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by lm28469 1055 days ago
The only viable alternative to doing nothing is stopping our quest for infinite growth in all sectors.

You're the proverbial boiling frog

2 comments

If all human carbon emissions magically ceased today anthropomorphic global warming and its concomitant environmental changes will still continue to unfold for the next few centuries or millennia, at a minimum, before settling into a new (albeit shifted) "natural" evolution. It will take millions of years for the human carbon emissions to be cycled back into the lithosphere.

In this sense, continued emissions only accelerate and compound the current process unfolding. Global warming as it exists today cannot be stopped passively.

That was the previous poster's point. We can infer that their unstated objective is the end of global warming in the near future (i.e. in the next few centuries), the achievement of which necessarily requires active intervention.

I might infer that your unstated objective is not the end of global warming, but the end of ongoing human interference per se. That's an entirely different objective, albeit no less legitimate.

If I'm correct (and I'm confident in my assessment wrt to the previous poster), then you two are talking past each other.

No problem with this, apart from convincing like 5-6 billion people to cut their standards of living to half. Also less people is needed, few children. Sounds like impossible now without concentrated media effort and all ruling parties probably would lose for decades.
5-6 billion people are going to have their living standards and reproductive opportunities destroyed anyway.

If not worse.

But you're really just remaking the point that as a species we're incapable of intelligent collective management of our resources.

You are right. But good luck convincing those billions to voluntarily reduce their living standards. I fear change will have to come involuntarily.
>> No problem with this, apart from convincing like 5-6 billion people to cut their standards of living to half.

> 5-6 billion people are going to have their living standards and reproductive opportunities destroyed anyway.

The problem might be that those sets of people are not the same.

Coordination problems are really really really hard. You shouldn't be dismissive about them.
Got to convince Nigeria that they shouldn't expect any further quality of life increase. Good luck.