[Loquebantur]

The economic system itself is incompatible with the physical reality of a finite planet.

The ones steering society choose to crash and ruin everything rather than to jeopardize their positions in power.

That obvious failure in morals and ethics, basic principles of adult responsibility really, is made possible by a lack of rational reflection in the populace.

Objective truth has to take precedence over subjective desires when it comes to existential questions. Currently it does not.

[constantius]

I'd push back.on blaming the populace for this: the widespread belief in general polls is that the climate situation is dire and that drastic measures need to be taken.

However, the constraints that most people have to contend with do not allow them to be more radical in their calls for change. You saw it in the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests uprising in France, that was motivated not by the passion for IC engines but by the inability to weather the costs of taxation on older vehicles.

The real culprit is far and away corporations that benefit from activities that carry with them extreme effects on the climate, and who can influence both politics and media. The research (sorry for lack of link) that shows that political direction is largely controlled by moneyed interests is not ambiguous.

I do agree that the populace also deserves some of the blame however: regular renewals of electronic devices, and especially the continuing consumption of animal products, is a moral failure justified only by pleasure.

[Loquebantur]

You're right about the general sentiment acknowledging the seriousness only when you look at the center and left of society. The majority in the US however supports or tolerates the actual political decisions made, contradicting that level of importance.

When you paint people as being "disallowed" from more radical actions, the same question of true importance arises? The current trajectory leads to Armageddon, plain and simple.

My point here thus is about the proper scale on which people place the topic.

It's not a "lifestyle choice" to doom humanity's children to ruin.

Placing responsibility with the irresponsible is a cop-out.

[inigyou]

The culprit behind corporations is politicians who allow them to get away with what they do, and the culprit behind this nexus is game theory.

[pluralmonad]

Throwing everything animal under the bus is not warranted. CAFOs and grain heavy operations certainly. Regenerative ag using animals on pasture is an amazing carbon sink. I agree that the factories using petroleum grown grains as feed are terrible.

[constantius]

90% of farmed animals globally are in factory farms: https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-est...

I don't have data on the West specifically, but I'd be surprised if it's not 99%. "Free range" animals are largely a fiction.

Animals being used for pasture grazing, for the benefit of the climate, could be understandable, but I think enslavement and torture of 200+ billion animals annually is a moral failure that goes far beyond its effects on CO2 ppm.

[burnt-resistor]

Animal ag creates unnecessary risks of (viral) pandemics, antibiotic resistant bacteria, air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, deforestation (for silage and feeder crops), caloric inefficiency, and animal cruelty. There are plenty of alternative plant-based protein and nutrients sources that could be grown instead.

[azan_]

> The economic system itself is incompatible with the physical reality of a finite planet.

„Infinite growth is impossible on planet with finite resources” is nice buzzphrase, but upon closer inspection it makes literally zero sense. Fortunately people will never accept degrowthers’ postulates.

[uv-depression]

You're making a very strong claim ("literally zero sense"), but you've provided no argument as to why. I don't believe that the economy can become arbitrarily decoupled from physical goods, which is a hard requirement for infinite growth with finite resources.

[azan_]

Because 1) growth is not directly linked to resources and the richer country is the less growth depends on resource-intensive areas such as farming or industry; 2) it’s absurd to think we are at the stage of growth where resource availability becomes constraint - I’d say it’s on the contrary and we are at the stage where we become far less dependent on resources than are on scarcer side (e.g. thanks to solar uptake).

[uv-depression]

But the claim must be that physical goods can become an arbitrarily small portion of the economy. Nobody would dispute that they've become smaller. Do you believe that food can become arbitrarily cheap relative to total wealth? Or steel, or silicon? In other words, can the food you eat require an arbitrarily small portion of your income? And looking at nation-states only is an accounting trick; the economy is global.

You again say "it's absurd" and provide no argument. I think the case is not as clear cut as you would like it to be. Solar energy is not an infinite resource.

[azan_]

> But the claim must be that physical goods can become an arbitrarily small portion of the economy.

Yes, if you actually mean infinite growth it’s true. And that’s what I find absurd - why would you care about infinite growth? If you actually care about infinity, then even if you degrowth you will run out of resources because guess what - resources are finite, so the use of resources will have to also be arbitrarily small and asymptotically approach zero!

[uv-depression]

What? Some resources are renewable. There's a finite amount of solar energy, but it doesn't "run out" (on human timescales). Growing food doesn't need to remove from the biosphere, even if the way we do it now does do significant damage. So we absolutely must stop using non-renewable resources (i.e. fossil fuels), but if we find an amount of renewable ones combined with recyclable non-renewables (like metal) that are sustainable then we can reach a steady state.

An economic system based on perpetual growth can never reach a steady state, unless you believe that physical goods can become an arbitrarily small portion of the economy.

[NoGravitas]

It appears that they believe you can eat emails (according to the substitutability principle).

[azan_]

It appears that parent comment believes that there’s infinite amount of food and once you degrowth you will never run out of it.

[ernst_klim]

> The economic system itself is incompatible with the physical reality of a finite planet

The economic reality is perfectly compatible with finite reality, because growth is not a function of resources.

An email is more economically valuable than a paper mail despite requiring much less resources (and leading to a much less CO2 emission)

[typicalset]

> growth is not a function of resources

This is a bold claim: I do not believe that if all remaining fossil fuels had vanished overnight that growth would remain identical.

[uv-depression]

To believe this, you must believe that the economy can become arbitrarily decoupled from any physical good. Do you believe that food can become an arbitrarily small proportion of the economy (and so arbitrarily cheap relative to income)? Steel? Purified silicon? Infrastructure like bridges?

I don't. Perpetual growth is incompatible with finite resources. Fortunately, human flourishing does not depend on infinite economic growth; there is, for example, enough food for everyone on the planet. Capitalism is just bad at allocating resources by any metric other than its own. (Yes yes, it's better that feudalism was. I think we can hold ourselves to a higher bar than that.)

[AlexandrB]

> Do you believe that food can become an arbitrarily small proportion of the economy

This is not necessary at all for economic growth to be infinite. Food prices can "inflate" and so stay at, let's say 20%, of the economy while the amount of physical food being produced remains flat year after year. That's sort of what's happening with housing, education, and healthcare already.

I think seeing prices go up like this makes people unhappy, but what really matters is what portion of a person's income this stuff occupies.

[uv-depression]

If physical goods remain a constant proportion of the economy without having more of them but get more expensive, all that's happening is inflation, not economic growth.