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I Choose Optimism

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Re: I Choose Optimism

#41

Post by atemerev »

salt-thrower wrote: post #30
atemerev wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human civilization will survive mass extinctions and change of habitability of some places. Humans are resilient. And if they won’t, life itself is even more resilient.

> And if they won’t, life itself is even more resilient. You realize that's hardly reassuring, right? You're right though - life is resilient. Life has survived worse. But our fragile global civilization, propped up by fossil fuels at a core level, is not resilient in the worst case outcomes of climate change. And keep in mind: in order to avoid the worst case scenarios, massive economic and political change needs to…

Hey, we are all going to die anyway, so that’s a baseline. The bar is pretty low :)

Now, I believe that human civilization is not there yet for coordinated global action. At the very least, it requires world peace, and we are on the brink of the next world war. Civilization can disappear even before we’ll feel consequences from climate change. Nothing is permanent.

Having said that, I think we should do everything to improve our prospects and our long-term quality of life, like building a lot of climate-safe nuclear power plants, stopping burning fossil fuels, and preparing for mass climate migration (which will not even be the first in humanity’s history). I think we’ll manage. But if not — I’m pretty sure that there are many other fine civilizations in the universe that will pass this particular test. We are not that important on the cosmic scale, and everything there is temporary anyway.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#42

Post by M3L0NM4N »

archhn wrote: post #12

You choose homeostasis. Feeeling good about the future makes you feel good. This leads to immediate improvements in one's quality of life. People are attracted to those who have a "positive outlook." No one likes hanging around a doomsayer. This author clearly lives in a place where he can afford such optimism. It's not so easy in the slums of Tanzania.

I believe feeling good about the future with many specific reasons to feel good about the future is totally valid though.

Ask yourself why people in the slums of Tanzania might not be "optimistic about the future". Is it because of their poor current living situation, or is it because they don't see as much of the political, scientific, and social progress being made over time globally? I'd argue it's more likely the latter.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#43

Post by xupybd »

darkteflon wrote: post #15

It’s great to recognise what we’ve achieved as a species. And maybe the arc of history has historically bent towards justice. What’s different about this moment in time versus any other in human history is that we face not one but two known existential risks. Climate change is the sort of knotty long-term vs short-term, private vs public, incentives problem that we as a species excel at fucking up. In addition to tha…

It was the same with the last cold war. They were convinced over population would destroy the earth and Russia and America would start throwing Nukes around.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#44

Post by jshen »

mrandish wrote: post #4

It's easy (and popular) to be a pessimist but when I look at objective global data on decade+ time scales, the only rational conclusion is that things are generally getting better for more people in more places than ever before (data like global poverty, infant mortality, literacy, etc). That doesn't mean we don't still have a ways to go and it certainly doesn't mean that things aren't terrible for some people in som…

Decade+ time scales don’t mean a whole lot. It’s far too short a time.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#45

Post by goatlover »

salt-thrower wrote: post #18

This article comes across as extremely tone-deaf, and the author seems unaware of the existential scale of the problems humanity is facing. The fact that the phrase "climate change" only appears once - at the beginning, as a throwaway line - really speaks volumes. If the only problems we face were war and rising Christian fascism, I would also be optimistic, because those things can and have been fought successfully…

Does the IPCC report anywhere claim that climate change is an existential threat? What does a "code red" actually entail for the next century? Where in the climate science does it actually say that large ares of Earth will become functionally uninhabitable and the biosphere will collapse? Outside of hothouse Earth scenarios, which are deemed unlikely at this point within the 2.5-3.7 degrees warming scenarios, I'm not aware of any such doomsday predictions by the actual mainstream climate science.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#46

Post by DoreenMichele »

M3L0NM4N wrote: post #40
DoreenMichele wrote: post #9

American homes in 1950 averaged 983 square feet; by 2014, the size had nearly tripled to 2,657 square feet. Today, 91 percent of our homes are air-conditioned. This is not actually a good thing. This is actually a problem.

I mean they objectively provide a better quality of life to people... Not to pick a side, but there's pros and cons to it.

To the privileged that can afford it. Meanwhile, global warming is fueling a real need for AC that didn't historically exist in most places and chronic homelessness has become a thing that didn't really exist in the past.

We have set the minimum so high that some people simply cannot attain it. Such individuals end up being a net drain on society in many cases due to their lack of housing.

Some hospitals have found that simply providing housing to some of their most expensive charity cases saves them money.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#47

Post by goatlover »

NovaVeles wrote: post #25
mrandish wrote: post #4

It's easy (and popular) to be a pessimist but when I look at objective global data on decade+ time scales, the only rational conclusion is that things are generally getting better for more people in more places than ever before (data like global poverty, infant mortality, literacy, etc). That doesn't mean we don't still have a ways to go and it certainly doesn't mean that things aren't terrible for some people in som…

I am in the camp of we are in overshoot, have been for a very long time. In the same way that a someone can spend way above their income by using the credit card. Looks great now but that looming cloud of debt is coming. Societal wise we have done this via the monkey pore wish for "unlimited energy" in the form of fossil fuels. We got energy unlike anything else in history but at the cost of environmental blow back a…

Why would energy usage need to decline when there's a giant ball of fusion in our sky we barely make use of, and when we've just begun exploring space in the past century?

Re: I Choose Optimism

#48

Post by atemerev »

scbrg wrote: post #35
atemerev wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human civilization will survive mass extinctions and change of habitability of some places. Humans are resilient. And if they won’t, life itself is even more resilient.

This is a very, very annoying strawman. Nobody believes that life, or even humanity will be wiped off the face of the earth. It's the tremendous amount suffering it'll have to endure that we'd rather avoid.

The tremendous amount of suffering will be there soon enough in the form of the next world war. Judging from observations in human history, mass suffering is normal, and the relatively peaceful environment of the “end of history” is quite an anomaly.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t do anything, converting our energy needs to nuclear and solar is the first priority. But yes, there’s a significant probability that it won’t happen soon enough, so we might want to think how to live when famines and mass climate migrations will happen. Linear progress is an exception, not a rule.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#49

Post by felipeerias »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #33

> For most of history, people thought: “The world is bad and, usually, it’s getting worse.” In other words, no longer did humans see themselves as mere pawns for the gods. What? Citation needed. A negative view of individual sin is certainly part of the Christian worldview, but gods are not, nor is an overall negative outlook. The whole point is that God loves his people enough to save them, the Church will expand, a…

Perhaps the author is thinking of the many creation myths about an original nearly-divine past.

In practical terms, for most of history the large majority of people were farmers and simply thought that the world was just about the same as it had always been.

Traditional belief systems were usually structured in terms of cycles, whether the yearly change of the seasons, the growth and decline of a human life, or the silent movements of celestial bodies.

Leaving aside great wars or catastrophes, social and economic changes happened slowly and would have been hard to identify by an individual living through them.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#50

Post by [deleted] »

darkteflon wrote: post #15

It’s great to recognise what we’ve achieved as a species. And maybe the arc of history has historically bent towards justice. What’s different about this moment in time versus any other in human history is that we face not one but two known existential risks. Climate change is the sort of knotty long-term vs short-term, private vs public, incentives problem that we as a species excel at fucking up. In addition to tha…

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