Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

Post by mantas » Fri, Nov 11, 2022, 1:18 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #76

bryanlarsen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the face of slowing population growth? That's the primary driver of increased consumption, and population growth has slowed dramatically. > If we suddenly weren't allowed to replace old-growth forests with mono-culture, pollute our groundwater, fill the earth with plastic, kill off a majority of animal species, and so forth, how much would the economy shrink? But would it? Such a transition would create a mas…

This is an important point. To pick an example which is both low-stakes and topical: many, probably most, of the 11,000 Facebookers who just got canned, were misallocated. Zuck was just paying them not to work for anyone else, whether that was explicit in his mind (as it was for Brin and Page), or not. Does that layoff reduce human productivity? Rather the opposite: the majority will be hired by companies which expec…

Post by erlich » Fri, Nov 11, 2022, 1:18 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #43

lettergram wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, even if economic activity was fully decoupled from emissions, Earth's environmental problems would remain overwhelming. Biodiversity loss, deforestation, aquifer depletion, desertification, etc. are just as concerning for most people here as rising global temperatures. The issue I take with the “Global warming” crowd is that there’s a lot inaccurate predictions (nearly all of them thus far) and the evide…

It amazes me that climate activists never seem to push for nuclear, the most obvious solution.

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Fri, Nov 11, 2022, 1:20 PM UTC

realusername wrote: post #101

Comevius wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software needs hardware to create economic growth, namely data centers and disposable computers (smartphones, notebooks, smart watches, routers and so on). It doesn't matter if they are more energy efficient either if you keep making more and more of them. Just the environmental impact of making them is unsustainable. Similarly it doesn't matter how much value new paradigms like Bitcoin or AI adds to the economy, it'…

Those are negligeable compared to their physical counterpart they are replacing though, they so replace a lot of car trips and expensive manufacturing which is now unneeded

Post by bryanlarsen » Fri, Nov 11, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

Comevius wrote: post #95

bryanlarsen wrote: post #69

Isn't Hacker News the home of "software eats the world"? That's a massive part of the de-correlation of economic growth and emissions. Except for AI training and proof of work, software is a low carbon activity. And it's massively cumulative -- it's not consumed, the software produced 20 years ago still has value. Some other examples: would anybody deny the iPhone 12 is better than the iPhone 11? It's smaller and pre…

Software needs hardware to create economic growth, namely data centers and disposable computers (smartphones, notebooks, smart watches, routers and so on). It doesn't matter if they are more energy efficient either if you keep making more and more of them. Just the environmental impact of making them is unsustainable. Similarly it doesn't matter how much value new paradigms like Bitcoin or AI adds to the economy, it'…

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Fri, Nov 11, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #109

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the software produced 20 years ago still has value Which unmaintained piece of software written 20 years ago still generates revenue?

Two goal post shifts in 1 sentence! "unmaintained" and "revenue".