As you make more and more money it is easy to just keep purchasing, and then yelling from soap boxes how no one has the will to save the environment.
kiba 3y ago
Our biological resources and ecological systems, sure. Earth's inner core is literally a molten ball of iron and nickel. Earth crust contained plenty of minerals, including elements like silicon and oxygen. Now, we could go full hog on population growth, assuming no ecological issues. What we might run into is the problem of heat dissipation. Humans are basically 100 watts space heaters. Never mind all the infrastructure needed to support a human population. How much can we produce before there's too much heat? Producing steel is a heat intensive process.
Emma_Goldman 3y ago
You are conflating absolute resource scarcity with planetary boundaries. There is no absolute resource scarcity on any meaningful timescale, there is only a related question about the size of the resources which will become economically recoverable over succeeding centuries. Resource-to-production ratios are often used to suggest that certain resources will run out within a number of decades, but that is just a form of corporate book-keeping - new exploration, technologies, and rising prices, can and do push the search for new reserves. The R-P ratios at the heart of the Limits to Growth argument have actually improved since the 1970s despite rising consumption, for exactly that reason. You are right, however, that there are clear tensions between compound growth and planetary boundaries like ocean acidification and topsoil depletion. That is really the crux of the issue - how many times can we multiply the size of the economy without, through sheer weight of exploitation of natural resource sources and sinks, and of material power and artifice, destroying the planet.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  I don't think I actually disagree with anything you're saying here. I'm not really arguing exactly whatever is in the Limits to Growth book (I've heard of it but haven't read it), but I do think we are overutilizing resources faster than they can recover, and we can't just create a "make some new fossil fuels" or "make the sand that we need" tech at the scale that we would need to replace them. Like fossil fuels for example, take millions of years for the planet to produce naturally, but we've burned through a good chunk of what is cheap to extract and process in about a hundred years. I might be including two things that are a bit different from each other, but they all contribute to our ability to thrive as a species, especially at our (average) level of comfort and consumption currently.
  - kiba 3y ago
    We are literally getting more energy from the sun than we could know what to do with it at this moment. The problem is that we oriented our society around the use of certain technology and resources are destructive to the planet's ecological and biological systems. I might be including two things that are a bit different from each other, but they all contribute to our ability to thrive as a species, especially at our (average) level of comfort and consumption currently. It's possible that certain overuse of certain technology is actually causing us discomfort. Cars are energy intensive mode of transportation and manufacture. We could all walk more and be subjected to less pollution and experience a greater quality of life.
ETH_start 3y ago
With better technology, you can: * reduce ocean acidification by reducing CO2 — which is the primary cause of ocean acidification — emitted per unit of energy generated. For instance, solar panels are becoming more effective and affordable, and this progress is happening at a rapid rate. Wind turbines are advancing nearly as fast. There's also progress in carbon capture and storage technology, which can directly reduce the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere. Nuclear energy also has enormous potential. * create new topsoil and increase the amount of food produced per unit of topsoil. For example, the use of GPS and IoT devices in agriculture allows farms to optimize planting and harvesting, toincrease output while reducing topsoil degradation. The same applies to the rapidly progressing fields of hydroponics and vertical farming * recycle more precious metals, and access more precious metals in the Earth's crust, and outside of the Earth. This also applies to material classes other than precious metals, including critical minerals like lithium, where companies are developing methods to more efficiently recycle lithium from batteries. The steady improvement of compost system manufacturing and distribution meanwhile makes topsoil generation more accessible and affordable. * generate more fresh water, through technologies like desalination and more efficient water filtration systems, which makes previously unusable water drinkable. Many of these are energy intensive, and the potential to expand clean energy output is absolutely enormous, from sources including solar, nuclear fission reactors and nuclear fusion reactors.
kortilla 3y ago
