Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage' • Hacker News Board

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#121

Post by speeder » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 1:35 PM UTC

flukus wrote: post #91

NLips wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that e.g. Prime Minister's questions is an example of good and useful debate? If so, then I am so very sorry for Aussies...

Granted it's mostly from the outside looking in, but your politics does like a bit better than ours. There seems to be a lot less pressure to hold the party line for one thing, which is very rigid here and there seems to be more local engagement. I'd appreciate someone who has experienced both more closely to correct me though. Much of the current trouble in Australian politics though is because we have the senate wh…

I am from Brazil, that theoretically has a fully modern democracy...

Parties learned to "negotiate" so well they became meaningless, frequently absurd laws pass that all parties allowed, you see multiparty tickets that include extreme left and right at same time, and when a big corruption scandal shows uo we find out almost all parties were involved...

I personally believe Brazil need to copy UK and put at least our monarch back in power, we had less political problems during monarchy (and much more infrastructure investment) and the royal family all live good noncorrupt lives (many run successful law abiding business, some are seen as example of ethics, for example having business that repair environmental damage instead of causing it)

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#122

Post by mikelyons » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 1:38 PM UTC

crawrey wrote: post #62

Tossrock wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, you said the reef looks "indistinguishable to what it looked like 20-odd years ago." which implies it looks basically the same, but that seems at odds with the rest of what you're saying. Did you mean something besides "indistinguishable" ("unrecognizable", maybe?)

Corrected, thanks. I'll put it down to lack of sleep :P.

The other one is "rifled" when you mean rife. :)

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#123

Post by caoilte » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 1:41 PM UTC

milesrout wrote: post #115

laumars wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't disagree with the facts you presented, I do disagree with the sentiment. Your argument is akin to passing the buck, yet the issue of climate change affects us all. Maybe let's ignore the GP's examples of flying and instead discuss industry. How many of us by pre-packaged foods or have Amazon Prime accounts and use it to order stuff we could just as easily get from our local shops? How many of us support…

No, you're promoting the same fallacy: if something as a whole is bad then you're bad for doing it personally. You can't solve these problems by peer pressuring people into not supporting exploitative systems. Your argument is akin to people saying 'so much for being socialist, you own an iphone, capitalism made your iphone!'. Now I don't use amazon prime to get things that I could just as easily get from local shops…

Unfortunately, admitting that you are right would require accepting that the entire neo-liberal edifice of free market fundamentalism ("the free market can solve every problem") is wrong.

We are societally unable to do that currently. It's our modern religion. Otherwise incredibly smart people (I include everyone on this website) are unable to see that only government intervention (pushed for by us) can solve this problem.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#124

Post by J-dawg » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 1:41 PM UTC

spodek wrote: post #89

Many posts here about how sad and disgusted people are. Not much about people taking personal responsibility. What do people think the carrying capacity of the planet means? Sustaining more humans means sacrificing other life that competes for our resources. It means pollution rising until it doesn't quite kill us but is well above the levels of a pristine, clean environment. Nobody wants to live near the carrying ca…

>Having more kids in western cultures contributes significantly.

I wonder how much longer before the idea of limiting people's reproduction is on the table.

Someone who never has kids can probably drive a Hummer and spend every weekend jetting off somewhere, and their lifetime carbon footprint will still be many times lower than someone who has several children.

I understand that developed country carbon footprints are vastly higher than developing countries, but there are countries that are developing rapidly yet still have fertility rates of 4 or 5 children per woman. We can be pretty sure that those people aspire to having a western-style carbon footprint (and to be fair, why shouldn't they) either through migrating to a developed country or their own country developing.

When do we start saying that we need to limit the number of people who can exist? I don't see how it could ever be practically possible (outside of a regime like China, and even then it backfired horribly) but it if it could somehow be enforced it would probably be the best (and fairest) thing we could do.

Side note: for those of us who worry about this stuff, it can be hard to comprehend how little the average person cares about it. We have these TV shows in the UK which show people going through the process of buying a holiday home (British people are obsessed with houses/real estate to the point where watching other people buy a house is a recreational activity). The other day there was a family with 4 kids buying a holiday home in Florida. So they're planning to spend the rest of their lives jetting their whole (large) family across the Atlantic a few times a year. As someone who feels kinda guilty every time I fly, it just left me thinking that I'm wasting my mental energy on caring about this stuff when other people care so little.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#125

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 1:45 PM UTC

milesrout wrote: post #115

laumars wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't disagree with the facts you presented, I do disagree with the sentiment. Your argument is akin to passing the buck, yet the issue of climate change affects us all. Maybe let's ignore the GP's examples of flying and instead discuss industry. How many of us by pre-packaged foods or have Amazon Prime accounts and use it to order stuff we could just as easily get from our local shops? How many of us support…

