[corporateslaver]

That’s what happens when you have this many people. For the kind of population growth, it’s either we stop having so many people, or the animals die. It’s us or them. Why is this so hard to understand? No amount of talking points and musing on environmentalism will take away those facts of human existence.

How could the industrial boom in China or the USA in the late 1800s and early 1900s have happened without emvironmental destruction? How can growth happen in China now without it? Get real about human development and the necessities of human development.

[dwaltrip]

It's a function of lingering ingorance and misaligned incentives. We have the technology and the institutions that can prevent the majority of this damage, despite our large numbers.

[codeisawesome]

I am genuinely curious. Clean energy systems exist, but they are either expensive, restricted and dangerous to proliferate or expensive, inefficient and inconvenient.

What institutions exist that can make clean energy palatable to all the human societies that require it for their survival—at-scale, that they are all ignoring?

Leaving energy aside, what other powerful means of doing good to ecosystems as a whole, are they simply ignoring? Is there any quantification of the damage?

I am most certainly not trying to attack your position. I pretty much believe the same things you said. But we should have these answers documented. Is there a single source for these things on the web?

[carapace]

Toby Hemenway - "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nLKHYHmPbo

Notes:

He reframes "sustainable" as the midpoint of a spectrum with "degenerative" on one side and "regenerative" on the other and emphasizes regenerative systems.

He talks about the length of time we (humans) have been doing "culture" (group activities, pottery, art, singing and music, etc.) and points out that it's roughly a million (1,000,000) years-- and that agriculture has only been happening for about ten thousand years, about 1% of that time.

Five culture types based on food getting technology: 1 Foraging; 2 Hunter-gatherer; 3 Agricultural (cities); 5 Pastoral (Animal herding); 5 Industrial

Then follows a great deal of the "dirt" on agriculture. Old hat to those who know it, horrifying and challenging to those who don't. Hemenway sums it up, "Agriculture... ...converts ecosystems into people."

(Oil => Food => People) x (Peak Oil) = Hoshit! i.e. we made people out of oil for the last few generations and now we are running out of oil. Could be trouble...

Holmgrin's scenarios:

1 Techno-fantasy (technology saves the day and we pack ourselves in like sardines until something else gives, or spew forth and colonize the galaxy until we reach the expansion limits of our space-drives... Technology doesn't solve the problem, only postpones it.)

2 Green-tech stable - stabilize population (match growth and death rates) and live within the Solar energy budget while regenerating the Earth.

3 Graceful decline - (growth rate less than death rate for awhile...) "Earth Stewardship" "Permaculture" I don't know where the people are supposed to have gone.

4 "Atlantis" - i.e. doom. Personally I think this is the most likely, but I'm okay with being proven wrong on that.

"Peak Wood" - no kidding. Peak Oil seems to have happened before with wood instead of oil, and could be responsible for bringing the Bronze Age to a close. Wow.

Last but not least, Horticulture to the rescue! All the great things about Permaculture and a Neo-Horticultural society.

The video is excellent and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in these subjects.

[bonesss]

> 2 Green-tech stable - stabilize population (match growth and death rates) and live within the Solar energy budget while regenerating the Earth.

Ok, we have something like 450 nuclear reactors globally. IIRC bumping that number up 10 times would give us roughly two times our current global energy usage (ie fuels and electricity).

That's a margin that could reasonably address energy requirements for synthetic fuel production & delivery, sustain the additional energy we want to use for cleaner but energy demanding electrical processes in industry, and arguably put us on footing to end global poverty. Atomic process heat is wicked-good for desalination, critical to avoid water-related wars. "Next gen" tech (from the 70s...), conceivably could let us think about replenishing continental aquifers, and all round have enough energy to continue exploring space. All without any social engineering or major lifestyle or geopolitical reshaping.

I'm a big fan of solar, but our global solar energy budget has some tricky hurdles before we get to 200% current global energy usage. And I'm not enthused about anything that requires a centrally managed government (that doesn't exist today), managing life and death. It sounds scary and ripe for dystopian outcomes.

[kmmlng]

It seems that all these points assume naturally unlimited and indefinite population growth, but it is projected that the world population will reach a certain point and then level off (see https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth for some charts).

The basic argument is that increasing the education of women leads to fewer children. You can already see this in developed countries which are actually starting to exhibit negative population growth (e.g. Japan).

[codeisawesome]

Thank you, I love this subject and will watch.

[dwaltrip]

Sorry it's been a long day, so I don't have the energy to write much.

One simple place to start is placing large taxes on the most harfmul activities (e.g. generating co2). This should incentive increased investment in safer energy sources.

Ideally, this should be a multi-national effort led by all the wealthy countries. They should also create investment funds to help more quickly developing nations move past lower tech, harfmul energy sources (need a lot oversight here to make sure there isn't any economic exploitation).

I'm not super well-researched, but there does seem to be a lot of effective, actionable solutions that we can start today. The above are just a small sample.

[tremon]

One simple place to start is placing large taxes on the most harfmul activities (e.g. generating co2). This should incentive increased investment in safer energy sources.

This was the basis for the Kyoto Protocol [1] in 1997, which sought to limit greenhouse gas emissions by making organizations pay for a license to emit greenhouse gases. It even put most of the burden on developed nations, as you suggest.

Now, you may argue that the costs for licenses were not steep enough, or that the resulting emissions trading market diluted the effectiveness of the regulation, or that the US' refusal to ratify it makes effectively a failed attempt -- but what you propose has been tried before.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol

[codeisawesome]

Understand. Thanks for stating some options - but like you said, it’s not 100% in the hands of the currently developing economies... but it would appear that a lot of commentary hates on them for being the polluters right now.

