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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

#131

Post by strainer »

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…

Sorry I am commenting in a hurry, but I just have to say... Our way of living - is not a desirable standard. Your mileage may vary, you may be "making it" - but most people aren't. We find reasons to be thankful, but most people are lonely, insecure, unfulfilled and comforting with junk food or media, 'retail therapy' or drugs. Most adults are 'feeling their age', unfit or overweight, medicating. Surrounded by and even consuming materials untested by natural history, that may be contributing to rises in autoimmune and cancer. Some goods are in relative abundance, but also overall as many ills.

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

#132

Post by ClumsyPilot »

meany wrote: post #98

I think the authors do a disservice to their cause with the inclusion of judgmental, emotional rhetoric such as sentences like: “ From this perspective, it seems likely that future generations will label the past two centuries as the Fossil Fuel Age rather than the Industrial Revolution—emphasizing the critical importance of a now-depleted resource over a self-flattering celebration of human innovation” It suggests t…

That sentence is factualy accurate.

If you are not comfortable with that, it suggest you are engaging in double think.

Basically doing the same thing Russia does when it calls a war 'special operation'.

Basic premice is solid, after all we don't look kindly at the medieval peasants that pointlessly died of the plague because they didn't know to wash their hands. Or chopped down all forests in UK to build wooden ships to fight China and force them to accept Opium trade

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

#133

Post by ClumsyPilot »

mellavora wrote: post #122
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #68

Similar things were predicted in the 70s but new sources of energy and improvements in productivity invalidated those predictions. Obviously at some point limits will kick in (unless we can expand to other planets) but what to do about that is more of a political question than a scientific one. I personally think it is more appealing to attempt expanding the limits, as we've done in the past, than to pre-emptively ad…

> Similar things were predicted in the 70s but new sources of energy and improvements in productivity invalidated those predictions. ok, cool. So you've identified the limits (energy and productivity). Are you sure productivity has grown? Is this growth sustainable? For example, agriculture. Highly dependent on rapidly disappearing resources Like i.e. dirt. If you look at erosion rates in the US, we are on track to r…

> The petro-chemical fueled "green revolution" exhausts and kills biodiversity, leading to soil death in a century

Interesting. Is this version of Capitalism better described ad Vandalism?

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

#134

Post by kkfx »

personomas wrote: post #121

This. This is really the real direction we need. Changing to renewable energy is only one small part of the whole problem. The real problem is that there are too many people on the planet.

Demography is not as simple: China have chosen in the past an apparently logic solution, limiting numbers of new birth per woman so lower the total population. After a certain amount of time they realize that doing so new humans found MORE elders then their parent, generation after generation, as a result they have to work to care them instead of having a life. As a result the society can't evolve, there are not enough HUMAN young and active resources to evolve.

A war kill many, but mostly young, so again you'll end up with a mean elder population. An epidemic typically kill the elders BUT no one can really program it enough in a mass controlled genocide that only modern sibling of ms adolf from Austria can imaging.

The real problem is that we live to live. Not to work, not be workers. Thief's and criminals against humanity who actually run many world society, essentially all the westerners and most of the third world countries, pretend to treat humans a software, slave workers and can't really foresee the real outcome. They dream a future they can't build, that can't work, and they pretend to impose their vision stating that no, it does work indeed.

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

#136

Post by yakutori »

simonhorlick wrote: post #123
personomas wrote: post #121

This. This is really the real direction we need. Changing to renewable energy is only one small part of the whole problem. The real problem is that there are too many people on the planet.

The richest 10% of the global population are responsible for an estimated 47% of emissions. The problem has never been that there are too many people. The problem is that there is a small number of people that are destroying the planet for the rest of us.

> The problem is that there is a small number of people that are destroying the planet for the rest of us.

I wonder if taking part in this forum is almost a sure indication of membership in the 10%, so perhaps it's us destroying the planet for the rest of them?

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

#137

Post by FeepingCreature »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #132
meany wrote: post #98

I think the authors do a disservice to their cause with the inclusion of judgmental, emotional rhetoric such as sentences like: “ From this perspective, it seems likely that future generations will label the past two centuries as the Fossil Fuel Age rather than the Industrial Revolution—emphasizing the critical importance of a now-depleted resource over a self-flattering celebration of human innovation” It suggests t…

That sentence is factualy accurate. If you are not comfortable with that, it suggest you are engaging in double think. Basically doing the same thing Russia does when it calls a war 'special operation'. Basic premice is solid, after all we don't look kindly at the medieval peasants that pointlessly died of the plague because they didn't know to wash their hands. Or chopped down all forests in UK to build wooden ships…

Yeah but we don't call it the Deforestation Age or the Plague Age, and most people don't center those concerns when talking about the past.

Re plague, the one thing that could be argued actually comes to mind when considering the middle ages, those waves of disease killed ~ half the population. To compete, climate change would have to kill several billion people. I think it's fair to call that alarmist.

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

#138

Post by FeepingCreature »

ouid wrote: post #3

>infinite exponential growth which is impossible on a finite planet. its impossible in any space with non negative curvature. the kind of growth that is unsustainable in a finite region is any growth at all.

Sure, but that's like a bacterium saying "exponential growth is unsustainable" after having colonized the extent of a petri dish. Technically it's correct; practically it's irrelevant.

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

#139

Post by FeepingCreature »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #84
dreadlordbone wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except starvation has gone down and quality of life has gone up for the large majority of the human population. Where are you coming from with "a trillion people who live in the edge of starvation"? Some assumed doomsday situation? Not to be a buzz kill but things have been getting better.

> Not to be a buzz kill but things have been getting better. Past performance does not guarantee future results. In fact, what this article is saying is that mathematically, our future results are practically guaranteed to be worse than they have been in the past. I don't find your comment at all persuasive because you have not even attempted to grapple with this issue presented in the article.

No, but past performance does provide evidence, and in the outside view, "no really, this really is the time where we're growing too much and are gonna collapse" has not been true yet. Will it happen eventually? It has to. Will this be the one? Probably not. Are we close to the limits where it'll actually occur? Probably not.
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