Are we running out of resources? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#71

Post by beaconstudios » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:51 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #68

beaconstudios wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but the conditions in the West are contingent on the work done in the rest of the world. There's a reason we're not all working in sweatshops making all the products we are constantly using, and it's because we have poor people in other countries doing it instead. For their living standards to rise, ours will have to lower (though the economy is not a zero sum game of course, and technology/automation…

> we have poor people in other countries doing it instead. and they become less poor afterwards. Eventually, they will no longer accept the low wages as their own wealth increases. i think this is a good outcome - all parties benefit from the transaction. This will take a long time to play out, and in the mean time, the research and development of tech would progress enough to find a solution to the energy and resour…

> and they become less poor afterwards.

This doesn't happen when you're paid subsistence wages, which sweatshop workers are. It's exploitation of the poor, pure and simple - there's no trickle-down economics in play, they just get to stay poor but alive while the goods they make are sold to wealthier countries.

It would be really nice if free markets played out the way free market advocates say they do, but they don't.

> But the way it will play out, means that there's always a gradient of relative "conditions"

Personally, I'd rather we lived in a meritocratic system where hard work and innovation benefits the individual responsible, and everybody earns the value of their work. I don't like the idea of a perpetual underclass based on characteristics unrelated to personal capability, like nationality or race.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#72

Post by simonh » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #56

bgroat wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a historical precedent for having a technology that can largely offset these risks (fission and fusion) but not using them? I don't want to say "this time is different" (because I don't know that). But we do find our self in a situation where technology hasn't peaked, but we aren't using the new tech we have

Fission (and likely fusion) ended up being too complicated and expensive to do the job. But renewables appear to be much better situated to push out fossil fuels over the next several decades.

The problem at the moment with renewables is they still don't provide reliable base load, and energy storage systems while useful locally are proving incredibly expensive at scale. The fact is the only option we have right now in many countries for reliable base load generation outside fossil fuels is nuclear. Some other options may eventually become viable, like geothermal or fusion, but there's no realistic prospect of that over the next few decades.

If we want to get serious right now about eliminating fossil fuels, the fact is the answer is a mix of renewables and nuclear.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#73

Post by benstrumental » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

volatilecarbon wrote: post #13

There were a lot of words here to simply fall back on the argument that innovation will solve every problem and do so before there is significant suffering. I agree that life will always go on, but this idea that consumption and quality of life can do nothing but rise when it is so dependent on the limited cheap energy and resources that we only learned to exploit a century ago is insanity to me. Our ever increasing…

>Our ever increasing population and consumption will cause the price of energy and materials to increase as the low-hanging fruit is picked.

Not only are we picking the low-hanging fruit in energy production, but we're picking it at a temporarily discounted cost (with carbon emissions not being priced in) at the expense of our future selves and future generations.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#74

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #51

cheschire wrote: post #26

It was nice to read something optimistic again. Feels so rare these days. Seems like whenever optimism pokes its head out, everyone rushes to smash it back into its hole. There’s no room for your optimism in my reality! And so on. edit: Hmm. I get a negative score for celebrating some optimism. How dare I step out of line.

Optimism is fine but when everything points the opposite direction it's called wishful thinking

But everything does not point in the opposite direction.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#75

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #72

pfdietz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fission (and likely fusion) ended up being too complicated and expensive to do the job. But renewables appear to be much better situated to push out fossil fuels over the next several decades.

The problem at the moment with renewables is they still don't provide reliable base load, and energy storage systems while useful locally are proving incredibly expensive at scale. The fact is the only option we have right now in many countries for reliable base load generation outside fossil fuels is nuclear. Some other options may eventually become viable, like geothermal or fusion, but there's no realistic prospec…

The "renewables can't supply baseload" has been so well debunked that at this point I have zero respect for anyone (typically nuclear stans) still trotting out that argument. No, renewables damn well can supply baseload, and likely cheaper than fission. The question is exactly which renewable sources and storage technologies will end up being cheapest, not whether they can do it at all.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#76

Post by revscat » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #48

volatilecarbon wrote: post #13

There were a lot of words here to simply fall back on the argument that innovation will solve every problem and do so before there is significant suffering. I agree that life will always go on, but this idea that consumption and quality of life can do nothing but rise when it is so dependent on the limited cheap energy and resources that we only learned to exploit a century ago is insanity to me. Our ever increasing…

What he is pointing out is the long history of doomsaying being wrong, because it implicitly depends on the assumption that technology has reached its peak and cannot further improve. To get a real doomsaying argument, you have to base it not on details of current technology, but on hard physical limits that no technological improvement can evade. And it's really tough to do that. The population limit for Earth based…

> What he is pointing out is the long history of doomsaying being wrong, because it implicitly depends on the assumption that technology has reached its peak and cannot further improve.