This is just doomer material not really based on any fundamental limits. If someone took the technology of the early 1900s and looked forward at the population growth, the conclusion would have been as bleak as yours, if not worse. Topsoil depletion isn’t a problem for people that know how to farm. Market forces will quickly incentivize people who don’t understand it when there is starvation at stake. Right now we have such an over abundance of affordable food that it’s just not a global threat. Freshwater access is likewise a complete non-issue at a global scale. The absolute worst case is people pay for it like in Israel with desalination, but there even in the US in the driest parts, we’re still arguing about letting farmers grow the dumbest crops possible for free.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  > Freshwater access is likewise a complete non-issue at a global scale. "Water scarcity affects roughly 40% of the world's population and, according to predictions by the United Nations and the World Bank, drought could put up to 700 million people at risk of displacement by 2030. People like van der Heijden are concerned about what that could lead to. "If there is no water, politicians are going to try and get their hands on it and they might start to fight over it," she says."[1] But no, a complete non-issue. Just build desalination plants, poor countries! [1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210816-how-water-shortages-are-brewing-wars https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210816-how-water-shorta...
xyzelement 3y ago
I sympathize with your concern but I don't personally share it. Just to share my perspective (which is not the same as trying to argue that you're wrong...) First, this concern is as old as the world[1] - and I experienced a version of this in the mid-90s when people were freaking out about peak oil[2] using much the same language/tone/concepts as you're voicing in your message. My point isn't that past performance guarantees future returns, but that there's something about this type of idea/anxiety that is inherently "sticky" in people's minds, separately from how it has actually panned out. Second, I think you're missing a logical step between "we aren't going to be able to just keep building new tech" and "rampant level of consumption companies have been training them on." Companies have been able to "train" consumers to the current level of consumption precisely because resource availability has made it possible. If a resource became scarce, the price of goods based on that item would go up and thus consumption would go down. For example, see the graph of oil consumption in the US that naturally dropped by quite a bit around the supply shock of the Iranian revolution. [3] The fact is obvious that humans can shift our consumption patterns, either by consuming less of something or shifting our consumption to a different type of thing. We naturally do this all the time as resource availability (and thus price) determine what is and isn't economical to be consuming. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil [3] https://www.ourworldofenergy.com/vignettes.php?type=introduction-to-energy&id=8 https://www.ourworldofenergy.com/vignettes.php?type=introduc...
lr1970 3y ago
Just to start, lets ban practice of building (almost) irreplaceable batteries into phones, laptops and other electronic devices. The amount of electronic waste generated by forcing consumers to upgrade because the batteries are failing is staggering especially if one counts all the waste produced building those devices. When Apple is talking about its ESG strategy I am laughing through my tears.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Sure, if we have an ever increasing population, we're going to run into resource limits, but the vast majority of experts believe the population is going to stop increasing, they just disagree about when and at what level. Secondly, the resources we use per dollar of GDP is going down rapidly. Not as fast as GDP is growing, but it is going down. Given that a good portion of our growing GDP is due to growing population, once the "growing population" part of it goes away, it's not unreasonable to expect that resources/$GDP will shrink at the same rate that $GDP grows. It's not unreasonable -- if we have access to lots of clean energy and we recycle efficiently our footprint will go down substantially. For example, the iPhone 25 will be better than the iPhone 24 yet likely use less resources. And the upgrade cycle for iPhone's is slowing down -- an iPhone 18 will still likely be "good enough". The biggie is food. Food uses a lot of resources. If we stabilize the population that'll take a lot of strain off, but I believe that we can significantly reduce our resource requirements for food. Right now we grow our food the way we do not because it requires so many resources, but because that's the cheapest way to do so. For example, if we used a lot more greenhouses we'd use a lot less land for the same amount of food, but we don't because greenhouses are more expensive than just using a lot of land. Also, I'm very optimistic about "precision fermentation".
- stillwithit 3y ago
  Would the industrial pipeline to build sufficient greenhouses not just make up for the mess saved in production of food? Invisible resource consumption pipelines offset resource savings elsewhere. Drink carts on airplanes have their own resource supply chain while most just think of the fuel costs. Reducing life for the masses to “make money” has infantilized people. Not so sure why we’re afraid of pushing back against a generation that can barely hold its head up and the tacit ageism they put upon us to prop them up at our expense.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    No it wouldn't. Glass and steel are easily and highly profitably recyclable when done in volume.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

