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Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

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Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#41

Post by PeterisP »

mr_toad wrote: post #24
alexnewman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

constant growth != infinite growth constant growth just means converging growth if the population is shrinking all we need to do is increase gdp per capita.

> constant growth != infinite growth constant growth just means converging growth if the population is shrinking all we need to do is increase gdp per capita. In theory. In practice GDP growth is strongly correlated with things like energy use and waste/pollution generation. There will come a point when either that correlation has to be broken or growth has to halt.

While GDP growth has historically been strongly correlated with energy use and pollution (including CO2/greenhouse gas emissions), due to the switch to service and digital economy, in rich countries GDP growth has become decoupled from energy use for a few decades already, already before year 2000. The correlation is already broken, and it seems quite plausible to continue GDP growth even with a decrease in energy use and waste/pollution generation.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#42

Post by Bloating »

Bakary wrote: post #5
spullara wrote: post #2

It is only compatible because we are approaching peak population mid to late century and then we will slowly contract over time until extinction through lack of births... if trends continue.

We aren't heading to extinction just on account of birthrates, it's the transition phase with a large number of elderly dependents and a small number of workers that is going to be the real problem.

2019: but the robots will take our jobs!

2022: we need more robots!

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#43

Post by ch4s3 »

gnramires wrote: post #32
jessenichols wrote: post #22

There are no resource limits, only limits to the creativity of people to create explanations that allow us to transform raw materials from one state to another. See The Beginning of Infinity by Deutsch and More From Less by McAfee.

This is false. There are resource limits, unfortunately (I guess?). Thermodynamics is a hard limit. There are many soft limits as well. Please look at this paper for an incredibly well researched physics-based review: (to appear in Nature Physics) https://tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/papers/limits-econ-final.pd...

I think the parent post means that resources are strictly speaking improved goods not raw materials. I’m that sense innovation and thermodynamics are the limitations, not what rocks we pull out of the ground.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#44

Post by PKop »

jessenichols wrote: post #22

There are no resource limits, only limits to the creativity of people to create explanations that allow us to transform raw materials from one state to another. See The Beginning of Infinity by Deutsch and More From Less by McAfee.

> limits to the creativity of people

Yes, therefore limits. At least in the short and medium term (which could be 1000s of years). Look at the technological advancement of Roman empire, lost for a millennium before human ingenuity advanced past that level again.

Good video from Jonathan Blow on rise of complexity leading to collapse and lost knowledge [0]. Add in energy and resource constraints (for the given world popuplation numbers) and we may be in for a bad time for a while in the near future.

[0] https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#45

Post by ch4s3 »

junon wrote: post #30
aeternum wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also if we really value life, we should probably optimize for total lives lived. The universe will not last forever and entire galaxies are being lost to both the cosmic horizon and blackholes at an alarming rate. For some reason Earth seems to be the only planet with life, so every second we spend without making life interplanetary we are snuffing out an unfathomable number of future human and animal lives.

This is sort of a selfish viewpoint to take, is it not? I mean I don't necessarily disagree with you, just... the reasoning seems strange to me.

It’s ultimately a humanist set of values that lead to that conclusion. If we value human happiness we should try to make as much of that as possible.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#46

Post by tzs »

adastra22 wrote: post #35
gnramires wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false. There are resource limits, unfortunately (I guess?). Thermodynamics is a hard limit. There are many soft limits as well. Please look at this paper for an incredibly well researched physics-based review: (to appear in Nature Physics) https://tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/papers/limits-econ-final.pd...

Limits which are millions, billions, or trillions of times beyond current capacities. For the moment, thermodynamic limits don't apply.

Exponentials can get away from you a lot faster than you might expect. For instance if we sustained a 1% annual population growth for another 13000 years the total volume of all living people would be more than the total volume of all the space within 13000 light years of Earth.

So unless we get faster than light travel or we greatly reduce the amount of space into which you can physically cram a living human we are under 13000 years away from a pretty hard upper limit.

