51–60 of 127 posts
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How does visiting help?
Tourism dollars. The pollys would think more about saving it if money was on the line. And it is a spectacular place to visit.
The sci-fi writer in me envisions a story about a future where humans exist, and there is only one species of fish in the ocean, and everyone is sick of eating it.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/10/07/130404545...
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As far as I understand it recovery was never possible by the time we realized what was happening. We have no good way to capture CO2 and no actionable way worldwide to reduce CO2 production fast enough. Even if we stopped producing CO2 right now the levels in the atmosphere would still continue to have detrimental effects for dozens of years.
> no actionable way worldwide to reduce CO2 production fast enough. People disagree about that one, but OK, your view is certainly one that a fair number of people agree with.
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I didn't argue that resource use and pollution per capita is uniform. It's obviously not. But damn, just look at the aggregate indicators. CO2 emissions are still growing exponentially. Ecological degradation is increasing exponentially. We're starting to see widespread firestorms across the northern hemisphere.
I agree we in a horrible, crisis situation. I simply believe pointing to overpopulation as a primary cause is wrong headed. The world's nations could stop a country's worth of energy use tomorrow by banning bitcoin as just a single example. There are other, harder examples but the (awful) problem of stopping runaway really doesn't seem related to a "booming" human population - the quote I originally took issue with.
Also, expecting industrial development to moderate growth rates in rapidly growing populations is iffy. Time lags could push systems into regimes with positive feedback. Ultimately, though, human populations will crash, and stuff will head back toward equilibrium.
Interesting article, but man is there a ton of bloat on that page. I could feel my phone heating up in my hand.
my 2007 macbook could barely load it.
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> no actionable way worldwide to reduce CO2 production fast enough. People disagree about that one, but OK, your view is certainly one that a fair number of people agree with.
I know that some people claim we could but it is often because they do not look at every angle, especially economics, and scalability. Global scale endeavors tend to be complex and require long timelines.
There are only two real impediments to this happening.
The first is lobbying from oil and coal companies (especially in the United States). The only solution for it is to have the will to tell them off and do it anyway.
The second is that nobody wants to do it alone. Having a carbon tax is a relative disadvantage -- if everybody does it then everybody is in the same boat, but if only you do it then everyone else is going to out-compete you, so you need some coordination method.
In particular, what keeps happening is that Europe and China are willing to reduce emissions but not if the United States won't and the United States has a large oil industry that it doesn't want to see destroyed even though that's what needs to happen. The answer is for the other countries to be serious about it and not take no for an answer -- literally stop trading with countries that won't do it. Give the US the choice between the oil industry and literally every other industry and the choice is easy.
That doesn't work for everyone. It isn't going to get a random African dictatorship to reduce its emissions. But none of the countries it wouldn't work on are major carbon emitters to begin with.
The problem is that nobody is willing to put their foot down.
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Oh, come on now. The previous prime minister Mal (and current deputy leader Josh) gave the great barrier reef $444m. They are doing their very best to save it. I mean sure, the charity they gave it to never asked for it, and have only 6 people working for them. And of course they were good friends of the party, ex-exxon, ex-origin (gas fracking), ex-jbp (most corrupt gov in aus history). No oversight, no investigatio…
It doesn't matter. There's no way that Australia could "save" the reef. At best, maybe they could bioengineer something that looked enough like a reef to keep tourists happy. Or maybe just replace it with plastic and stuff ;)
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> no actionable way worldwide to reduce CO2 production fast enough. People disagree about that one, but OK, your view is certainly one that a fair number of people agree with.
I know that some people claim we could but it is often because they do not look at every angle, especially economics, and scalability. Global scale endeavors tend to be complex and require long timelines.
The actual title of the article is: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’ , and that's what the article is about. There are only cursory mentions of climate change in general.
Yes, I hate how media outfits use several titles for the same piece. Readable heading vs. HTML title tag (which the bookmarklet uses) is another discrepancy.
But I mostly hate it because you just know that someone on HN will not understand this reality and try to give you a hard time.
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I agree we in a horrible, crisis situation. I simply believe pointing to overpopulation as a primary cause is wrong headed. The world's nations could stop a country's worth of energy use tomorrow by banning bitcoin as just a single example. There are other, harder examples but the (awful) problem of stopping runaway really doesn't seem related to a "booming" human population - the quote I originally took issue with.
The causes are co-option and destruction of ecosystems, and various sorts of pollution. I do agree that it's inaccurate to focus on overpopulation. Still, some impacts, such as ecosystem co-option for agriculture, and harvesting wood for fuel, are substantial even without industrial development. Also, expecting industrial development to moderate growth rates in rapidly growing populations is iffy. Time lags could pus…
And certainly, populations in less developed areas have done and can quite a bit of damage - but that damage can only be corrected by state policies to prevent poor resource usage.
Also, expecting industrial development to moderate growth rates in rapidly growing populations is iffy.
This has occurred in a fairly predictable rate over the majority of the world's area. India, the Mid-East and Africa are basically the primary areas of growing population in the world.