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The world has probably passed peak pollution

sustainabilitybynumbers.com

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Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#101

Post by latentcall »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #29
bamboozled wrote: post #3

Positive on the one hand, stupid it took us this long on the other.

Posted from a huge house with air conditioning while using multiple petroleum products (iPhone/computer, chair, desk, fleece, etc). The pollution lifted every single person’s standard of living across the globe to levels unimaginable 100 years ago. It’s easy to be in Seattle or New York and say we gotta stop burning oil and coal but there are trade offs that were worth making. If you live in a developing country with…

Ah yes I forgot the standard of living is just more stuff in my house! Meanwhile we have all this cheap junk but expensive healthcare, expensive education, expensive housing, poison in our food and water, and rising temperatures. Glad some folks could binge order cheap plastic crap on Amazon for these amazing benefits. Advancement!

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#102

Post by jacobolus »

skissane wrote: post #80
joshuahedlund wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are their historical and present population and growth numbers?

Consider a place like Kiryas Joel, New York: in the 2000 census it had a population of 13,138; by 2010 it had grown to 20,175 (a 53.6% increase over the decade); by 2020 it had grown to 32,954 (a 63.3% increase over the decade); the US Census Bureau’s 2022 estimate is 38,998 - 18.3% in only two years. The vast majority of that growth is due to births not migration. It is now the largest municipality in its county, an…

Ultra-orthodox communities (like everyone else in the modern world, with vanishingly few exceptions) are entirely dependent on the broader society/economy. Under the implausible scenario where they approached a majority of the population, they'd inevitably (a) diffuse much more broadly into the rest of the population, and (b) make their current set of organizing practices unsustainable, without any persecution involved.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#103

Post by [deleted] »

skissane wrote: post #24
monero-xmr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also possible that secular society creates effective off-ramps to convert the hyper-religious to secular values. I’m uncertain if this will work given how successful the in-group remains despite the internet and modern social media.

Many ultra-Orthodox Jews use "Kosher Internet filters" – filters that block content that isn't approved by their rabbis. In Israel, you can buy "Kosher phones" which have this software pre-installed by the telco and locked down so you can't remove it. People assume that technology necessarily encourages secularism, but it doesn't inevitably do so. Technology also makes possible new methods of social control which can…

[deleted]

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#104

Post by defrost »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #54
cpill wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What of it? China + India = 2.864bn Not China or India = 5.244bn I think the characterization that a turning point has occurred is perfectly supportable. The article never even tried to say anything other than that it only just barely happened 11 minutes ago and a few metrics metrics don't show a clear past peak yet.

"The article" https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2023/supply

was a few paragraphs summerising the global coal supply as a subsection of the IEA Coal 2023 report.

If you fell that detail was lacking you can look to either the executive summary

https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2023/executive-summary

or download and read the full 130 page report (PDF) https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/a72a7ffa-c5f2-4ed8-...

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#105

Post by Andrex »

andsoitis wrote: post #60
skissane wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Peak baby - 2013. [2] I think your source's claim that "The planet will never see more babies than it has in 2013" is open to question. To just use the US as an example: mainstream Americans have a declining fertility rate, and we have no reason to think that is going to reverse in the foreseeable future. Immigrants have higher fertility, but they tend to converge to the mainstream after a generation or two. So,…

> mainstream Americans What is a mainstream American?

Legally speaking? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#106

Post by quesera »

fallingsquirrel wrote: post #33
monero-xmr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t reproduce then your genes are not passed on. You have self-selected not to be part of the human race any longer. My hunch is that the people who still decide to reproduce, despite all the reasons people who advocate for not having children talk about, likely have some sort of genetic predisposition for reproduction - a strong innate need. After all the non-breeders die off, the future belongs to the repr…

What a wild take. This is like claiming gay people will "die off" in 2 generations because they don't reproduce. 1000 years ago some subset of people chose not to have children, and humanity did just fine, and that same group of so-called "non-breeders" still exists today. Therefore we can conclude it's not purely a matter of genetics. There are a huge number of reasons people make that choice. People even change the…

Both things must be true.