Make more realistic assumptions than speed of light expansion of humanity and that limit gets a lot shorter even with growth rates quite a bit lower than 1%.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#47

Post by Qem »

PeterisP wrote: post #41
mr_toad wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> constant growth != infinite growth constant growth just means converging growth if the population is shrinking all we need to do is increase gdp per capita. In theory. In practice GDP growth is strongly correlated with things like energy use and waste/pollution generation. There will come a point when either that correlation has to be broken or growth has to halt.

While GDP growth has historically been strongly correlated with energy use and pollution (including CO2/greenhouse gas emissions), due to the switch to service and digital economy, in rich countries GDP growth has become decoupled from energy use for a few decades already, already before year 2000. The correlation is already broken, and it seems quite plausible to continue GDP growth even with a decrease in energy us…

> due to the switch to service and digital economy, in rich countries GDP growth has become decoupled from energy use for a few decades already.

They just pushed pollution elsewhere, by outsourcing manufacturing.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#48

Post by PeterisP »

Qem wrote: post #47
PeterisP wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While GDP growth has historically been strongly correlated with energy use and pollution (including CO2/greenhouse gas emissions), due to the switch to service and digital economy, in rich countries GDP growth has become decoupled from energy use for a few decades already, already before year 2000. The correlation is already broken, and it seems quite plausible to continue GDP growth even with a decrease in energy us…

> due to the switch to service and digital economy, in rich countries GDP growth has become decoupled from energy use for a few decades already. They just pushed pollution elsewhere, by outsourcing manufacturing.

That strengthens the effect, but no, the growth is decoupled even if you take into account the energy and pollution cost of the outsourced manufacturing.

The same goods (and better goods) take less energy and pollution to produce than in 2000, and a lot of physical goods have been effectively replaced with features in digital devices; and the main part of GDP growth for developed countries does not involve any growth in consumption of goods but rather the consumption of services - the shift from an industrial economy to a service economy has quite fundamental impact on the nature of growth.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#49

Post by ericmcer »

c54 wrote: post #36

I do think some of the concerns here are right on the nose > What can be done to minimize the chances of colossal failure or sub-systemic breakdown, which in the worst case could threaten preservation of science and human knowledge? It seems like the two extremes are degrowth and malthus on the one hand, and haughty denialist expansionism on the other. One is borderline eugenicist and denies billions of people of our…

Do you think we will ever turn back to eugenics? It has deeply immoral roots and has led to some of the most messed up scenarios in our history, but it is also a crazy powerful tool we have been unable to leverage in a non-evil way.

(This is kinda tangential but related) I have a weird theory about humanities purpose: Assuming someone/thing created life (if life wasn't created then it truly is random chaos and we have no purpose), but if life was intentionally made then we were created for a reason. Determining what that reason was will tell us what our purpose is. The only clue we have is evolution. If we can reverse engineer the mechanisms of evolution it should give us clues about why we are here. What is evolution driving us to become? If we can figure that out we might be able to deduce what our purpose is.

I feel like one of life's huge leaps forward, on par with single->multicellular, is recognizing that these evolutionary mechanisms exist, furthering our understanding of and leveraging them. Anyway that is a long ramble to say it sucks that we as a species cannot really touch any kind of eugenics without genociding eachother.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#50

Post by jxramos »

shmageggy wrote: post #12
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #11

>This age of modernity is characterized by consistent growth in energy use, economic activity, and resource consumption, and a generally increasing standard of living—albeit inequitably distributed. This paper states this as though it is desirable and inevitable. There's no reason human society needs to keep expanding like a cancer or a virus. Sustainability is both possible and desirable. This isn't to suggest we sh…

> This paper states this as though it is desirable and inevitable. No it doesn't? Two sentences later: > But modernity has been enabled by the rapid and accelerating expenditure of our one-time inheritance of fossil fuels, and by drawing down the resources and ecosystems of our finite Earth—none of which can be sustained as we transition from a resource-rich frontier to a human-dominated planet.

I still don't fathom this singular deposit of fossil fuels in the earth, are they truly some artifact of a huge die off of living creatures from centuries ago or is there some steady generation through time that replenishes and generates the crude oil beneath our feet? I'd like to learn more about where the fossil in fossil fuels comes from and just what sort of biomass quantity we're talking about and when on earth that quantity of biomass was originally generated and walked the earth.
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