May as well just pack up the human race and give up right now if thats the attitude. Earth wont be around forever, and currently our only ticket off is increasing our technology and power consumption.

ctoth 3y ago

Sounds like an even better reason to start working on space travel! The Universe is really, really, really, really, really, really, and even more really than you can probably count big! I guess this is what the bible meant when it said: "the meek will inherit the earth"

poszlem 3y ago

This all falls apart as soon as you look into the night sky and see that, no, we are actually not running out of resources any time soon.

boringg 3y ago
Cost to extract and re-create what planet earth creates from biology from which benefits and is essential for humanity isn't achievable in space. You can get rare metals and materials but the insects and organic materials essential for life aren't out there in any reasonable way .. unless you know of a planet that has those ecosystem services.
- tech_ken 3y ago
  Plus you've got to deal with the biological offensive you're going to be exposing yourself to. Imagine a whole planet of microorganisms against which we have no immunity or medical experience. Do we even have an antibiotic that would be effective against the new lifeplans we'd encounter? The Spanish colonizers of the Americas died in droves, and likewise the indigenous population; all this from bacteria in lineages which our bodies were familiar with! Now imagine what you're going to experience on a fictional planet with an ecosystem that could support our bodies. We'd be living in hazmat suits for generations, or would have to burn the planet to ash and start fresh.
tuyiown 3y ago
I suspect we might need a little bit of the pesky «logistics» thing between us and the stars.
cableshaft 3y ago
Are you sure humanity is going to get there, and survive, before they run out of resources to build what's needed for such a thing here on Earth? Also even if we do that, there's only a tiny fraction of the people on Earth that will be able to go on that journey. Most of the people born here are definitely stuck here. There are predictions that some of these things could start happening as early as 2050 (specifically the extinction of edible seafood one), and most of what I mentioned maybe happening by 2100. Is the majority of people here still alive at that time going to be off this planet then?
jjulius 3y ago
... uhh, sure, if you can get to the planet a resource is on, harvest it, and bring it back before we run out of it here.

monero-xmr 3y ago

That is the Malthusian take. The Club of Rome famously announced in "Limits to Growth" that we were going to run out of resources, and it caused great anxiety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome They were totally wrong on every point. All of their predictions failed. It's because technology constantly adapts. If some resource is low, alternatives are found. Productivity increases. Price signals tell entrepreneurs what to work on and produce more of. We will never run out of anything. Regarding CO2, it pains me greatly that people actually think a few degrees change in temperature will destroy the earth. The earth has been much warmer and much colder. Mesopotamia used to be paradise, now it's a desert. Regions change. Humans adapt. This is no reason to do something extreme, or live with existential grief. For people that live in constant anxiety about all the things politicians and the news tell you about, I recommend this book, what can it hurt giving it a read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vision_of_the_Anointed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vision_of_the_Anointed

willio58 3y ago

I’m under the impression that we’ve been experienced like 1% of the detrimental effects of climate change and real change won’t occur until mass deaths start to actually happen. Either that or we’ll reach a point where the effects start to actually affect the rich (billionaires) in a way that causes them to start lobbying in a way that actually benefits the climate rather than doing so only for show. But yeah, there just doesn’t seem to be enough incentive yet unfortunately. But if, say, there were mass protests world-wide there could be action from governments and companies. The problem is people just don’t care that much, but when millions are dead we might start caring.

hotpotamus 3y ago
The problem with waiting is that there are potential tipping points where the Earth itself begins releasing carbon. It's entirely possible (perhaps even likely; my impression is that the scientists don't really know, but are terrified by the possibilites already) that by the time we see what you consider real consequences, the process will have runaway far beyond humanity's ability to control.

slibhb 3y ago

The idea that we're at some fundamental limit where we can't keep building technology without destroying the environment seems wrong. Besides solar power, there's plenty of room for alternate, environmentally friendly technologies to address the problems you mention. I can't help but think the actual motivation behind your attitude is not environmentalism but a pessimism about technology that amounts to an extreme form of conservatism. At worst it's a kind of misanthropy. Technology isn't always good but we should keep building it. I'm not sure how much pressure we should be applying to the brake. Definitely some, but not as much as you're advocating.

nonethewiser 3y ago
> I can't help but think the actual motivation behind your attitude is not environmentalism but a pessimism about technology that amounts to an extreme form of conservatism. Care to elaborate on this speculation? Sounds more like a harbinger of collectivist austerity to me.
cableshaft 3y ago
Again I love technology. I probably have more of it in my house than most people. I'm literally surrounded by two laptops and a desktop right now (with two other laptops in the room). Hell, I just bought a force feedback steering wheel yesterday, and it's super fun (I shouldn't have bought it considering what I'm saying here, but I did). I would love if there was a technological solution to these things, and the human will to do so. I don't even want people to stop searching for technological solutions, it just doesn't seem like it will ever be enough considering human nature. I also suspect that throwing more technology at the problem might just add more problems, like taking a shot to lose weight that ends up giving you pancreatic cancer a few years later (based on an actual warning label on an Ozempic-like sample my doctor gave me once). Edit: Part of the reason I have so many laptops is my job requires it, and one of those extra laptops is 8 years old and I haven't recycled it yet. Whenever I change jobs I'll have to return 2 of those laptops.
- throwitaway222 3y ago
  As you make more and more money it is easy to just keep purchasing, and then yelling from soap boxes how no one has the will to save the environment.

