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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]

#141

Post by roenxi »

jdietrich wrote: post #100
plutoh28 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely do not see the point you’re trying to make. Is it that pollution == lower birth rate? I’d imagine there are many factors besides pollution that may influence why certain regions have more birth rates than others.

The places with high birth rates are economically undeveloped, so the people there consume very few resources, produce very little pollution and have negligible impact on the environment. One person in the US produces the same amount of CO2 as 150 people in DR Congo. That disparity is broadly similar for metrics like land use, water use, soil depletion, waste production etc. The number of people being born in very po…

Or we could target the whole world population living in wanton profligacy. The goal here is something like maximising median living standards.

Ideally we'd all be living even more decadently than the best US lifestyle. If that means nobody feels like having kids - great.

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

#142

Post by imtringued »

randomdata wrote: post #69
HenryBemis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I will reply in 9gag-style) Hi, CO2 and work-out Captain here. I don't know how much CO2 you typically exhale when you do push ups but it is nothing near the exhaust fumes by your 5lt gasoline SUV built in 1990.

It’s funny how travel has become so ingrained into the urban psyche that it doesn’t occur that not travelling is an option. It’s especially funny as you would think the whole reason people want to live so close to other people is because they don’t want to travel far to engage with other people… Yet it is always about how to get as far away from them as possible, whether by bike or train or whatever it takes.

They are running away from the landowners of the city centre.

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

#143

Post by imtringued »

julienreszka wrote: post #108

I never worry because fear and anxiety shrinks the brain and makes you stupid. If you rely on intelligence for your work why would you ever allow something to make you anxious.

Why would anyone trust their survival instincts?

They must be really dumb.

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

#144

Post by thaumasiotes »

127361 wrote: 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 taboo to say this, but people worldwide have had far too many children

Taboo? It's stupid. But it's not taboo, it's an incredibly conventional thing to say, and has been for many, many decades.

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

#145

Post by pk-protect-ai »

I no longer worry. I'm extremely pessimistic about the impending climate change. I believe Sabine isn't pessimistic enough about what to anticipate. Consider the tundra methane emissions and the explosive release of methane-hydrates from the oceans, along with water vapor, a potent greenhouse gas. The disaster looming over all ecosystems (a mass extinction event) that will happen in decades and the doom-phase could last for 200,000 years. The chances of humanity surviving are incredibly slim, IMO. We can't colonize Greenland or Antarctica due to the lack of fertile soil, and it would take thousands of years to develop it. Without saying so, we don't have this amount of time.

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

#146

Post by thelastgallon »

9dev wrote: post #135
tempestn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with a fair bit of this, except that I'm not convinced the consequences to humans will be as dire as the loss of a good part of the global population. If we're counting animal species though, then maybe.

Just you wait, the effects are subtle and interlinked. If the bees eventually go extinct (which is happening right now), most plant species on earth will cease to exist. This includes fruit trees, but also a boundless number of plants animals need as food sources; animals that have other responsibilities in their ecosystems, like fertilizing the soil, transporting nutrients, and devouring vermin. Earth is inhabitable…

“Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.”

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

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

#147

Post by defrost »

lancebeet wrote: post #136
Erratic6576 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overpopulation isn’t the source of the problem, IMHO. A wild human being in their natural environment pollutes thousands of times less than an industrialised consumer. Each American or European, whose food is grown thousands of km away, is plenty more only to make their salad. Can they be blamed for their Carbon Footprint^TM? I think we should blame the fossil fuel corporations which have turned us into fuel junkies

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 actually true that some blame can be apportioned to fossil fuel companies that have actively pushed "more fuel consumption" since the 1970s, the Koch Group in particular funde a slew of think tanks to poo-poo and crash and burn any grass roots public transport movements in the USofA during the past 50 odd years.

It's less true that a valid comparison should be "if not modern 21st Century life then hunter gather".

There's a middle ground more agrarian, less hunter, lifestyle that supported a large population in the past and can likely support a larger population than Victorian times if farming | mining switched across to renewables (electric | hydrogen) instead of fossil fuels - we've learnt a lot about efficiencies in the past century, it's a matter of application and less consumption now, certainly time for less greenhouse gas being released.

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

#148

Post by Joeri »

johnea wrote: post #86
declan_roberts wrote: post #16

Weird. I used to worry about climate change and now I don’t. I guess the world has a way of finding its equilibrium. I do however worry about the accidental introduction of invasive species and diseases, which seems to be accelerating (see: citrus greening disease).

> 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 enough to maximize long term revenue. If extraction would decline, fossil fuel prices would rise, and the market would automatically rebalance into a green transition.

Really the only thing politicians need to do is put in place a global and declining cap on fossil fuel extraction. Wells need to be capped even when they’re not empty. There should be zero new drilling. You can tell the honest intentions of a politician on climate change by their policies on fossil fuel extraction.

And this means ultimately it is a political problem, not an individual problem, and can be fixed through the voting booth. But that requires people to consider this the most important problem, and they don’t. So ultimately, the reason things don’t change is not some cabal, but just plain people not prioritizing it in the voting booth.

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

#149

Post by yungporko »

127361 wrote: 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…

i don't think overpopulation is the problem, but maybe it's a symptom. the problem is we've forced our way up to an unrealistically high standard of living which is completely unsustainable, and now we're trapped in an inescapable death spiral because nobody wants to go back.

people aren't willing to stop paying for conveniences because they're cheaply available, corporations aren't willing to stop selling them because there's a demand for it and money to be made, and governments aren't willing to force anybody's hand because the people and corporations will both force them out of power if they try.

there is absolutely no chance of breaking out of it other than giving up on democracy, but that will only happen when modern society collapses entirely, which will be far too late to prevent unimaginable suffering on a massive scale.

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

#150

Post by green7ea »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #114
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as "overpopulation" on its own. There's only population relative to resource abuse. A small fraction of the population using resources at the rate that your common local billionaire or environmentally abusive megacorp uses resources will be just as "over". A much larger population appropriately pricing externalities instead of ignoring them will not be "over". The number of people in India is no…

>There's no such thing as "overpopulation" on its own. There's only population relative to resource abuse. This is an unfortunate delusion that is widespread, and exploited by governments and industries that seek to ravage what is left of our environment for profit. If you believe and understand that the earth is a finite place, with finite resources (as all intelligent, rational people do), then you believe and unde…

Most essential resources aren't consumed but part of cycles — food, water, shelter. These cycles are sustained by energy and, if we were to use it well, the sun alone provides more than enough.

A simple example of this is that water isn't used up, it gets dirty. It can be made clean again but that requires energy. This can be done by humans (water filtration) or by nature (evaporation and rain). We don't manage these cycles very well and they sometimes stretch out over too many of our lifetimes to manage (plastics, some nuclear waste) so it becomes easier to talk about resource 'use'.

The equation is pretty simple `humans × resources/human`. We can talk about reducing number of humans or reducing the resources needed per human. If we manage the cycles well, humans could inject more resources into the system instead of taking away from it. Of course this would still be limited by available energy. In that case, increasing the number of humans within energy capacity could benefit ecosystems.

We already have a lot of available energy but there is orders of magnitude more available as our technology improves — fusion, thorium fission, solar, wind, tides.

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