[myshpa]

(ChatGPT) There are several human sources of methane, including:

- Livestock farming: Methane is produced during the digestive process of ruminant animals such as cows, sheep, and goats. Therefore, animal agriculture is a significant contributor to methane emissions.

- Energy production: Methane is the primary component of natural gas, which is commonly used for heating and electricity generation. Methane can also be released during the extraction, transportation, and distribution of natural gas.

- Waste management: Methane is produced during the decomposition of organic waste in landfills, wastewater treatment facilities, and manure management systems.

- Fossil fuel production: Methane can be released during the extraction and processing of coal, oil, and gas.

- Biomass burning: Methane can be produced during the incomplete combustion of biomass, such as wood or crop residues.

- Agricultural practices: Methane can be emitted during rice cultivation, as well as through the use of fertilizers and manure in agriculture.

Ok, so let's stop using fossil oils and animal agriculture (let's ignore human farts for a moment).

How could that be detrimental for human flourishing, I ask? Are the burgers essential for humans to flourish? I don't think so.

[xyzzyz]

Yes, eating meat is essential to flourishing of overwhelming majority of humans. Most humans, as they become wealthier, increase their meat consumption. This is very consistent across the world. If you forced humans to stop eating meat, this would make billions of people very unhappy.

Benefits of burning fossil fuels are extremely obvious, so I shouldn’t even need to list these — for one thing, they make the discussion we have now possible in the first place. Many of current uses of fossil fuels can be replaced by other sources of energy, though at higher cost. Higher cost of energy necessarily means we get to spend less on other things, which entails less flourishing in aggregate.

[myshpa]

> If you forced humans to stop eating meat, this would make billions of people very unhappy.

Wealthy billions. The poor ones don't eat as much meat and dairy. And it's a good thing ... if they did, we would need not one, but 4-5 Earths to feed everyone.

Eating meat is a culture. A story we tell ourselves. It cost us all of megafauna, half of our forests, it threatens thousands of animal species with extinction, and it should go. It can't go for much longer if we want to have any future.

> Higher cost of energy

Costs are human construct. Money is just a record in someone's database. Goverments can make as much as they want. It means nothing.

> necessarily means we get to spend less on other things

We will learn what has value when we'll eat the system to the ground.

[xyzzyz]

> Wealthy billions. The poor ones don't eat as much meat and dairy. And it's a good thing ... if they did, we would need not one, but 4-5 Earths to feed everyone.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying: less energy consumption pretty much directly translates to less human flourishing. You seem to be arguing that this is a good thing (which I disagree with), but you keep supporting my claim with more evidence, so please, concede this.

> Costs are human construct. Money is just a record in someone's database. Goverments can make as much as they want. It means nothing.

This is not so. If that was the case, poor countries could become rich by their governments printing more money. Zimbabwe tried, they did get more money, but did not get any wealth.

The point here is that money represents something very real and significant, which a claim on value produced in the economy. If you just “change records in someone’s database”, you’ll only have more money chasing the same amount of goods, ie. inflation. If you, however, force people to use different, more expensive sources of energy, the impact is very real: less of stuff in total gets produced, and so the society gets to consume less in aggregate. This means less flourishing.

[myshpa]

> don't eat as much meat and dairy

> less energy consumption pretty much directly translates to less human flourishing

You're like the man who floats on the sea on the raft made from coconuts. The more he eats, the more he thinks he flourishes.

Sharks are meanwhile patiently circling around.

> Zimbabwe tried, they did get more money, but did not get any wealth

Not everybody has the guts and means to organize few coups & occupy some countries first, steal their oil and other natural resources, then build mega army and spread it around half a world.

But if they did, then it would work. It's a recipe that works everytime.

Inflation is irrelevant. I've studied economics ... it's hogwash.

[lowkey]

> Inflation is irrelevant. I've studied economics ... it's hogwash.

I call the above statement hogwash. Let’s take your proposal to the logical extreme. If inflation is hogwash, then why do we have to tax the citizens? Why not just print the money we need to run the government? Why do we have a national debt if we could just print the money we need to pay it off? We could try your proposal by I don’t think it would end well.

