[moosey]

Until human society stops serving abstractions (like money) over things that are real, then real things will continually face consequence. These will still over into our lives in a multitude of ways until we no longer have real systems to support these abstractions.

Loss of natural life is such a failure. Today we speak of stock markets, governments, businesses. Someday, our main concern will not be these shared dreams, but meeting basic needs. This can already be seen in homelessness. How long before things like this means our planet can no longer manage pollution, or produce soil healthy enough to feed us?

As a believer in the concept of memetics, it is clear that standing in defense of the real is a battle that is being lost, but the consequences will not be escaped forever. One such consequence is the pandemic and my society's inability to deal with it due to serving things that aren't real. I think that a million dead will be remembered with whimsy in the coming decades as not being so bad.

[AussieWog93]

There have been massive ecological disasters in command economies too, the most famous being the locust plagues that resulted from Mao's Four Pests Campaign.

Hell, before civilisation even existed you had humans wiping out megafauna right across the world.

Regardless of what economic system we have, a technologically advanced culture that values hamburgers and Doritos over biodiversity will trample on nature to get what they want.

(I'm not making the cynical argument that humans don't inherently care about the environment - in many Australian Aboriginal cultures, for example, environmental damage was considered as great a sin as murder - just that you can't blame capitalism for wider humanity's lack of care or respect for the environment.)

[moosey]

A "command economy", or even "China", are still abstractions. Arguably, your points further prove mine.

[AussieWog93]

Really?

The whole point of a command economy is to have a central planning authority that oversees production of x tons of potatoes, y tons of steel and z T-34 tanks. They explicitly ignore abstract financial metrics like GDP and stock prices. They still ruined the environment.

Unless you're arguing that the mere existence of abstract concepts somehow degrades the environment, I don't see how this proves your point.

[moosey]

My point is, what does it serve to build tanks? If the goal is to protect "our nation", then we are serving the abstractions.

If you take a "command economy" and tell it to feed the people of the world, restore natural areas, shelter people... Then the abstractions serves real things.

[AussieWog93]

If you tried to build a society that invested $0 into the military, you would be pummeled into the ground by an external aggressor.

Those tanks are serving the abstraction of survival.

[selestify]

But isn't the problem that these abstractions exist precisely to help coordinate real things? The economy (and by extension, to a limited degree, the stock market) directly influences a lot of real things and basic needs.

[derbOac]

I think the problem is that there's lots of hidden costs or incorrect assumptions in much of the way society functions. We overestimate how rational people are, many costs get swept under the rug or ignored as "something for future people to deal with", certain costs are just hidden, we fail to account for corruption and fraud, and so forth and so on.

It's not really that we use abstractions or models, it's that many or all of them are incorrect, and we proceed as if they're correct, even when we seem to know they're not.

I don't think this is just limited to the environment. Sometimes I wonder if this is some defining feature of our age, rampant fraud or disingenuousness. Maybe it's always been this way, and maybe it doesn't matter.

[nradov]

Abstractions and models tend to get more correct over time. Sure sometimes we get off track or even go backwards, but if you look back at all of recorded human history our abstractions and models are generally a better fit to objective reality than ever before. You have an opportunity to help improve them further, if you choose to take it.

[huetius]

The problem has to do with the order of values which is evinced by our economic activity. Ideally, money should be ordered towards facilitating the exchange of real things, which are in turn ordered towards a good life, and so on to higher meaning beyond that, but that is not what is transpiring. We can see this not only in the huge tranches of the economy devoted to trivial or deceptive things, but also in routine decisions: be they irresponsible, greedy personal choices, or larger organizational habits which have devastated human communities and the environment for the sake of making a number in a spreadsheet go up. Further, this takes the form of a novel crisis in that the scale and speed at which the consequences keep coming are without precedent among societies with similar vices in the past.

[__MatrixMan__]

These abstractions were once configured for specific purposes (e.g. help Caesar expand his empire by incentivising newly conquered villages to feed the soldiers that will soon be conquering their neighbors), and the people who configured them died long ago, and we're just still following the old program.

We need to figure out how to reconfigure them. For instance, instead of the gold standard, let's back our money on permanently sequestered carbon. And once that problem is solved, we'll reconfigure it for the next thing.

[jwmhjwmh]

Yes. However, using modern computing and communication technology, it would be possible to run a complex economy with calculations "in-kind". That is, most calculation could be done using the inputs and outputs of millions of processes. Such an economy could avoid the instability of our current economy with its cyclical booms and busts.

[pdonis]

> using modern computing and communication technology, it would be possible to run a complex economy with calculations "in-kind".

No, it wouldn't. It's not a matter of the speed of the computing; it's a matter of the number of information channels available. The amount of information that would need to be processed to run a complex economy goes up exponentially with the size of the economy, but the number of information channels available only goes up linearly with the size of the economy. I think it was Hayek who first pointed this out more than a century ago.

The proper tool to "run" a complex economy is decentralized computing, otherwise known as a free market.

> Such an economy could avoid the instability of our current economy with its cyclical booms and busts.

The way to avoid cyclical booms and busts is for the government to stop messing with markets. The government should not be subsidizing some products and services and penalizing others. It should let the market work out what products and services are produced and consumed.

[register]

You mean you should let decide to monopolies and oligopolies what products and services we need right? There is no such thing as an ideal free market. Free market is an human model and therefore just an abstraction. The gap between theory and reality makes all the difference in the world.

[pdonis]

> There is no such thing as an ideal free market.

Sure there is. A free market is a market in which all transactions are voluntary. That's the natural state of a market. We see many markets that are not free only because governments either prevent people from engaging in transactions they would otherwise choose to make, or force people to engage in transactions they would otherwise not choose to make (the obvious example of this is coercive taxation).

[jwmhjwmh]

I'm not sure what you mean by "information channels". Wouldn't a factory mainly just need to communicate its inputs and outputs the computer or computer cluster doing the calculation? Similarly for distribution centers. In particular, would much more information need to be transmitted in a planned economy than in a market economy? Remember that, while there are millions of products in the economy, any given center of production or distribution is unlikely to use more than a few thousand.

I don't think the computation cost scales exponentially. If it did, the decentralized free market computer would not be able to accurately compute the economy. Paul Cockshott claims to have found a planning algorithm with O(n log n) complexity, which is very manageable.

The main problem with free markets is that they lead to extreme inequality and subsequent conflict. A planned economy could distribute the surplus much better.

I disagree that the government should withdraw from the market economy. The government can help alleviate the failures of the market. For one thing, the market is generally short-sighted, while governments can think more long-term. For example, it is my understanding that the Chinese government has invested a lot in solar panel technology and implementation. You would probably agree this is a good thing, given the severity of the climate crisis.

