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I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

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Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#181
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's 2 topics that need to be held apart here: 1) Limiting number of children in rich countries. This is what your links talk about I think. Yes, perhaps there is a taboo in place here. Is that relevant to sustainability crisis though? Population is already declining in rich countries, quite naturally. 2) Limiting number of children in poorer countries. Well, as in the article pointed to in a sibling comme…

The issue is the global population. Obviously, that's the metric that matters for global issues like the climate and environment. The global population is still increasing. Furthermore, as poor countries develop this is compounded by increased consumption (both resources and energy) per capita. In that respect, "richest 1% account for more emissions than poorest 66%" should be interpreted as very worrying when the po…

I never understand this argument of overpopulation. How can you be OK with reducing population but at the same time worry about global warming?

To have that position you basically need to reconcile two positions that to me aren't really compatible, unless someone explains it to me.

Either it's fine for Earth to not have humans and just exist peacefully with the rest of the ecosystem until another lifeform takes over.

Or it's not fine for the Earth to have no more humans and so we need to stop climate change from making the Earth uninhabitable for us, but if to do that we want to reduce the humans, I don't get it.

To "kill" humans to save humans seems weird. I guess you can slide on the scale of "more people living worse", or "less people living better", but to choose who is not possible in my opinion, so this is not implementable.

Because if you care about the Earth primarily, then warming or not doesn't really matter, it's just a geological event like many more gnarly ones over the history of meteorite impacts and so on.

But if you care primarily about the humans, then how can the answer be to have less of them? And pick and choose who gets to reproduce?

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#182
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, yea, people making their life better is now the reason. We must all live in poverty, because that is the natural state, where we obey the needs of nature. Nature is healing!! And for that we need to abandon demoncracy. And the leader should be who? Of course you, because only you know the solution! Cheeky ;)

you can put your fingers in your ears and say "la la la" all you want, it doesn't change the undeniable and objective truth. everybody knows the solution, *you* know the solution, it's just a hard pill to swallow so mental gymnastics are preferable. as a species we know that the overconsumption of resources is the problem. there are exactly zero valid arguments against that. anybody who claims that consuming less res…

> consuming less resources isn't the solution

it isn't, because no solution that require any form of altruism is an actual solution.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#183
post #148
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weird. I used to worry about climate change and now I don’t. That's funny! I was going to start my post with the exact same sentence! But for a totally different reason: I'm now convinced that there is no stopping the massive destruction of the natural environemnt. A much MUCH bigger problem than that of the climate alone. I'm not a "doomer", I'm a "realist". It's clear at this point that the world's ownership clas…

It's clear at this point that the world's ownership class is NOT going to allow any significant mitigation of petroleum use. The problem is not use, the problem is extraction. If it comes out of the ground, it gets used, and mostly ends up in the atmosphere. The volume of extracted fossil fuels is carefully managed so that prices remain low enough to prevent green alternatives from winning in the market, and high eno…

some sanity for a change. you wont get very far with that but its refreshing to see.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that actually true? Nature has a very low capacity per area for "wild humans". I don't think the planet would support anywhere near 8 billion "wild" (hunter-gatherer) humans.

It's estimated that we couldn't support much more than half the world population without the Haber-Bosch process. Industrial fertilizers are just that important. With hunter gatherers you'd be talking about orders of magnitude fewer people.

Probably best to focus on decoupling from fossil fuels.

    The Haber-Bosch process is the primary method in producing ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen. Ammonia produced, utilized mainly as fertilizers, currently responsible for approximately 1.8% of carbon dioxide global emissions 
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/haber-bosch...

Yes, green ammonia is a thing - not yet at scale but there are plans afoot, funded by resource billionaires, to make industrial ammonia w/out the greenhouse gas ommissions.

https://fortescue.com/what-we-do/green-energy-research/green...

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#185
post #45

It's taboo to say this, but people worldwide have had far too many children, and I believe that overpopulation is the root of the sustainability crisis, including climate change and pollution. And that taboo is probably rooted in evolutionary psychology, people have a genetically driven tendency to criticize those who advocate having less children? So could there be an instinctual drive behind it? https://www.flashpa…

It’s not really taboo, it is being mentioned in, like, the comments on every 2nd post on climate change. The problem with this line of thinking (and similar ones like „what about China?“) is that it basically absolves you from any responsibility in the matter. After all, there are simply too many people on the planet, what could you possibly do about it? As other commenters pointed out - the west uses way too many re…

I'm super super low carbon footprint, personally. All ARM-based computers here, just Raspberry PIs and tablets, that can run from a portable solar panel if I want. Very few possessions too. I love coding and freedom so much more that having stuff. And even more so when doing so in the forest, amongst nature.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#186
post #175
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole Western world has shifted rightwards in recent years as can be witnessed in election results.

it's because the left has been attempting to make progress too fast, without regard to the people who lean towards the right as tho their point of view is universally regarded as being wrong. Reactionary politics is real, and the left ought to be more aware. Leaning towards left (aka progressive) is good, but if you're not paying a cost for it, someobody else is - and it's likely someone leaning right that's being fo…

I think single factor explanations are likely to be overly simplistic. Usually, there is not one single reason that motivates people to vote one way or the other.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#187
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can put your fingers in your ears and say "la la la" all you want, it doesn't change the undeniable and objective truth. everybody knows the solution, *you* know the solution, it's just a hard pill to swallow so mental gymnastics are preferable. as a species we know that the overconsumption of resources is the problem. there are exactly zero valid arguments against that. anybody who claims that consuming less res…

> consuming less resources isn't the solution it isn't, because no solution that require any form of altruism is an actual solution.

meh, semantics. the only correct answers to the question of "how do we prevent the suffering caused by the overconsumption of resources?" are "consume less resources." or "pull more resources out of thin air using magic". whether people are unable/unwilling to do it or not is neither here or there.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#188
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is the global population. Obviously, that's the metric that matters for global issues like the climate and environment. The global population is still increasing. Furthermore, as poor countries develop this is compounded by increased consumption (both resources and energy) per capita. In that respect, "richest 1% account for more emissions than poorest 66%" should be interpreted as very worrying when the po…

I never understand this argument of overpopulation. How can you be OK with reducing population but at the same time worry about global warming? To have that position you basically need to reconcile two positions that to me aren't really compatible, unless someone explains it to me. Either it's fine for Earth to not have humans and just exist peacefully with the rest of the ecosystem until another lifeform takes over.…

Who ever suggested to kill humans? Your whole comment does not make a lot of sense.

Population is already naturally decreasing in a fair number of countries. Let's embrace this instead of panicking and trying to reverse the trend.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#189
post #45

It's taboo to say this, but people worldwide have had far too many children, and I believe that overpopulation is the root of the sustainability crisis, including climate change and pollution. And that taboo is probably rooted in evolutionary psychology, people have a genetically driven tendency to criticize those who advocate having less children? So could there be an instinctual drive behind it? https://www.flashpa…

It's not taboo in the slightest, it's everywhere.

It's just that it wouldn't work because any group defecting and having more children would inherit the earth and you'd be back to square one, only now not even in control.

It's the same mistake as every other decel "solution".

It's so obvious, and so unbelievable that proponents don't think of it that one has to wonder, who pushes this? Qui bono?

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#190

Until the war is over, we can't know if exploding things non stop for two years is having a part in making the last years warmer. The models could be incomplete, or obsolete

We could measure the effect of historical wars which exploded a much, much larger quantity of explosives than any current conflict, and assume that the current impact isn't any larger than that.

Like, the intensity of current wars isn't even comparable to that of WW1 or WW2 battles.

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