Live data from Hacker News

Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change Now Inevitable Jem Bendell BA PhD [pdf]

lifeworth.com

11–20 of 35 posts

Re: Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change Now Inevitable Jem Bendell BA PhD [pdf]

#11

If you believe climate change is going to lead to complete societal collapse, your primary policy remedies are 1) geoengineering, or 2) nuking some combination of India and China (a subset of option 1, but practical with existing tech). However, almost every global warming proponent advocates deindustrializing the west and moving production to vastly less efficient areas overseas. Why does this discrepancy persist?

> moving production to vastly less efficient areas overseas

As a staunch, lifelong environmentalist, I am astounded to hear such advocacy attributed to my milieu: this is the first I am hearing of it.

How did you come to this belief about the climate-concern platform?

Edit: the closest sentiment I could find in the OP was this:

> Examples include withdrawing from coastlines, shutting down vulnerable industrial facilities, or giving up expectations for certain types of consumption. The third area can be called “restoration.” It involves people and communities rediscovering attitudes and approaches to life and organisation that our hydrocarbon-fuelled civilisation eroded. Examples include re-wilding landscapes, so they provide more ecological benefits and require less management, changing diets back to match the seasons, rediscovering non-electronically powered forms of play, and increased community-level productivity and support.

Re: Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change Now Inevitable Jem Bendell BA PhD [pdf]

#12

If you believe climate change is going to lead to complete societal collapse, your primary policy remedies are 1) geoengineering, or 2) nuking some combination of India and China (a subset of option 1, but practical with existing tech). However, almost every global warming proponent advocates deindustrializing the west and moving production to vastly less efficient areas overseas. Why does this discrepancy persist?

[deleted]

Re: Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change Now Inevitable Jem Bendell BA PhD [pdf]

#13
post #7

Alarmism. Societal change is inevitable, societal collapse is not. Society has survived a hell of a lot. Chinese society survived the Mongols. European society survived losing a third of its population to the black plague. Is climate change going to wipe out a third of the world population anytime soon? I doubt it.

A big difference now is the ease of mobility. A catastrophe in equatorial Africa a thousand years ago didn’t result in mass migration to Southern Africa. A catastrophe today will result in massive mobilization from one locale to another. The only example I can think of of mass migration was the steppes peoples but even that wasn’t that quick to happen.

Mass migration over time though. Not civilization ending.

You should be more concerned about a meteor or giant vulcanic eruption than catastrophic climate change.

Re: Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change Now Inevitable Jem Bendell BA PhD [pdf]

#14
post #10

If you believe climate change is going to lead to complete societal collapse, your primary policy remedies are 1) geoengineering, or 2) nuking some combination of India and China (a subset of option 1, but practical with existing tech). However, almost every global warming proponent advocates deindustrializing the west and moving production to vastly less efficient areas overseas. Why does this discrepancy persist?

> 2) nuking some combination of India and China No one is advocating for #2 or anything like it because it's a completely incompetent and reprehensible idea.

Better than letting human society collapse though. If that’s what you really believe will happen.

Re: Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change Now Inevitable Jem Bendell BA PhD [pdf]

#15

If you believe climate change is going to lead to complete societal collapse, your primary policy remedies are 1) geoengineering, or 2) nuking some combination of India and China (a subset of option 1, but practical with existing tech). However, almost every global warming proponent advocates deindustrializing the west and moving production to vastly less efficient areas overseas. Why does this discrepancy persist?

Your first sentence is a logical fallacy (your second clause does not follow from the first) and casually introduces the topic of intentional murder and genocide of billions of people. You're the first to bring that suggestion up, but you attribute the idea to non-existent 'others'. Your next sentence is also a logical fallacy and AFAIK is simply untrue: "almost every...decentralizing the west"? I've never heard of any such proposals. This is no way to have any kind of reasonable discussion.

Re: Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change Now Inevitable Jem Bendell BA PhD [pdf]

#16

If you believe climate change is going to lead to complete societal collapse, your primary policy remedies are 1) geoengineering, or 2) nuking some combination of India and China (a subset of option 1, but practical with existing tech). However, almost every global warming proponent advocates deindustrializing the west and moving production to vastly less efficient areas overseas. Why does this discrepancy persist?

Dealing with climate change is a really important thing. It’s also a thing that scratches the itch of authoritarians and moralizers. (Right cause for the wrong reasons.) I suspect that’s why conservation and population control get so much more attention than say nuclear power or genetic engineering of agriculture.

Re: Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change Now Inevitable Jem Bendell BA PhD [pdf]

#17

If you believe climate change is going to lead to complete societal collapse, your primary policy remedies are 1) geoengineering, or 2) nuking some combination of India and China (a subset of option 1, but practical with existing tech). However, almost every global warming proponent advocates deindustrializing the west and moving production to vastly less efficient areas overseas. Why does this discrepancy persist?

I have no idea of who espouses option no. 2. No sane person thinks that.

One important issue I do not see, is population stabilization in places where growth is unsustainable.

Re: Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change Now Inevitable Jem Bendell BA PhD [pdf]

#18

If you believe climate change is going to lead to complete societal collapse, your primary policy remedies are 1) geoengineering, or 2) nuking some combination of India and China (a subset of option 1, but practical with existing tech). However, almost every global warming proponent advocates deindustrializing the west and moving production to vastly less efficient areas overseas. Why does this discrepancy persist?

Corruption. Our political-economic systems favor a tiny fabulously wealthy minority who care not a whit for the long term survival of the planet, so long as they get to enjoy the narcotic high of lording over their fellow human beings during their short lives.

Re: Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change Now Inevitable Jem Bendell BA PhD [pdf]

#19
post #14
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) nuking some combination of India and China No one is advocating for #2 or anything like it because it's a completely incompetent and reprehensible idea.

Better than letting human society collapse though. If that’s what you really believe will happen.

That cannot be the logical follow-through. A collapsing society can do its best to recover - a nuked and destroyed, murdered wasteland cannot.

Climate-precipitated societal collapse is surely preferable to all over a large-scale nuclear war that is suggested to have been unilaterally invoked, tantamount to murder of billions and multiple genocides. That kind of 'solution' has no place in reasonable discourse about climate change mitigation or adaptation.

Re: Societal Collapse Due to Climate Change Now Inevitable Jem Bendell BA PhD [pdf]

#20
post #11

If you believe climate change is going to lead to complete societal collapse, your primary policy remedies are 1) geoengineering, or 2) nuking some combination of India and China (a subset of option 1, but practical with existing tech). However, almost every global warming proponent advocates deindustrializing the west and moving production to vastly less efficient areas overseas. Why does this discrepancy persist?

> moving production to vastly less efficient areas overseas As a staunch, lifelong environmentalist, I am astounded to hear such advocacy attributed to my milieu: this is the first I am hearing of it. How did you come to this belief about the climate-concern platform? Edit: the closest sentiment I could find in the OP was this: > Examples include withdrawing from coastlines, shutting down vulnerable industrial facili…

I think their inference is that by proposing higher (pollution kerbing) standards for already industrialized nations versus developing economies, one is virtually doing just that.
Post reply on HN