By the way, the following are some of what have informed my opinion here:

- https://www.haerdin.se/blog/2021/06/29/a-critique-of-economi...

- http://users.wfu.edu/cottrell/socialism_book/new_socialism.p...

[pdonis]

> I'm not sure what you mean by "information channels".

I mean information channels to and from the central computer.

> Wouldn't a factory mainly just need to communicate its inputs and outputs the computer or computer cluster doing the calculation?

If that's all it's doing, a free market does that fine. There is no need for any additional computation. Similarly for any other economic actor.

If the central computation is going to improve anything over what the individual economic actors would do on their own, it can only be by computing what the inputs and outputs should be for all economic actors, better than those actors can do themselves, and then dictating those inputs and outputs to the actors. Otherwise there's no point to it. And that is what it can't do based on the information argument I gave.

> I don't think the computation cost scales exponentially. If it did, the decentralized free market computer would not be able to accurately compute the economy.

Wrong. The decentralized free market computer's capacity scales exponentially, since each individual economic actor is computing their own actions. The centralized computer, however, has to compute everyone's actions. That's why it faces an insurmountable information problem that the individual actors doing their decentralized computing do not face.

> The government can help alleviate the failures of the market.

No, it can't. That is the lesson of history. Every time governments have done this, they have made things worse, not better. That is not to say that market failures do not exist, only that the failures of government are worse.

> the market is generally short-sighted, while governments can think more long-term.

You have this backwards. Government time horizons are the next election. Individual market actors can have time horizons going out decades--for example, individuals saving for retirement. Governments can't even keep their social security trust funds safe from being raided by the legislature when it wants to fund some white elephant.

> it is my understanding that the Chinese government has invested a lot in solar panel technology and implementation.

Quite possibly it has. That in no way means China might not be even better off if it were not centrally controlled by the government.

> You would probably agree this is a good thing, given the severity of the climate crisis.

No, I wouldn't, because I don't think climate change is a crisis. And as far as I can tell, neither do the Chinese. They are investing in those technologies not because they believe they need them themselves, but because they believe they can sell them at a substantial profit to Western countries who are much more worried about climate change than the Chinese themselves are.

[meheleventyone]

> I mean information channels to and from the central computer.

This makes no sense to grow exponentially then. Information channels grow exponentially in a peer-to-peer network but only linearly in a centralised one. You can trivially see this in computer networks. One server with eight clients will have 8 connections. Eight peers will have 64 connections. Adding one more node will make the centralised solution add one more connection. Adding one more node to the peer-to-peer solution adds 17.

[jwmhjwmh]

You say "a free market does [calculation] fine," but it has obvious deficiencies that I have already remarked upon. As I have said before, the optimization problem can be solved on modern computers without the problems of the market. The inputs and outputs of individual processes are known in a market system, so logically this information can be centrally recorded for use by the planning process. If a production center doesn't produce output at exactly the expected rate, the expected rate can be adjusted.

About computing capacity: Maybe free market capacity scales exponentially (with the number of actors?) but I don't see how it could. If an economy of n actors has a "capacity" of e^n, the average capacity of an actor would be e^n/n, which is about the same as e^n. How could an individual actor have such capacity? Perhaps my analysis here is mistaken.

Regarding government intervention, let's look at an extreme example. Do you think that, during World War II, the U.S. should have structured its wartime economy around free market principles? Did it make things worse by not doing so?

About government planning for the future: First of all, social security gets gutted because the U.S. government is not a government of the people. Business interests have too much control (that is, more than no control at all.) You also say governments are shortsighted because of elections. Even if this is the case, this is not a necessary part of government. The governance model described in the book I linked is based on sortition rather than election. China's current system, while authoritarian, is also able to plan for the future.

It seems you agree that China investing in solar power is beneficial to it, even if you disagree on the reason. So you agree that, all else being equal, it is better for China to have invested in solar power than to not have done so. In this case, this is a clear example of a government acting in the market with a good outcome. This contradicts your previous point.

[AussieWog93]

>Such an economy could avoid the instability of our current economy with its cyclical booms and busts.

From what I understand (not an economist, but quoting what I've heard from them), much of the boom-bust cycle can be dampened by limiting debt.

[jwmhjwmh]

I'm not an economist either. It just seems the business cycle has been a persistent feature of capitalist economies.

[AussieWog93]

Perhaps look into Australia. We have much tighter regulations than the US or UK when it comes to lending, and we've largely avoided recessions, including in 2008.

COVID got us, but that did have a physical reason behind it.

[sdenton4]

The way we use money to coordinate activity is very selective: Money only solves problems when those with problems have money. This means that the environment and the poor are generally not served by capitalism.

[mc32]

Yes abstractions here are a distraction. People will consume whether they hunt, barter, trade or use fist money.

[karaterobot]

Disagree with this. According to this article, birds aren't dying off because people choose the almighty dollar, they're dying because they smash into windows or are hunted by cats. The solution isn't to examine our relationship to abstractions versus reality, it's to put a screen on the window so the bird will notice it in time.

[photochemsyn]

That's not what the original paper says. This is why you want to read the actual scientific paper and not the article about it. The researchers, in the article's text, state:

> "Steep declines in North American birds parallel patterns of avian declines emerging globally (14, 15, 22, 24). In particular, depletion of native grassland bird populations in North America, driven by habitat loss and more toxic pesticide use in both breeding and wintering areas (25), mirrors loss of farmland birds throughout Europe and elsewhere (15). Even declines among introduced species match similar declines within these same species’ native ranges (26). Agricultural intensification and urbanization have been similarly linked to declines in insect diversity and biomass (27), with cascading impacts on birds and other consumers (24, 28, 29). Given that birds are one of the best monitored animal groups, birds may also represent the tip of the iceberg, indicating similar or greater losses in other taxonomic groups (28, 30)."

This points to agricultural pesticides having impacts on insect populations, and additionally this mirrors where losses have been most extreme, in grasslands most impacted by agricultural activity:

> "Across breeding biomes, grassland birds showed the largest magnitude of total population loss since 1970—more than 700 million breeding individuals across 31 species— and the largest proportional loss (53%); 74% of grassland species are declining. (Fig. 1 and Table 1)."

I've made it a habit to always seek out the original paper instead of just reading the 'science journalism' take on it, for reasons like this.

https://www.flatheadaudubon.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/R...

[throwawaylinux]

This illustrates why it's a terrible shame that the overpopulation topic has effectively been silenced and demonized in science conservationism and environmentalism.

