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Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

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Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#81

Post by svachalek »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #73
Liquix wrote: post #20

> Clearly, it is in humanity's best interest to... Herein lies the problem. What happens to the environment is not governed by "humanity's best interest", it's governed by whomever has the most power and the biggest stick. These entities act in their own best interest. To the Chinese government, more factories = more money = more power = good. To the US government, more military equipment = more power = good. At the…

I recently came across a game theory term called "Moloch" in which individual incentives lead to negative outcomes for all parties involved. Nobody individually wants the negative outcome, but it's extremely difficult to break out of the cycle.

I've also just learned this recently. See "Meditations on Moloch" for the original essay. It explains so much but it's also very depressing -- it's hard to imagine how any ordinary person has a prayer of changing the system when so many elements of it are primed to both produce terrible outcomes and to resist change.

It's possible that you could design a new system of government deliberately designed to counter some of these natural tendencies, to change the rules of the game to reward beneficial outcomes better than selfish ones. But I don't know you'd ever get such a thing in place when the people who can make that kind of change are the ones with the most to lose.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#82

Post by jacquesm »

myshpa wrote: post #51
toss1 wrote: post #32

Note that the areas of the three largest deviations are, in order: Biosphere Integrity, Novel Entities (synthetic chemical & processes), and Biogeochemical Flows. The entire ecosystem on which we depend for sustenance is an extremely complex web of interlocking dependencies, from plankton to pollinators, to soil microbiota, to temperature & hydration, and so on, endlessly. This is the food web. If it collapses, we as…

> This is the food web One major contributor to the overshoot is our current agricultural practices, with animal agriculture being a primary offender. It's responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gases, it's a leading driver of biodiversity loss and deforestation, and it contributes to soil degradation and water pollution. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World…

In NL the agro lobby has just successfully launched the largest political party here, on the back of a very well financed and organized series of protests. These people will stop at absolutely nothing to be allowed to fuck us all over for a few more years just so they can rake in some more dough. It is very disturbing to see how gullible the voters are.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#83

Post by jacquesm »

toss1 wrote: post #59
myshpa wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the food web One major contributor to the overshoot is our current agricultural practices, with animal agriculture being a primary offender. It's responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gases, it's a leading driver of biodiversity loss and deforestation, and it contributes to soil degradation and water pollution. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World…

>>Our agriculture and food production are major contributors to the damage Yes - deadly serious. I had to travel to the US midwest recently, after not having been there for a long time. As I drove out of the city the first impression of the farmlands was pleasant. But after an hour of highway-speed driving past nothing but bare fields (out of growing season) with scant rows of trees, we became a bit horrified — there…

We've been at 8 billion for a while now, since the 15th of November last year to be precise.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#84

Post by ribosometronome »

apsec112 wrote: post #63
Liquix wrote: post #20

> Clearly, it is in humanity's best interest to... Herein lies the problem. What happens to the environment is not governed by "humanity's best interest", it's governed by whomever has the most power and the biggest stick. These entities act in their own best interest. To the Chinese government, more factories = more money = more power = good. To the US government, more military equipment = more power = good. At the…

The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions isn't military, it's for ordinary consumer uses like heating, cooling, driving, and farming meat. No matter what the form of government, lots of people will object very strongly if the solution to climate change is not having central heating, cars, hot water, or beef for dinner.

Does renewable power and hydrogen/electric vehicles not solve essentially all of what you listed, save beef?

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#85

Post by neltnerb »

apsec112 wrote: post #63
Liquix wrote: post #20

> Clearly, it is in humanity's best interest to... Herein lies the problem. What happens to the environment is not governed by "humanity's best interest", it's governed by whomever has the most power and the biggest stick. These entities act in their own best interest. To the Chinese government, more factories = more money = more power = good. To the US government, more military equipment = more power = good. At the…

The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions isn't military, it's for ordinary consumer uses like heating, cooling, driving, and farming meat. No matter what the form of government, lots of people will object very strongly if the solution to climate change is not having central heating, cars, hot water, or beef for dinner.

I think I would like to have safe housing, healthcare, nutritious food, and clean water more than "driving and farming meat" but I guess we all have our priorities.

I think that can definitely be sustainable indefinitely, but not so long as companies and cultures are unable to make any kind of real concessions to reality. We should not be using plastic. For basically anything. We should never have started. We should barely be using cars. We should never have started. We should not be eating nearly as much meat as people do in rich countries. We'd use a fraction of the agricultural area and be healthier to boot. Yet somehow meat being cheap is a god-given right?

I object to lots of things that reality forces me to deal with.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#87

Post by maerF0x0 »

apsec112 wrote: post #63
Liquix wrote: post #20

> Clearly, it is in humanity's best interest to... Herein lies the problem. What happens to the environment is not governed by "humanity's best interest", it's governed by whomever has the most power and the biggest stick. These entities act in their own best interest. To the Chinese government, more factories = more money = more power = good. To the US government, more military equipment = more power = good. At the…

The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions isn't military, it's for ordinary consumer uses like heating, cooling, driving, and farming meat. No matter what the form of government, lots of people will object very strongly if the solution to climate change is not having central heating, cars, hot water, or beef for dinner.

> majority of greenhouse gas emissions

To be extra precise, human initiated greenhouse gas emissions. My understanding is about half of the emissions are natural and there's little we can do about their emission (but can do about their sequestration). Of course that doesn't/shouldn't stop us from addressing the half we can :)

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#88

Post by hinkley »

Liquix wrote: post #20

> Clearly, it is in humanity's best interest to... Herein lies the problem. What happens to the environment is not governed by "humanity's best interest", it's governed by whomever has the most power and the biggest stick. These entities act in their own best interest. To the Chinese government, more factories = more money = more power = good. To the US government, more military equipment = more power = good. At the…

And even that's not true.

It's governed by the eyeballs of whoever has the most power and the biggest stick. We don't, for instance, know what the actual rates of theft is in a civilization because we cannot accurately discern lost belongings from stolen belongings. Anyone who tells you they think they know the number is absolutely full of shit. A truly crafty thief makes you think you lost something, used it up, or threw it away. In which case there is no report, because as far as you know nothing happened. The better the criminals, the bigger the disparity between the reality of theft and the perception of theft.

I can't beat you with a stick if you're dumping toxins somewhere I can't see. And it's no good beating your successors once you're dead, or you once you're very old, because there is no lesson to learn there except that you can get away with bad things for 30 years, so time your crimes accordingly.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#89

Post by maerF0x0 »

thriftwy wrote: post #86

This late summer was pretty great around here. We were able to go swimming on 10th of September, whereas the folk wisdom here tells is's a no-no after 2nd of August.

Meanwhile Austin has has the 3rd hottest[1] year on record (so far, we still have ~3.5 months to go). https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/austin/yearly-day...

[1]: i used days of 100f and over as a proxy for deciding how hot a year is

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#90

Post by bottled_poe »

commandlinefan wrote: post #45
dr_dshiv wrote: post #28

I don’t know why this triggers such skepticism in me. Particularly the section on novel entities. But it feels funny, somehow, and I can’t put my finger on it.

> why this triggers such skepticism I know it does for me - because the people who claim to believe in it the most don't actually live their lives as if they actually believed it. Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to do whatever I could reasonably do to create cooler summers and less smog, but I've never heard any actual concrete proposal beyond "vote democrat".

Curious!
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