No, you're promoting the same fallacy: if something as a whole is bad then you're bad for doing it personally. You can't solve these problems by peer pressuring people into not supporting exploitative systems. Your argument is akin to people saying 'so much for being socialist, you own an iphone, capitalism made your iphone!'. Now I don't use amazon prime to get things that I could just as easily get from local shops…

[deleted]

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#126

Post by sp332 » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 1:50 PM UTC

milesrout wrote: post #115

laumars wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't disagree with the facts you presented, I do disagree with the sentiment. Your argument is akin to passing the buck, yet the issue of climate change affects us all. Maybe let's ignore the GP's examples of flying and instead discuss industry. How many of us by pre-packaged foods or have Amazon Prime accounts and use it to order stuff we could just as easily get from our local shops? How many of us support…

No, you're promoting the same fallacy: if something as a whole is bad then you're bad for doing it personally. You can't solve these problems by peer pressuring people into not supporting exploitative systems. Your argument is akin to people saying 'so much for being socialist, you own an iphone, capitalism made your iphone!'. Now I don't use amazon prime to get things that I could just as easily get from local shops…

Flying is a relatively small contributor. But as spodek pointed out, a flight can take a year's worth of CO2 emissions for one person if we're aiming for a 2-degree change. That just shows how far over that limit we are going. We're going to have to do all the big things you alluded to, but if we don't also tackle smaller things like flying less, we're still going to be over the limit.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#127

Post by knz » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 1:56 PM UTC

J-dawg wrote: post #124

spodek wrote: post #89

Many posts here about how sad and disgusted people are. Not much about people taking personal responsibility. What do people think the carrying capacity of the planet means? Sustaining more humans means sacrificing other life that competes for our resources. It means pollution rising until it doesn't quite kill us but is well above the levels of a pristine, clean environment. Nobody wants to live near the carrying ca…

>Having more kids in western cultures contributes significantly. I wonder how much longer before the idea of limiting people's reproduction is on the table. Someone who never has kids can probably drive a Hummer and spend every weekend jetting off somewhere, and their lifetime carbon footprint will still be many times lower than someone who has several children. I understand that developed country carbon footprints a…

Many OECD nations are barely at or even below replacement levels for fertility. Few people are having 4+ kids.

https://data.oecd.org/pop/fertility-rates.htm

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#128

Post by pier25 » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 1:56 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #28

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #25

This is what keeps me up at night. If we don't find an efficient way to extract CO2 and methane from the atmosphere, I fear that mankind might go extinct.

Mankind is absurdly resilient. We are like rats or cockroaches but a hundred times more adaptable. Billions of people could die. We might lose 99% of species. But human extinction is out of the question. We could live in bubbles of air under the ocean huddled around nuclear reactors if we needed to. Roaches couldn't do that (without our help).

> Billions of people could die. We might lose 99% of species.

You make it sound like this wasn't a huge deal.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#129

Post by hobs » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 2:05 PM UTC

jsperson wrote: post #109

milesrout wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite frankly I think blaming it on flying is incredibly offensive. It's got nothing, at all, to do with cars or flying. They're tiny pollutors compared to industry, specifically the dairy industry, transportation by truck and manufacturing things in China. Sure we could fly less and drive less but that would do fuck all, and certainly having fewer kids isn't going to solve any problems. Having fewer kids in the west…

Offensive!? You're of course free to get offended, but pointing out that flying pollutes a lot relative to the proposed limits is certainly valid. I think the point is that there is an opportunity to take personal responsibility here. Why wait for government? Using a couple of your examples, buying less stuff made in China would go a long way.

Because collective action is the only way to make a dent in multinational corporations that poison the environment?

While changing the agreement and raising awareness is good, its basically rearranging the deck chairs on the titantic.

Do you know how many "upright citizens" I know who dont shop at wallmart? All my friends, family, and people I work with. And how's wallmart doing economically right now?

Even a decently large group of citizens taking action has minimal impact on the global scale.

Either convince the governments of the world or expect the slide to continue at an ever increasing pace.

Re: Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage'

#130

Post by corey_moncure » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 2:08 PM UTC

spodek wrote: post #89

Many posts here about how sad and disgusted people are. Not much about people taking personal responsibility. What do people think the carrying capacity of the planet means? Sustaining more humans means sacrificing other life that competes for our resources. It means pollution rising until it doesn't quite kill us but is well above the levels of a pristine, clean environment. Nobody wants to live near the carrying ca…

>fly less, drive less, eat much less meat, and have fewer kids

Decreasing resource consumption only creates a demand vacuum that others will rise up to fill. It's the same with increasing efficiency: instead of diminishing our overall environmental footprint, the net result is that we grow the contracted envelope right back to the absolute limit, this time with more people.

The ONLY solution that will EVER prevent the coming ecological collapse is: less people, everywhere, full stop. Whether it's war, or global mass sterilization squads, it will be ugly, but the alternative is far uglier.