I frequently get people becoming wildly irrational and upset at me when I suggest that the current population is not supported by the earth sustainably, let alone a much larger one. They'll angrily insist that the earth's "carrying capacity" is 20, 50, 100 billion people! Or that countries should be looking to increase their populations, or that natural population stability and decline is a terrible thing.

As though we have not _already_ caused (and are continuing to cause) a great extinction event almost entirely before any significant effects from greenhouse gas emissions have made an impact.

Habitat destruction, chemical pollution, mining, mineral and fossil fuel depletion, water depletion and contamination, farming practices and monocultures, human interference, etc., are all just horrific, are responsible for massive destruction and extinction of the environment, and aren't all suddenly going to get magic'ed away the instant we somehow get the GHG pollution thing under control (if we ever do).

The funny thing about that is, if our population was a very healthy, say, 5% of its current level, greenhouse gas emissions would be practically a non-issue too. The problem would literally be solved. Gradually moving toward cleaner and more renewable sources of course should and would happen, but while that was responsibly and efficiently changing, there would be no imminent climate catastrophe occurring.

EDIT: It's happening again.

[jdkee]

2430 A.D. by Asimov.

"Earth has established a totally balanced and ecologically stable underground society (similar to that portrayed in Asimov's novel The Caves of Steel). But one man, Cranwitz, regarded as a deviant and eccentric because he keeps a few animals as pets, refuses to get rid of these animals, the last non-human inhabitants of the planet.

He is finally persuaded by his sector representatives to exterminate his pets, but also commits suicide. This leaves Earth in 'perfection', with its fifteen trillion inhabitants, twenty billion tons of human brain and the 'exquisite nothingness of uniformity'."

[Groxx]

Greenhouse (specifically carbon dioxide) specifically might be solved, because trees exist and are pretty good at what they do, but I absolutely do not believe that a 95% reduction in population would lead to a consistently-healthy world. I think you dramatically underestimate our ability to pollute in small populations. Consider how bad air pollution was in London during the 1700s and 1800s.

[idontwantthis]

But in the 1700s and 1800s you could leave London and go to the countryside and have very little pollution. That would be wonderful today. Instead we are filling and polluting every space in the world.

[ekianjo]

Air goes around.

[throwawaylinux]

I didn't say a 95% reduction in population would lead to a consistently healthy world. I said if global population was 5% of what it is now, greenhouse gas emissions would practically be a non problem.

[Groxx]

Fair enough, and for carbon dioxide I mostly agree. But it definitely seems like this:

>Habitat destruction, chemical pollution, mining, mineral and fossil fuel depletion, water depletion and contamination, farming practices and monocultures, human interference, etc., are all just horrific, are responsible for massive destruction and extinction of the environment, and aren't all suddenly going to get magic'ed away the instant we somehow get the GHG pollution thing under control (if we ever do).

is claiming broad relation to population being above some threshold, since the whole comment is about overpopulation.

[Cullinet]

What do you think about our ability to raise qualified adults enough to manage the continuing industrial sectors of the planet, if we were 5% of our present number?

Subjectively and with zero rigor I think that possibly 150 to 100 years ago levels of population were capable of creating so much of the modern world. But from the Holocaust to Pol Pot, the Bangladesh civil war, mass exterminations of some of humanity's most capable gene pools is something that I very badly want to be convinced hasn't badly harmed the species potential.

[ijidak]

"the appointed time came to bring to ruin those ruining the earth" Rev 11:18

I find it interesting that ruining of the earth by humans was predicted approx 2,000 years ago.

Sadly we have lived up to the hype.

And, we show no signs of making the wholesale changes needed to turn this ship around.

But, if you're interested in an often pooh-poohed alternative, you may find some comfort reading this: https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/peace-happiness/save-e...

[momenti]

You are not the first "genius" realizing this. Look up Ted Kaczynski. But he was smarter than you because he considered what this reality entails for the ruling classes: Namely the decision whether they shouldn't give up on maintaining the masses once technologically feasible. It is for this reason that it is a taboo and has to remain one. Everything else is propaganda and chatter.

[throwawaylinux]

> You are not the first "genius" realizing this.

Found another one.

[ekianjo]

> and upset at me when I suggest that the current population is not supported by the earth sustainably,

because you are wrong. 100 years ago people said we would all starve when the world population reaches 1 billion people. then we not only not starved but became wealthier as well. Doom predictions are mostly damn wrong.

[throwawaylinux]

No it's not because I'm wrong, because you can argue with or debate with people who are wrong (or you believe are wrong) without becoming irrational and angry.

And I'm not making any predictions, just observations. This might come down to semantics on what exactly you suppose sustainable to mean or whether or not it is desirable, but causing an ongoing mass extinction event does not meet my definition of sustainable.

I'm talking about environmental sustainability to be clear (hopefully it was from the context but I may not have been explicit enough). I don't doubt we could physically feed billions more people at least as long as we have cheap energy and fertilizers from fossil fuels if we accepted ever increasing environmental destruction.

[ekianjo]

> And I'm not making any predictions, just observations.

Claiming we are in the middle of a mass extinction event is a prediction, not an observation. It will become an observation when you have actually seen billions of species disappear over time. You don't extrapolate an extinction based on trends over dozens of years (especially on mostly imperfect data).

[OtomotO]

Antinatalism is a thing, yes.

You're not alone and it doesn't matter if something is popular.

Apart from the adoption rate (no pun intended)

[idiocrat]

Please be aware there is also the "The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement". https://www.vhemt.org/

It is led by Les Knight.

Here is quick explanation, from their site:

''' VHEMT (pronounced vehement) is a movement not an organization. It’s a movement advanced by people who care about life on planet Earth. We’re not just a bunch of misanthropes and anti-social, Malthusian misfits, taking morbid delight whenever disaster strikes humans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Voluntary human extinction is the humanitarian alternative to human disasters.

We don’t carry on about how the human race has shown itself to be a greedy, amoral parasite on the once-healthy face of this planet. That type of negativity offers no solution to the inexorable horrors which human activity is causing.

Rather, The Movement presents an encouraging alternative to the callous exploitation and wholesale destruction of Earth’s ecology.

As VHEMT Volunteers know, the hopeful alternative to the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of one species: Homo sapiens... us. '''

I certainly like the promotional video, "Thank You For Not Breeding".

http://vimeo.com/7652051

[ekianjo]

This group will go extinct just by following their own philosophy. Brilliant.

[throwawaylinux]

Not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse or you actually think what I wrote equates to antinatalism, but no that's not my believe. No more than someone who believes the earth's carrying capacity is 100 billion saying that 200 billion is too many people would be antinatalism.