kiba 3y ago

Our biological resources and ecological systems, sure. Earth's inner core is literally a molten ball of iron and nickel. Earth crust contained plenty of minerals, including elements like silicon and oxygen. Now, we could go full hog on population growth, assuming no ecological issues. What we might run into is the problem of heat dissipation. Humans are basically 100 watts space heaters. Never mind all the infrastructure needed to support a human population. How much can we produce before there's too much heat? Producing steel is a heat intensive process.

Emma_Goldman 3y ago

You are conflating absolute resource scarcity with planetary boundaries. There is no absolute resource scarcity on any meaningful timescale, there is only a related question about the size of the resources which will become economically recoverable over succeeding centuries. Resource-to-production ratios are often used to suggest that certain resources will run out within a number of decades, but that is just a form of corporate book-keeping - new exploration, technologies, and rising prices, can and do push the search for new reserves. The R-P ratios at the heart of the Limits to Growth argument have actually improved since the 1970s despite rising consumption, for exactly that reason. You are right, however, that there are clear tensions between compound growth and planetary boundaries like ocean acidification and topsoil depletion. That is really the crux of the issue - how many times can we multiply the size of the economy without, through sheer weight of exploitation of natural resource sources and sinks, and of material power and artifice, destroying the planet.

cableshaft 3y ago
I don't think I actually disagree with anything you're saying here. I'm not really arguing exactly whatever is in the Limits to Growth book (I've heard of it but haven't read it), but I do think we are overutilizing resources faster than they can recover, and we can't just create a "make some new fossil fuels" or "make the sand that we need" tech at the scale that we would need to replace them. Like fossil fuels for example, take millions of years for the planet to produce naturally, but we've burned through a good chunk of what is cheap to extract and process in about a hundred years. I might be including two things that are a bit different from each other, but they all contribute to our ability to thrive as a species, especially at our (average) level of comfort and consumption currently.
- kiba 3y ago
  We are literally getting more energy from the sun than we could know what to do with it at this moment. The problem is that we oriented our society around the use of certain technology and resources are destructive to the planet's ecological and biological systems. I might be including two things that are a bit different from each other, but they all contribute to our ability to thrive as a species, especially at our (average) level of comfort and consumption currently. It's possible that certain overuse of certain technology is actually causing us discomfort. Cars are energy intensive mode of transportation and manufacture. We could all walk more and be subjected to less pollution and experience a greater quality of life.

ETH_start 3y ago

With better technology, you can: * reduce ocean acidification by reducing CO2 — which is the primary cause of ocean acidification — emitted per unit of energy generated. For instance, solar panels are becoming more effective and affordable, and this progress is happening at a rapid rate. Wind turbines are advancing nearly as fast. There's also progress in carbon capture and storage technology, which can directly reduce the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere. Nuclear energy also has enormous potential. * create new topsoil and increase the amount of food produced per unit of topsoil. For example, the use of GPS and IoT devices in agriculture allows farms to optimize planting and harvesting, toincrease output while reducing topsoil degradation. The same applies to the rapidly progressing fields of hydroponics and vertical farming * recycle more precious metals, and access more precious metals in the Earth's crust, and outside of the Earth. This also applies to material classes other than precious metals, including critical minerals like lithium, where companies are developing methods to more efficiently recycle lithium from batteries. The steady improvement of compost system manufacturing and distribution meanwhile makes topsoil generation more accessible and affordable. * generate more fresh water, through technologies like desalination and more efficient water filtration systems, which makes previously unusable water drinkable. Many of these are energy intensive, and the potential to expand clean energy output is absolutely enormous, from sources including solar, nuclear fission reactors and nuclear fusion reactors.