On the one hand, you'd expect humans (animals) to have completely bred out all forms of infertility -- except that there are non-heritable causes of infertility. (In fact, all causes of infertility must be non-heritable, or at least not inherited! :)

On the other hand, it's surely true that characteristics which deprioritize or diminish the likelihood of reproduction are bred out, however incompletely. Whether it's a sense of taste that enjoys poisons, a risk-taking brain that kicks in before fertility, homosexuality (in males at least), or just not wanting children.

These characteristics are bred down to a sustainable level, obviously. But they are clearly not bred out fully, nor are they consistently bred "up".

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#107

Post by quesera »

DavidPiper wrote: post #37
monero-xmr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s surprising to me why my parent comment was down voted. It’s simple biology and mathematics. If you want culture to survive (if what is most important to you is cultural values) you must have a society with children in order to impart those values. There is no future for a society that discourages children.

> After all the non-breeders die off, the future belongs to the reproducers. I suspect it was downvoted because that line suggests dismissal or contempt for people who don't have children. There are many people across all generations who haven't had children (either by choice or because they were unable for various reasons), and their lifespans and social contributions are no more or less on average compared to peopl…

Ironically, "breeder" is (or used to be?) a slang denigration of heterosexuals, within the homosexual community.

I didn't interpret the original comment as contemptuous of either opinion. But it is undeniable that both groups are sensitive about their choices (or unfortunate inability to choose differently).

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#108

Post by fragmede »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #82
vouaobrasil wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single person? Not exactly. What about farmers forced off their land for corporate interests? What about people working in the garbage dumps of Tijuana in Mexico [1]? I've actually lived in the "first world" (born there) and now have lived over a year in a developing country where most people (including myself) don't have "aircon", and whether technology has improved things is not as clearcut as you might think…

I find it truly amusing how any suggestion that technology LOWERS our standard of living is immediately met with a severe reaction here. It's as though it is gospel, to be assumed without any question. Technophiles are truly narrow-minded.

the micro view of technology is that it improves things. how could it be otherwise? the things that used to take a painful ten hours can now be done in six, without painf. it's not until you look at capitalism, realize that we're not all on the same team, that things go awry. see, we invented this thing called money, and things have gone downhill ever since. there have been some good things to come out of it, sure, but the thing of it is, we're already at a place where we can make enough food for everybody yet people die of starvation every day because we can't get over ourselves because they don't have money so they don't deserve to eat, even though there's food right there! so technologists keep invention new technologies and society just has to deal with these technologies. because we can't just have a society where everyone is fed and has a roof over their heads and can do whatever else they want to do with their time.

so the macro view, that some technologies have actually lowered our standard of living, is difficult, because it's not the technology's fault! it's only when you have to deal with other people that there are problems. throw in 7 billion other people and of course things are bad .

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#109

Post by SantalBlush »

andsoitis wrote: post #60
skissane wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Peak baby - 2013. [2] I think your source's claim that "The planet will never see more babies than it has in 2013" is open to question. To just use the US as an example: mainstream Americans have a declining fertility rate, and we have no reason to think that is going to reverse in the foreseeable future. Immigrants have higher fertility, but they tend to converge to the mainstream after a generation or two. So,…

> mainstream Americans What is a mainstream American?

Any American who likes Tom Petty.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#110

Post by iamthemonster »

unnouinceput wrote: post #93

2B humans out of 8B are in China. You do not have numbers for China nor, if you manage to get it, can those be trusted anyway. I feel that while the West started the downtrend, China will not offset that but surely pass as how much pollutants it spews. We are not out of the woods until China gets on board too.

I think I trust the numbers for China more than your estimate of China's population which is out by 43%
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