[toqy]

> I frequently get people becoming wildly irrational and upset at me when I suggest that the current population is not supported by the earth sustainably

Arguing about how many people the earth can sustain is pointless without defining what kind of life you expect people to be living. How many billions can capitalism + western rates of consumption sustain and for how long vs a simpler way of life.

> aren't all suddenly going to get magic'ed away

and neither are all the people deemed excess by your world view, which is probably the part people get riled up about.

[throwawaylinux]

> Arguing about how many people the earth can sustain is pointless without defining what kind of life you expect people to be living. How many billions can capitalism + western rates of consumption sustain and for how long vs a simpler way of life.

Not really, 10 billion "simpler way of life" people have huge catastrophic footprints as well. Farming being a major one. But the point was not to come to a precise figure and metrics, it's an unhinged kneejerk reaction to any suggestion that the population is not sustainable. Which it is not.

> and neither are all the people deemed excess by your world view,

This false ad hominem suggests you are one of the people my original post refers to.

_My_ world view deems no person "excess". It acknowledges a simple reality that our population is not sustainable and reducing it or limiting growth is critically important for the environment and makes all other environmental efforts simpler or less severe.

> which is probably the part people get riled up about.

No, it's not. They get unhinged about the idea that population is a serious environmental problem at its current levels let alone increased levels. The (baseless and unfounded) claims they make being that it's not a problem "because earth's carrying capacity is 50 billion people" or other absurd statements along those lines.

[dwaltrip]

They probably get upset as they assume you are implying some moral judgment against having kids. Most people want kids, just like those before us for untold hundreds of thousands of years.

[toqy]

> This false ad hominem suggests you are one of the people my original post refers to.

It's not an ad hominem, and if you think that my reply is "wildly irrational and upset" then I question if you actually get that kind of reaction in general.

It's merely my interpretation of what you said, since you've given no concrete details and left nearly everything to the imagination of the reader. Given your 5% figure, you are arguing for reducing the population by ~7 billion people, but how? On what timeline? Just saying the world is overpopulated is uninteresting.

> The (baseless and unfounded) claims they make being that it's not a problem "because earth's carrying capacity is 50 billion people" or other absurd statements along those lines.

You've stated that the earth's carrying capacity is 5% of current population, which seems to be equally unfounded.

[carbonguy]

> _My_ world view deems no person "excess".

So we don't have "too many" people? The world is not OVERpopulated? Because excess means "too many" or "more than needed," so if you're saying there's no excess, then you're saying there's not too many people.

I definitely agree with you, by the way: the world does not have an excess of humans!

[jjoonathan]

It's not so much the abstract idea of depopulation that has people upset at you, it's that every concrete proposal for getting there involves genocide and suffering.

[spodek]

First, no they don't. Look up successes in Thailand, Costa Rica, Iran, South Korea, and other nations that lowered their birth rates through noncoercive means that improved health, longevity, prosperity, equality, and stability.

Second, not lowering birth rates involved billions of people suffering and dying. There is no option where we keep living above sustainable levels without consequence.

[throwawaylinux]

No it's not that at all actually. It's a plain head-in-sand denial of reality that I'm talking about encountering.

Same kinds of thinking cause the exact same kinds of knee jerk reactions, denialism, conspiracy theories, etc. when you suggest green house gas emissions are not sustainable and should be reduced too.

And I should say that you're wrong about that genocide assertion too. In most of the countries with the highest consumption and environmental footprints, populations are naturally in slight decline on their own. No genocide or suffering needed to reduce populations in those places.

[jjoonathan]

You seem quite convinced that you have the carrying capacity argument correct. I can understand why: it's really easy to come up with doomsday arguments of this form. Extrapolate any rising trend against any perceived constraint and bingo bango you have your prophecy. Thing is, people have been doing this since the dawn of history, and they've been spectacularly wrong since the dawn of history. Doomer models just never seem to be nearly as clever as real human beings.

One day the doomers might actually get it right for once. I'm not holding my breath, but even if I were, proactive genocide would be a tough sell.

> populations are naturally in slight decline on their own

I am aware.

> No genocide or suffering needed

That depends entirely on why you think this trend is happening, but if you're willing to accept the trend as it stands then we can probably find common ground.

[ip26]

populations are naturally in slight decline on their own

Yeah, by maybe 10-20% generation over generation. If your target population is 5% of today, and your strategy is to use the natural population decline of Western countries, you aren't getting to those levels for a good 15-25 generations. 400-700 years or so.

[wubbert]

With the Earth's being consumed at unsustainable levels, genocide and suffering are an inevitability. It's just a question of who is going to do it to who.

[benatkin]

> I frequently get people becoming wildly irrational and upset at me when I suggest that the current population is not supported by the earth sustainably

Irrationality is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

[throwawaylinux]

Exhibit A

[AlanSE]

Well, people get wildly irrational at me when I suggest that the only viable option here is for people to migrate from Earth into orbit. Space constraints will go away, because in 3-dimensional space everyone can live in as large of a house as they want but remain in a fast commute to urban centers of space cities. There are plenty of materials available on the moon to build whatever we want with. This can, of course, leave the focus on Earth to shift to biosphere remediation.

After we take full intentional control of the planet's climate and shift 99% of human land use to the project, then I expect it will still be 100 years or more before we get back to pre-industrial natural productivity. This won't happen on its own, I'm assuming we put a large amount of artificial accelerators into to the process. It won't be the same as before humans, but we could quickly get back to the same megafauna numbers as before. Rough equivalents to pre-industrial ecosystems will eventually work out the missing niches.

[carbonguy]

I suspect part of the reason people have a strong response to your suggestion is that it's patently impractical, and thus easy to pick apart.

To offer one small critique: you suggest that we first need "people to migrate from Earth into orbit," THEN "take full intentional control of the planet's climate" - surely if we have the ability to fully control Earth's climate, we don't need everyone in orbit?

And, since we have to develop the technologies necessary to implement your plan anyway, wouldn't it be easier to just figure out how to remediate the biosphere directly, instead of figuring out how to get everyone into orbit, THEN figure out full planetary climate control, THEN artificially-accelerated natural productivity restoration?

[AlanSE]

Your comment doesn't add up. I need to ask more questions to triage what your positions are. Let's start with the fairly basic premise that virtually all of us agree on:

1. Current human impact on the planet is unsustainable

Now add these premises:

2. As developing world changes, our impact gets worse 3. As our own standards of living increase, our impact gets worse

Your vision of the Earth doesn't have space migration as part of our path to sustainability. Because of this, you're fighting increasing demands while at the same time needing to reduce total impact dramatically. Say that the equation is:

Impact = (number of people) x (quality of life) x (efficiency)

You can reject either (2) or (3) or both at the cost of some human harm. Most pro-tech people tend to not reject either of these, but you might be an exception. Because of that, you have 2 increasing factors, because you don't have control over the number of people are we're locked into growth for 50 years or something demographically, even with birth rates quickly falling below replacement (which they haven't yet).