kortilla 3y ago

This is just doomer material not really based on any fundamental limits. If someone took the technology of the early 1900s and looked forward at the population growth, the conclusion would have been as bleak as yours, if not worse. Topsoil depletion isn’t a problem for people that know how to farm. Market forces will quickly incentivize people who don’t understand it when there is starvation at stake. Right now we have such an over abundance of affordable food that it’s just not a global threat. Freshwater access is likewise a complete non-issue at a global scale. The absolute worst case is people pay for it like in Israel with desalination, but there even in the US in the driest parts, we’re still arguing about letting farmers grow the dumbest crops possible for free.

cableshaft 3y ago
> Freshwater access is likewise a complete non-issue at a global scale. "Water scarcity affects roughly 40% of the world's population and, according to predictions by the United Nations and the World Bank, drought could put up to 700 million people at risk of displacement by 2030. People like van der Heijden are concerned about what that could lead to. "If there is no water, politicians are going to try and get their hands on it and they might start to fight over it," she says."[1] But no, a complete non-issue. Just build desalination plants, poor countries! [1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210816-how-water-shortages-are-brewing-wars https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210816-how-water-shorta...

xyzelement 3y ago

I sympathize with your concern but I don't personally share it. Just to share my perspective (which is not the same as trying to argue that you're wrong...) First, this concern is as old as the world[1] - and I experienced a version of this in the mid-90s when people were freaking out about peak oil[2] using much the same language/tone/concepts as you're voicing in your message. My point isn't that past performance guarantees future returns, but that there's something about this type of idea/anxiety that is inherently "sticky" in people's minds, separately from how it has actually panned out. Second, I think you're missing a logical step between "we aren't going to be able to just keep building new tech" and "rampant level of consumption companies have been training them on." Companies have been able to "train" consumers to the current level of consumption precisely because resource availability has made it possible. If a resource became scarce, the price of goods based on that item would go up and thus consumption would go down. For example, see the graph of oil consumption in the US that naturally dropped by quite a bit around the supply shock of the Iranian revolution. [3] The fact is obvious that humans can shift our consumption patterns, either by consuming less of something or shifting our consumption to a different type of thing. We naturally do this all the time as resource availability (and thus price) determine what is and isn't economical to be consuming. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil [3] https://www.ourworldofenergy.com/vignettes.php?type=introduction-to-energy&id=8 https://www.ourworldofenergy.com/vignettes.php?type=introduc...

lr1970 3y ago

Just to start, lets ban practice of building (almost) irreplaceable batteries into phones, laptops and other electronic devices. The amount of electronic waste generated by forcing consumers to upgrade because the batteries are failing is staggering especially if one counts all the waste produced building those devices. When Apple is talking about its ESG strategy I am laughing through my tears.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Sure, if we have an ever increasing population, we're going to run into resource limits, but the vast majority of experts believe the population is going to stop increasing, they just disagree about when and at what level. Secondly, the resources we use per dollar of GDP is going down rapidly. Not as fast as GDP is growing, but it is going down. Given that a good portion of our growing GDP is due to growing population, once the "growing population" part of it goes away, it's not unreasonable to expect that resources/$GDP will shrink at the same rate that $GDP grows. It's not unreasonable -- if we have access to lots of clean energy and we recycle efficiently our footprint will go down substantially. For example, the iPhone 25 will be better than the iPhone 24 yet likely use less resources. And the upgrade cycle for iPhone's is slowing down -- an iPhone 18 will still likely be "good enough". The biggie is food. Food uses a lot of resources. If we stabilize the population that'll take a lot of strain off, but I believe that we can significantly reduce our resource requirements for food. Right now we grow our food the way we do not because it requires so many resources, but because that's the cheapest way to do so. For example, if we used a lot more greenhouses we'd use a lot less land for the same amount of food, but we don't because greenhouses are more expensive than just using a lot of land. Also, I'm very optimistic about "precision fermentation".

stillwithit 3y ago
Would the industrial pipeline to build sufficient greenhouses not just make up for the mess saved in production of food? Invisible resource consumption pipelines offset resource savings elsewhere. Drink carts on airplanes have their own resource supply chain while most just think of the fuel costs. Reducing life for the masses to “make money” has infantilized people. Not so sure why we’re afraid of pushing back against a generation that can barely hold its head up and the tacit ageism they put upon us to prop them up at our expense.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  No it wouldn't. Glass and steel are easily and highly profitably recyclable when done in volume.