[myshpa]

Inability to imagine alternative ways of managing things is all too common, and too complex topic to be addressed in a single comment.

Instead I'll recommend works of David Graeber [0], mainly his treatise Debt and The Dawn. [1][2] I'll throw in his Bullshit Jobs, just because. [3]

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

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything:_A_New_...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

[freedomben]

> Ok, so let's stop using fossil oils and animal agriculture (let's ignore human farts for a moment).

> How could that be detrimental for human flourishing, I ask? Are the burgers essential for humans to flourish? I don't think so.

Disclaimer: I decided to interpret the comment as disagreeing with me because it seemed like the most plausible interpretation giving the ambiguous potential use of sarcasm, but it's very possible I misinterpreted.

The burgers and the farts were an attempt at humor.

A much more serious consideration (also in my original) is heating our homes. If you have ever been homeless longer than a day or two during cold months in a cold place (I spent 6 months this way), you pretty quickly learn how important modern climate controls are. I don't see how you can "fluorish" when you're freezing your ass off. Good luck getting the sleep you need to perform either physical or mental work, which currently is needed in order to fluorish (unless you think the homeless on the street are fluorishing). If you're lucky your employer will be able to heat their office so you could live there, but not everybody works for someone like that. The wealthy would be able to buy whatever they needed (electric heaters, solar panels, battery storage, the high labor costs of retrofitting all these things, assuming these are even still available after the long chain of dependency is broken) but the vast majority of people would not. Human fluorishing is not just comfort for the wealthy. The average person's life matters. Much of what advances our human condition come from people who aren't born into wealth.

How exactly do you propose to heat the average person's home when all fossil fuels are no longer available? And any derivative products of fossil fuels such as plastics? Keep in mind even bio-plastics made from corn and other products would not be nearly as available since we would lose orders of magnitude of production capacity by no longer being able to use fertilizers, tractors and other machinery, etc.

I guess we should probably establish what "human fluorishing" even means otherwise this discussion is pointless. If your idea of human fluorishing is where a massive perecentage of human labor is doing farm work again like in the 19th century, or going back to feudalism where we all work the Lord's land and pick his crops. My definition is where human quality and standard of life continually increases. We're not perfect right now (especially with life expectancies in the US dropping) but our current situation would look like a future paradise compared to what we'd have without any fossil fuel.

[myshpa]

> How exactly do you propose to heat the average person's home when all fossil fuels are no longer available

Atom & renewable sources. 256x256 km of solar panels is enough for whole world.

> And any derivative products of fossil fuels such as plastics

You mean trash (99% of plastics produced)? Stop producing it.

> fertilizers

Use regenerative agriculture. Agriculture can perfectly well function without fossil fuel inputs.

> tractors and other machinery

Electric tractors. Should have been here decades ago.

> your idea of human fluorishing is where a massive perecentage of human labor is doing farm work again like in the 19th century

Maybe we shouldn't insist on 70+ % of workers working bullshit jobs, and let instead few of them work in agriculture instead. Many would like it, if they could support themselves with it.

It's only because of the exploitation of the soil, natural resources and humans, that current agricultural practices prevail. If it would mean that our food production would not be dependent on use of poisons, i think that would be good thing for everybody.

> fluorishing

Humour?

[josephcsible]

> Atom & renewable sources. 256x256 km of solar panels is enough for whole world.

> Electric tractors. Should have been here decades ago.

Those sound like great ideas. How about we roll them out first, and only stop using fossil fuels once they're able to totally replace them with no downside, instead of giving up heat and tractors indefinitely in the meantime?

[myshpa]

So ... business as usual?

We have to decide to stop using the bad stuff first, set the deadlines, or new stuff will never materialize.

Have you noticed how Tesla started electric cars, everybody laughed, and now they're the only way forward?

It will be the same with this ... sooner or later. And the change of focus will bring innovation we can't even imagine now.

[josephcsible]

> Have you noticed how Tesla started electric cars, everybody laughed, and now they're the only way forward?

But Tesla was super successful even though ICE cars still aren't banned.

[myshpa]

But they're being phased out.