There's only 1 factor left in your toolbox - efficiency. We live better but at a lower impact to the planet. Agreed, that's great, but because of (1) and (2) we already have high expectations of this factor. On top of that, we need truly dramatic total reductions in total impact. So if we need 2x improvement (which is probably underestimating) to stay level, then we need maybe 8x or 16x to get where we need to be so that the Earth is moderately healthy. That would be great, but this is magical unicorn-ish thinking. Is this what you're counting on? I want to know.

We can control Earth's climate today by Sulfur geoengineering, which I'm worried that we will not start until it's too late, and even more worried that it may not be globally coordinated which would be disastrous. This is just a band aid, we still need to virtually eliminate Carbon emissions on a time scale we're not prepared for. As long as we are here, then climate intervention will be done for us (our own selfish needs), not for the health of the biosphere.

[throwawaylinux]

It sounds like you agree that population levels on Earth are unsustainable and reducing them would help to preserve the environment.

Now certainly you can see why your ideas may be a little harder to accept as the scientific fact that human activity at even much smaller levels as today's population has caused terrible environmental destruction, extinction, etc., and with a lot more room to disagree, but so long as you approach the conversations humbly and with a willingness to consider differing opinions as you would have people consider your opinion I sympathize. Some people just react irrationally.

[eloff]

I think because it's not practical yet. I'm not sure if it ever would be, but if SpaceX gets starship right it brings us one big step closer to that. Also I think most people would prefer to remain on Earth. But moving some kinds of industry to space could be useful. Asteroids contain an abundance of elements that are difficult to extract here on Earth. If much of the demand for them was also in space due to heavy industry there, that might make it viable. Having heavy industry in space like that could really open up orbit and the solar system to us.

[Groxx]

It is also just general reading comprehension, as the post begins with what appears to be a fairly accurate summary of the study:

>Experts believe that habitat loss due to agricultural development and intensification is most likely the driving factor.

and then makes recommendations about tinting windows and cats. One does not imply the other.

All of which also mirrors stuff like plastic recycling and water pollution. Individual actions are so incredibly dwarfed by industrial actions that it's almost pointless. We need legislation, not feel-good individual ethics.

[AlanSE]

Seems more complicated - industrial actions, technology, and personal preferences have intertwined roles.

The most effective thing we could do would be to tax beef (and other meats on a sliding scale), because this would decrease the acreage needed per person. People would howl because they like meat, consumers would also just absorb a lot of the tax instead of actually changing behavior. They'll break out arguments about inequality and social justice (but in truth they like the taste).

Vertical factory-like farms seem very promising to me. These will only target certain groups of foods, which tend to be very leafy and healthy. Government policies can play a big role in advancing this tech because economics are challenging and it needs some more scale to drive the cycle to further cost reduction.

I'm sure that direct farm incentives to reduce pesticide use could help. But there's a reason they're used, and there needs to be a game-plan that doesn't assume the farmer will make massive capital investment into the alternatives.

[helmholtz]

Brilliant, thank you for that effort, especially the direct link to the PDF. A third of the bird population gone in the 50 years since 1970. As he says in Blood Diamond, "Will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other? ..." The future is here and the future bites.

[abeppu]

Actually, is that really what the article said?

> Experts believe that habitat loss due to agricultural development and intensification is most likely the driving factor.

But I don't think the numbers in the article make sense together.

> wild bird populations in the continental U.S. and Canada have declined by 29 percent—or a total net loss of around three billion birds—since 1970.

> between 365 million and one billion birds die each year across the U.S. as a result of window strikes.)

> pet felines kill some 2.6 billion birds annually in the U.S. alone.

So ... the total decline over 50 years (~3B) is approximately the same as the annual deaths from cats and windows at somewhere between a quarter and a third of all birds? I think this is one of those cases where uncritically accepting estimates from independent sources who used different methods produces an incoherent picture.

[vertak]

The article and numbers are right, it’s just not clearly worded.

I had this same question a couple years back when I read this stat, so I messaged the Cornell Lab Ornithology and one of their reps explained how these numbers make sense.

“We start with a population of breeding adult birds at the beginning of the year. They breed, and multiply, and then the population is "spent" throughout the year on deaths such as window strikes, pesticide poisoning, and cat kills. If the population could keep up with these deaths, we would see a net loss of zero. Unfortunately, instead, we are seeing less and less breeding adult birds at the beginning of each year.

So when we say "we've lost 2.9 Billion birds," what we really mean is, "We've seen a net loss of 2.9 billion breeding adult birds since the 1970's." Back in the 1970's, the breeding season started with about 13 billion adult birds. This year, we had about 10 billion. Throughout the year, they multiply to about 40 billion before they die back. Of that 40 billion, cats kill 2.5 billion.”

[horsawlarway]

I think the honest answer is that we just don't have nearly as much surety around these numbers as you might expect.

I went looking for data on actual bird populations, and I get wildly different estimates.

The 3 billion number comes from the following source (as far as I can tell):

" Critical data were contributed by citizen-science participants in the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, North American Breeding Bird Survey, and other bird-monitoring initiatives. The Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database was a critical source for the data. " - https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/

Nat Geo quotes

" New research estimates there are between 50 billion and 430 billion birds on Earth. " - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/how-many-...

A lot of articles seem to quote the "at least 50 billion" line, probably based on the above numbers.

Basically - I'd say we have no idea how many birds there really are. Take ALL numbers involved as wild guesses.

[__s]

Counting population based on deaths alone isn't accurate

If the ecosystem is healthy, a dozen birds dying will make way for a dozen more to replace them

[cmurf]

And make outdoor cats illegal. An unpopular opinion no doubt. But from nature photographers to veterinarians, the outdoor cat is not good for anyone, including the cat.

[Spooky23]

I blame online communities for this.

Cat ladies are insane and organized now. In my city, there’s a group distributing shelters and placing them in various outdoor areas to keep feral cats alive over the winter.

They are as nutty as the pigeon feeders, except the cats kill everything in sight.

[pirate787]

We have a group like this, which feeds a couple dozen feral cats on "Kitty Cat Lane." Of course there is science behind the insanity -- toxoplasmosis infections from the cats they love.

[Spooky23]

Our local Nextdoor exploded when some particularly nutty cat vigilante started stealing cats and spaying them.

I think as society sprawls out and folks have fewer kids, this stuff gets escalated.