This is a straw man. The arguments against humanity’s survival are not technological, but economic: we will not survive because our economic systems continue to poison the environment, to the detriment of all. Solutions exist, but because it is taken as a matter of faith that economics is more important than environmental impact, no technological solutions are implemented. Capitalists fight almost literally to the death to maintain the status quo of a fossil fuel driven society, and has shown no ability to change in ways needed to stave of doom.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#77

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

revscat wrote: post #76

pfdietz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What he is pointing out is the long history of doomsaying being wrong, because it implicitly depends on the assumption that technology has reached its peak and cannot further improve. To get a real doomsaying argument, you have to base it not on details of current technology, but on hard physical limits that no technological improvement can evade. And it's really tough to do that. The population limit for Earth based…

> What he is pointing out is the long history of doomsaying being wrong, because it implicitly depends on the assumption that technology has reached its peak and cannot further improve. This is a straw man. The arguments against humanity’s survival are not technological, but economic: we will not survive because our economic systems continue to poison the environment, to the detriment of all. Solutions exist, but bec…

But there are plenty of examples of changes, involving both changes in economic incentives and changes in technology, that greatly reduced pollution. To pretend there's some iron law connecting industry and pollution is simply dishonest.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#78

Post by teknopaul » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

evrydayhustling wrote: post #37

volatilecarbon wrote: post #13

There were a lot of words here to simply fall back on the argument that innovation will solve every problem and do so before there is significant suffering. I agree that life will always go on, but this idea that consumption and quality of life can do nothing but rise when it is so dependent on the limited cheap energy and resources that we only learned to exploit a century ago is insanity to me. Our ever increasing…

Yeah, although the author is excited about new knowledge, he is ignoring our growing knowledge about toxicity and the costs of disrupting ecosystem resources, as well as the compounding expenses of maintaining a high standard of living at greater population density. You can be optimistic about the long arc of human progress and still realistic about our ability to take catastrophic steps backwards.

It's interesting that it's easy to spot nonsense by how it's written before you get to something that's wrong.

Rich/knowledgeable people can benefit from fission but poorer people are still dependant on simpler resources such as rain fall and fertile soil. We're he correct, we wouldn't see increased poverty right now. But we do. Knowledge itself is not equally distributed, just as resources aren't. Be good if countries relied on their own resources, protected shared resources, and shared knowledge. It's impirically incorrect to presume that some people having knowledge of how to effectively use resources is sufficient to end poverty for others.

People are still looking after themselves at the expense of shared (or imported) resources.

We see basic resources depleted.

We are in a boom of misinformation vs knowledge expansion.

It's odd that people think "we understand/we have the knowledge" when they themselves don't.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#79

Post by rmah » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 2:10 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #45

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The multistory rather than merely spacious homes and 'pool' with the implication of a private pool, which are both very space inefficient make this seem foolish to me, but I see no issue with billions of people living in cities with easy access to pools, parks, schooling, jobs, and comfortable safe, warm/cool housing and living standards that are science fiction to their immediate ancestors.

This is one of the reasons we need to be expanding the space for collective resources - it's not likely we can sustain a world where everyone on earth lives in a single family detached home in the suburbs with a car, private heated pool, private air conditioning etc that the author advocates for. However, if we're a little more clever with how we allocate and share our resources, we can scale up standards of living i…

4 bil households (8 bil people) with each household living on a detached 500 sq m lot (20m x 25m or apx 1/8th acre) => 4,000,000,000 hh * 500 sq m => 2mil sq km.

The earth has 149mil sq km of land area so those suburbs would take up about 1.7% of the land. If you subtract out antarctica (14 mil sq km), siberia (13 mil sq km) and 3/4 of canada (7 mil sq km), the sahara desert (9mil sq km)... you're still left with about 106 mil sq km so we're using about 1.8% of the land.

Density isn't evenly distributed you say? Well, let's look at only china then... Some 1.4 bil people in 9.6mil sq km. Everyone living on in 500 sq m lots means 350,000 sq km, or about 5% of the land. Lots of western china is too inhospitable you say? Fine, subtract out Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xining (forget the fact that 60mil+ people live there). That's half of china's land area! You're still left with around 4.860 mil sq km. So everyone's suburban lots would fit in about 7% of the land.

My point here is that the earth is not really as crowded as many people seem to believe. It only seems crowded if you spend the majority of your life in or near dense urban areas. Which most people do these days. So most see it that way. There are still vast tracts of nearly uninhabited land and even vaster expanses of sparsely inhabited land. Sure, these are typically not the really nice bits of the earth (from a human perspective), but we do have central heating and A/C now, right? :-)

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#80

Post by softcactus » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 2:10 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #68

beaconstudios wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but the conditions in the West are contingent on the work done in the rest of the world. There's a reason we're not all working in sweatshops making all the products we are constantly using, and it's because we have poor people in other countries doing it instead. For their living standards to rise, ours will have to lower (though the economy is not a zero sum game of course, and technology/automation…

> we have poor people in other countries doing it instead. and they become less poor afterwards. Eventually, they will no longer accept the low wages as their own wealth increases. i think this is a good outcome - all parties benefit from the transaction. This will take a long time to play out, and in the mean time, the research and development of tech would progress enough to find a solution to the energy and resour…

That's very easy for you to say in your current situation. I think you would not find it acceptable if you were one of the sweatshop workers. This is the exact logic that has been used to justify slavery/exploitation throughout history.