[vkou]

> How could the industrial boom in China or the USA in the late 1800s and early 1900s have happened without emvironmental destruction? How can growth happen in China now without it? Get real about human development and the necessities of human development.

Not all of that environmental and human damage was necessary. Much of it was out of ignorance, and more was out greed, combined with a callous disregard for human life.

[nothrabannosir]

> Why is this so hard to understand?

Who said anything about hard to understand?

Are you explaining the observation or justifying it? Because the former might be a fool’s errand; everyone understands, as you so eloquently put it.

In other words: just because I know why something happens, doesn’t mean that I think it’s a good thing, or that it shouldn’t change.

[corporateslaver]

I’m saying enough with these lamentations about the environment, would these people rather be living in the woods? It’s complete nonsense. Destroying the environment has been a necessary step to human evolution.

[nothrabannosir]

This feels brittle. Does that include lamentations about global warming? If so: I’m afraid I disagree. If not: that’s a bit arbitrary.

I understand the sentiment, but sometimes, a complaint is valid. And making it over and over and over again is also valid. It is the first step towards fixing it. If we stop acknowledging this problem we lose all hope for ever finding a way out.

I would say the litany of woeful clamouring is already driving SOME people to consciously consume , buy electric cars, (or we can focus on conscientious vegetarians, if you don’t like the global warming analogy) etc. Sure , it could be a lot better, but it could also be a lot worse.

If nobody ever complained , I bet there would be a lot fewer vegetarians.

[rosser]

We are not separate from our environment.

We wreck it at our own peril.

Rapacious destruction may have been an expedient shortcut to our development, but unchecked, it will also end us.

[lopmotr]

What's your evidence or reasoning for the claim that unchecked destruction of the environment will destroy us?

I understand that it _might_ and that that would be a pretty bad thing. So there is a risk, but why do you think it's so certain?

[rosser]

Are you legit saying, "I don't know if extinct-ing most of the species on the planet will wipe us out. It might. That seems like a worthwhile hypothesis to test empirically!"?

When the dice are that loaded, you throw them at your own peril.

When they're that loaded, you keep throwing them because it's more profitable at everyone's peril.

[lopmotr]

Sounds like you agree it's not certain but you're exaggerating the risk to scare people who don't understand risks. It might be appropriate to yell during a Greenpeace march but I would rather have intelligent discussions than just yell slogans at each other. It's like a parent telling their teen "If you don't wear a seat belt, you'll die in a car crash." It's obviously not true but dying in a car crash is so bad that it's worth telling a lie to increase the chance of saving their life. That's what the parent would desperately yell at them as they run off with the car keys, but not if they want to develop an independent person who can make complex decisions for themselves.

[outworlder]

Good luck continuing your "evolution" when you have no food, no clean air and abundant diseases.

[PhasmaFelis]

I was nodding along with you--yes, the population explosion is destroying the environment--until I realized, with mixed bemusement and horror, that you were in favor of this.

Just for starters: Why is "the Industrial Revolution happened" an argument against trying to do better in the future?

[corporateslaver]

It points to a hard fact about what kind of things cause environmental destruction but are also massive improvements for humanity. The picture painted where environmental destruction is superfluous is completely wrong and disingenuous.

[PhasmaFelis]

It may be that the Industrial Revolution couldn't have happened without massive pollution, sure. The Industrial Revolution is long over. Why should we recapitulate the past when we have radically more advanced technology and a far better understanding of its effects? If you're in favor of progress, it should be obvious that we can do better than the Industrial Revolution.

[telchar]

Don't forget the plants! They're dying as well through the effects of agriculture, draining swamps for new subdivisions, and such. And from the few invasive species that thrive to the detriment of many native species.

Although I suppose the animals are getting the worst of it since we actively go after many of them.

[windows_tips]

>How could the industrial boom in China or the USA in the late 1800s and early 1900s have happened without emvironmental destruction? How can growth happen in China now without it?

Possibly if they had used solar-thermal power generation and focused on battery tech instead of exploiting petroleum so heavily.

[nickparker]

I'm reading "The Progress of Invention in the 19th Century"[0] right now, and it's at least partly dissuading me of the whole "We couldn't possibly have developed without fossil fuels" idea, along with the similar "If we collapse now we'll never build back up without abundant surface fossil fuels."

Worthwhile electric generators really weren't that far behind worthwhile steam engines. Without any fossil fuels, I think we would've just built lots of hydro and wind.

[0]: https://gutenberg.org/files/41538/41538-h/41538-h.htm

[corporateslaver]

Sarcasm?

[windows_tips]

There was already heavy investment in steam technology. Using the sun the boil water instead of coal or wood is much less resource intensive and completely eliminates external supply chains.

[codeisawesome]

Did they have enough tech by that point to even begin to figure out mass manufacturing of solar cells to focus enough energy into water to make steam? Burning something that burns well is a much more intuitive and scalable process...

Also, mining the easy stocks (at that point) is a low tech affair too. Which was powered by... combustion of fuel and human labor.

We still can’t make solar panels with 100% efficiency, what hope did they have?

[windows_tips]

You don't need solar cells to heat water to boiling, just glass or a metal like aluminum or silver.

With glass you can build a lens to concentrate light. With a metal you can build a concentrating mirror.

[codeisawesome]

Good points. But lens building is a complex endeavour that requires tooling at the manufacturing level (especially computing power!) - no matter the choice of available material, yes? Doing it with high precision at a civilisation-powering scale seems like an impossible ask of a species that was still considering much of their Home planet to be “new” (Americas).

[MaxBarraclough]

> either we stop having so many people, or the animals die. It’s us or them.

This assumes there can be an 'us' without a 'them'.

[viggity]

Nobody give corporateslaver the infinity stones.