[jollybean]

These comments are disturbingly out of touch.

'Neuter and Release' programs are common, supported and sanctioned by animal shelters, usually local vets provide their services for free, and the point is to provide basic medical for the animals while at the same time trying to control excess populations.

Calling them 'Nutty cat lady vigilantes' would be like calling people 100 years ago providing shelter for abused women 'Marriage Wreckers'.

[jollybean]

Enough with the petty, denigrating attacks people helping mostly harmless animals, which is a generally good thing. These rescuers/helpers run 'neuter and release' programs and are keen on having population control, not increasing the number of rogue cats.

[thatguy0900]

Mostly harmless to you... What a strange thing to call what is effectively an apex suburban predator that is known to kill for fun with no intention of eating.

[cmurf]

Feral cats should be euthanized from a distance. Ask any infectious disease doc about cat bites. And think twice about feral kittens being all innocent, their teeth are like hypodermic needles, and can inject shit into joints. You can lose life and limb from kitty cat bites. These are not cool animals.

[digitaltrees]

Our door cats have existed for millennia. Pesticides have not. I don’t think outdoor cats are the problem. Pesticides have killed most of the bug biomass in the last several decades and now birds are being affected.

[drran]

I cannot understand why DDT is forbidden, but 10000x more powerful insecticides are not forbidden. WTF? Birds are dropping from the sky in Spring, because they have nothing to eat, because bugs are gone while seeds are not ready yet.

Also, air pollution makes them weak. Birds are much more sensitive to air pollution and CO2 level, because they breathe at much higher rate while they have much lower mass than land animals.

[ostenning]

Its a solid point. I'm not sure what the average ownership of cats are, but I would imagine every 3rd or 4th person in my friendship network to own one. I would imagine at least over 100 million cats in north America to which most owners probably let them outside to hunt wild life.

[lettergram]

Bob cats, mountain lions, etc used to have the entire US as their range. I suspect the bird population boomed after we got rid of the cats (100-150 years ago). Now that we have house cats they’re dropping again.

Boom-bust cycles for animals are common. I try to reflect what the natural order was 10,000 years ago and reflect. 20,000 years ago, there was an ice sheet over North America - ie no birds.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentide_Ice_Sheet

[AlotOfReading]

Unless you're talking about the lynx (which mainly eats hares), the historic ranges of American cats barely overlap with LGM ice cover. It's not very relevant to this discussion.

[elihu]

Would that even be beneficial? If the problem is that there are fewer insects and therefore the birds have less food, then cats suppressing the bird population might have a positive impact on insects, which the birds eat. That might be good for birds too in the long run.

Predators are part of a feedback loop. That the predators in question are housecats makes it a somewhat unnatural feedback loop, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad.

Housecats are part of the food chain as well; they can be killed by cayotes and raccoons, and hawks might sometimes go after a small cat.

[ca01an]

Not sure what it is like in the US, but in the UK, the RSPB doesn't seem to think cats are a major cause of bird population decline https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/gardening-...

[simonsarris]

That seems very silly. The concept of an indoor or outdoor cat didn't even exist until one hundred years ago.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=outdoor+cat%2C...

[charcircuit]

>including the cat

But my cat likes going outside. He likes catching birds.

[arbitrary_name]

I like birds, i like them alive. I would like your car to not go outside and catch birds.

[swayvil]

He didn't say money, he said like money.

[mkotowski]

> "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

> YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

> "So we can believe the big ones?"

> YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

(Death about belief and humanity, from Hogfather by Terry Pratchett)

> Until human society stops serving abstractions […]

Without abstraction, there is no human society to speak of. No government to organize large scale actions, no incentive to share ideas, no way to exchange goods from places where there is overabundance to the places in need of those resources. Wanting to maintain a livable environment, too is nothing but an abstract thought.

I would dare to claim that human society exists first and foremost thanks to our brains being able to abstract away some processes. Of course, it creates blind spots and shortcoming in the process, but they are in the end an acceptable cost.

> As a believer in the concept of memetics, it is clear that standing in defense of the real is a battle that is being lost, but the consequences will not be escaped forever.

Is it? Seems to me that more and more people are starting to be more proactive in attempts at preserving the nature. Too late? Maybe. Time will show.

[revolvingocelot]

>Without abstraction, there is no human society to speak of

I'm appalled that such a quote could be used to support such an argument. Grandparent, and Pratchett's Death, agree that humans and human society are supposed to support humans. Grandparent maintains, quite correctly, that our current society is, in fact, tooled to support abstract concepts like "valuation" and "wealth creation" instead of things like clean nutritive food and safe affordable shelter and supportable realistic hope -- and the biosphere itself that serves as backdrop, stage, and audience all in one.

Whether unintentionally or otherwise, the parent is missing the point. The grandparent doesn't argue against abstraction itself, but the reification of corporations as people, the conflation of the stock market as barometer of the economy, and enablers of all this in ostensibly benevolent governments.

If one chose the read the rest of the fucking book, one would see that it's all about fighting against those who would use human frailties -- like greed, and desperation, and the smallness of our own perspective -- to trick humans into destroying that which makes life worth living. Of course, it's all couched in the supernatural trappings of the Discworld, but as Prachett points out in several Discworld book intros, the Disc is a "world and mirror of worlds". On Earth, the antagonistic Auditors have names and addresses...

[mkotowski]

> humans and human society are supposed to support humans

And it is the same thing I am talking about. Abstraction is humans’ way to streamline the process of maintaining the society. Money was created as an abstraction of a reward for one’s labor. Then atop of it more abstractions were built. Existence of stocks and markets is orthogonal to how to maintain a livable environment. In other case communism would do a better job at not starving people to death.

> Grandparent maintains, quite correctly, that our current society is, in fact, tooled to support abstract concepts like "valuation" and "wealth creation" instead of things like clean nutritive food and safe affordable shelter and supportable realistic hope

Give me an example of a society/culture, that cared more about the environment than the ones currently existing. Former societies/cultures were much smaller in scope and headcount to care about such things. Deforestation was a thing during the time of ancient Romans[0], the idea that a species can go extinct (at lest in European-centric culture) started to take roots during 19th century[1]. According to the Wikipedia, Thomas Jefferson was against a notion that species can go extinct (my point is: it wasn’t simply some fringe group’s dogma). Compare this with The South Sea Bubble[2], which was in 18th century.

In short, my argument is: the abstract ideas like “valuation” and “wealth creation” were there well before any coherent idea about taking care of the environment as a finite and common resource was widely accepted.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Roman... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction#History_of_scientif... [2]: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/South...

[themodelplumber]

That seems a bit of a dichotomous view on a complex web of interconnected "realities" and "abstractions", and I'm not sure if "real" is a great term for an opposite of an abstraction, which is also real in a lot of ways.

Otherwise you are getting _very_ close to the N/S dichotomy in Jungian psychology and the Myers-Briggs type model :D and the growth idea there is transcendence of the dichotomy, bringing strengths of both ends forward, rather than regressing to the one-sided way.

[Retric]

The difference between abstraction and reality is all the little details that get excluded from abstractions. Consider, people cooking at home are creating real value that doesn’t get captured in GDP, which means maximizing GDP may is not maximizing the actual economy.

The difference is not so critical when people are starving, but the difference continues to grow until maximizing GDP starts harming the economy.

[LudwigNagasena]

GDP is a useful abstraction that can help guide policies. Do you have concrete examples of its unjust use that were supported by economists?

I don’t know any government that considers maximizing GDP as its primary goal.

[Retric]

Maximizing GDP doesn’t need to be the primary goal to as you say guide policies. There are plenty of policies aimed to increase economic growth as measured by GDP.

Economists however are on all sides of this issue, it isn’t some monolithic field where everyone agrees on even basic ideas.

[LudwigNagasena]

What economists are on the side that GDP is a perfect measure that precisely captures the increase in well-being? I have never heard of one. If you look at the IMF website you will find a nuanced explanation of what GDP is and is not. For example, it states that

> It is also important to understand what GDP cannot tell us. GDP is not a measure of the overall standard of living or well-being of a country. Although changes in the output of goods and services per person (GDP per capita) are often used as a measure of whether the average citizen in a country is better or worse off, it does not capture things that may be deemed important to general well-being.

Tirades that when economists calculate GDP the human society is serving "abstractions" or the devil over the "real" and God is just fearmongering.

[Retric]

Again your taking things to unreasonable extremes, plenty of economists think GDP is good enough to be useful. Which means it’s informing their decisions or it wouldn’t be useful.

You can’t say measure X is useful, and it’s flaws are well known therefore it’s flaws are irrelevant. If it’s useful then it’s flaws are part of any decision made using it.

[themodelplumber]

There are a lot more differences than that. You are communicating a subjective model of reality, one model of many, many models.

[Retric]

Within the context of a Model. Models that don’t capture the very large scale effects are useless and therefore not worth talking about. What’s left is models that used to capture large scale effects and all the smaller effects that where never captured by the model.

[themodelplumber]

This sounds more like an argument for systems design. You can easily build models and meta-models that help navigate various scopes. For example the concept of the long tail is by definition a widely-scoped way of gaining leverage in a situation where smaller details are important.

Traffic control systems, computer hardware design...these all incorporate the same combinations of depth and breadth of thinking. I think it's wise to keep an open mind and ask whether it's really necessary to exclude a given model or entire set of them.

[Retric]

It’s not a question of excluding the model, it’s a question of the feedback loop where the model is used to both inform your decisions and validate they where correct.

Goodhart's law is an adage often stated as "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

[mypalmike]

At any granularity, knowledge consists of models in the consciousness of the thinker.

[Retric]

Direct observation exists alongside models. You may not be able to correctly interpret that observation, but it is still a form of knowledge.

This is true even if what’s being observed is by a simulated entity, the observation exists outside of it’s internal models and is indirectly related to things in the underlying reality. Ie, physical states of various bits of physical RAM.

[willob33]

You’re flogging the abstraction known as English.

None of these philosophers old works need to be given any weight and working with you to decipher your personal beliefs is not my problem.

The abstractions of physics and biology provide the evidence necessary given the context.

Perhaps sit and ruminate as you wish. Those dead men have no capture of my perception. Paulo Freire said we have no obligation to import the jargon and implied behavior of our captors; I won’t submit to Christian rule; why rich mens dollars? The political capture of our economic behavior is a cudgel I’m tired of being bashed with, and the measurable effects are where I’ll put my effort.

If you prefer to equivocate them away with deference to endless semantic recitation, that’s fine, because I know that means you won’t be in the “real” way. You’ll be here proselytizing others just how none of the effort is going how it should.

[makeitdouble]

This comment is really hard to parse.

"homelessness", "pollution" and "healthy" are abstractions that try to capture in single concept a myriad of different realities, and most of us won't have similar concrete representation of what's behind them. This of course becomes an issue real fast because because solving "homelessness" for instance requires separating all these different cases in their own buckets and coming with appropriate solutions to all of them.

Also money is as real as the food you buy with it, the electricity that comes if you keep paying your bills and the factories you buy with them.

[tristor]

> it is clear that standing in defense of the real is a battle that is being lost

Unfortunately so. As far as I am aware, there are no political movements in any Western country focused entirely on reality and the consequences of reality. We have become enamored, as a society, with abstract ideas and are sacrificing reality on an altar to our delusions.

[zip1234]

Tax/price the negative externalities.

[quadrangle]

We have to start by acknowledging that externalities exist and tell the free-market-is-magic people to shut-up and acknowledge that the market doesn't automatically take care of everything.

[tengbretson]

I don't know if the "population of birds in north America" is a more or less abstract concept than money, but I'd bet they're similar.

[hungryforcodes]

Though population of birds in theory is a measurable real thing -- and money really is an abstraction. Without humans it wouldn't exist. On the other hand, birds would probably exist much better without us.

[refurb]

Money is real, it’s how we pay for medical care, welfare, etc.

[rabuse]

Pretty much the premise of the movie Interstellar.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the pandemic and my society's inability to deal with it

To put the doom and gloom in context, we had a novel virus go from virtually zero to pandemic in the course of a few months. Within weeks we had working treatments. Within a year, effective vaccines. Less than two years from first publication, and over 4 billion people have been inoculated. All within the systems of abstractions you decry.

We're messing up a lot. And we can do much better. But let's not lose the forest for the trees. When we focus on something, we get it done, massively better so than at any prior point in human history.

[outworlder]

> When we focus on something, we get it done

That's true.

What's also true is that some things simply can't be done. If a species goes extinct, it's over (Jurassic Park fantasies nonwithstanding). It's not like they will respawn if we fix the ecosystem, the damage is permanent.

If we get too far into climate change, it won't get undone in time, no matter what crazy geoengineering efforts we undertake.

In between there's a window where we can act. That is closing.

[milkytron]

> In between there's a window where we can act. That is closing.

If we is taken as individuals, then sure we can do tiny bits and pieces. But it will take global systematic changes that start with the elite individuals to invoke such changes. And those that try will acquire many enemies and challenges that fight for the status quo.

[titzer]

Well, there's a lot to quibble about in this rosy portrayal of the COVID clusterfuck, particularly anti-rationality's rearing of anti-Science conspiracy theories and "hesitancy"--but I won't.

> When we focus on something, we get it done

Yeah, great. Can we focus on not ruining this planet for the stock market? Climate change, deforestation and plastic pollution are seriously damaging the one planet in the known universe that can sustain human life.

[lambdadmitry]

We are focusing on it plenty enough. The timeframes for serious climate change are measured in half-a-centuries, remember how much changed in the last decade? Solar got massively cheaper, it became possible to convince countries to reduce their carbon emissions purely through political pressure, billions get spent on energy and sustainability R&D. Hell, even nuclear is quickly losing it stigma after Europe haven't had much wind for a few weeks! We are getting there, regardless of alarmist "we have two years to fix everything or the planet is uninhabitable" nonsense.

[titzer]

I do remember how much changed in the last decade. A very nice decline in solar power cost. But you know what? That didn't solve any problems. Emissions kept rising at an exponential rate, meaning the problem not only kept getting worse, it got worse at a faster rate. Adding solar capacity replaced no fossil fuel capacity. We're using more fossil fuels than ever. We are still on exponential growth. So the next decades look bad. And those half-century bad predictions? They wouldn't be nearly as bad if we didn't continue exponential growth--that literally means no GDP growth, something no politician or public policy advocate will even talk about. Growth is making the problem worse, yet it is literally the only strategy that any one can think of to make life better in any way. Exponential growth of something. We've lost our collective minds, TBH. Like trying to grow a watermelon in a lightbulb. Exponential growth busts this planet's capacity, every time.

[lambdadmitry]

Whose emissions? Western emissions (yes, including carbon embodied in imported goods) are falling for a decade both in Europe and in the US [1], both per capita and total. Sure, there are six more billion people on the planet that can't afford cutting edge grids and loads of renewables and nuclear just yet, but that's a temporary issue, the efficiencies of scale will take care of that.

That "exponential growth" is mostly about taking people out of poverty. Not nearly enough people in the West realise just how dire the average level of wealth is on this planet, which means any "degrowth" rhetoric is just outright misanthropical, and what's worse self-defeating. We still need to produce loads of stuff, and it will be produced regardless of what "enlightened" Westerners imagine about acceptable quality of life, unless you want to literally bomb India or Bangladesh for burning fossils.

Besides, I just don't see why do you imagine some sort of fundamental cutoff existing and being roughly at where we are. Humanity managed to grow from several tens thousands of nomads to soon ten billion people, most probably stabilising somewhere close to that number; why the cutoff was not overshot earlier? If it increased over time, what stops it from increasing any further?

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 , see "Production vs. consumption-based CO₂ emissions, Europe" and the one below for the same but per-capita

[titzer]

> which means any "degrowth" rhetoric is just outright misanthropical

Sorry, I will absolutely challenge "misanthropic" being used here. To suggest that we modern humans could not live as our ancestors did--that is, fulfilling, local, simpler lives with less technology and vastly less energy usage is a subtle assertion that the modern way of living is the only moral one. Which is just, anthropologically, vapid elitism and completely ignorant of human existence over millenia. (I challenge you to live a decade as an ancient philosopher in ancient Greece's height and come back to your 9-to-5 job). This "misanthropic" word comes laden with an implicit accusation that we'd force disease and poverty on people when in fact the only thing that forces disease and poverty on people is exactly overpopulation and broken political and economic systems which are ironically exactly the thing supposedly producing this great wealth.

Oh, we moderns have figured out exactly the right way to hold the world, alright. Rampant consumerism and overconsumption. Yep, the most moral system.

To argue that we need degrowth is not to argue that we need be sick and poor. Hell, the richest person 200 years ago was neither sick nor poor, but was incapable of living a high-carbon lifestyle despite utter luxury. Our entire modern system runs on unsustainable levels of energy consumption and is inextricably wedded to fossil fuels. We live like little kings because we burn the Earth's hidden energy reserves to do it.

So yeah, de-grow it.

[lambdadmitry]

Indeed. It's also just that people don't remember the issues of the yesterday, they just disappear without much reflection.

Remember ozone layer hole? Acid rains? Leaded petrol? Asbestos causing lung cancers? All sorted out when we realised they are problematic. Not immediately, not without some foot dragging and screaming, but sorted.

We are great at solving problems. We just take a bit of time and convincing to get going.

[titzer]

Just a reminder, but we solved, err, almost none of those things. The ozone layer hole has just barely stabilized, and might recover by 2075, acid rain was never a scientific concept, but a media scare, but leaded petrol did absolutely contaminate the air and water and that lead is still out there, so is most of the asbestos, we just let it be for the most part, as it is really expensive to deal with--I know, I have some in my house.

It's a matter of perspective. Do we solve large problems? Not really. Do we forget about large problems and/or declare victory? A lot. We only have so much attention span.

[lambdadmitry]

The ozone hole stabilising and recovering while we don't emit PFCs anymore is solving the issue. Acid rain is so real it has its own big Wiki article [0] and was solved through sulfur emission controls. Leaded petrol use stopped, asbestos is either phased out or has strict protocols for working with it rendering it harmless. Being "really expensive to deal with" is solving the problem, because the expense if the expense of making it safe.

You just moved the goalposts in every example. I'm not sure why would you do that, what's the underlying narrative you have in mind.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain

[titzer]

Thanks for the link, I didn't realize acid rain was as widespread a problem as it appears to be....which actually reinforces my point, in that the emissions that give rise to acid rain haven't stopped, they've just been reduced.

I haven't moved any goalposts on anything, it's just different standards. When someone says "I've solved problem X" one would assume that X is no longer a problem. That's the common assumption. All of the problems you mentioned and I commented on are still problems. The ozone hole is still a major problem that kills people and is affecting our planet. We project it will be closed, but it ain't closed. (And there have been flare-ups of CFC emissions). It's also a problem then once solved (when both of us are dead probably), will require constant vigilance against.

Your post came off as very rosy, like all these problems are solved and are in the past. Not the case.

[et-al]

I wouldn't be that optimistic. A lot of these problems the developed world "solved" by offshoring production to countries with looser environmental regulations.

And it's not like our new technologies don't bring about new problems. E.g. pesticide use and microplastics everywhere.

[dbtc]

Interesting. I frame it as a problem of radical materialism’s ignorance of intangible importances: [love, beauty, god, consciousness, ...]

[nobody9999]

>Until human society stops serving abstractions (like money) over things that are real, then real things will continually face consequence.

But birds aren't real![0]

[0] https://birdsarentreal.com/