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The world has probably passed peak pollution

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Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#161

Post by NateEag »

shkkmo wrote: post #95
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…

> Actually, I think the standard of living, at least in the long-term and for the many future climate refugees, is not actually that much improved. Compared to what? Where do you draw the line of the "pre" technology? Technology has been as part of human society since before we invented history. Do you have a specific point after which you think technology became a net negative? Do you think thinks were fine pre-indu…

> The only sensible way to draw a rational technophobic line is to look at specific technologies and their effects and decide if your life will be better or worse with each.

Interesting to note that this is what the Amish actually do.

The popular depiction is of people who blindly live as if they're in the 1790s, but it is not that simple. The various Amish communities all do things slightly different from one another, and the technology allowed in different communities is not homogenous.

For ex., the Amish family just down the road from me has a solar panel on one of their barns, and a small forklift, I think diesel-powered (might be battery). But on the occasional Sunday when the meeting is at their house, there's not a car to be seen.

I've read of Amish carpenters who actually use a computer to run their business. It's usually kept in the workshop, away from the family home, though, and IIRC none of them had an internet connection.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#162

Post by globalise83 »

skissane wrote: post #141
globalise83 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that these are still very much niche interests after many generations indicates that the social indoctrination processes needed to maintain such cultures are not scalable.

> The fact that these are still very much niche interests after many generations indicates that the social indoctrination processes needed to maintain such cultures are not scalable. In 2023, Israel contained over 1.28 million ultra-Orthodox Jews, 13.5% of Israel’s population. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, it will be over 16%. [0] By shortly after 2065, it is estimated that 50% of Israeli children w…

So in % terms not even a rounding error of the global population by 2085. These religious communities rely on both cult-like indoctrination and quasi-incestuous family networking in tandem to survive. We are not going to see Amish or ultraorthodox Jewish populations taking over the world.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#163

Post by hollerith »

voxelghost wrote: post #90
hollerith wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where you have "accumulating", you mean persisting.

No, even if you emit less, you are still 'accumulating', but at a slower rate. And previously released methane is still converting to co2 in the atmosphere, for decades to come.

OK. It's too late for me to retract my comment, though.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#164

Post by matthewdgreen »

benreesman wrote: post #135
diob wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the two are entangled. Those at low incomes (heck even middle income), will be disproportionately hurt by climate change.

I think the problem is that the best and brightest (of which HN’s readership is a plausible sample) dislikes this observation: a great many people who rarely use anything but hard rationality still believe that not only will they be the one to join the tiny elite (can’t be all of them, most are wrong by construction), but that this is acceptable. Of secondary importance is what a depressing commentary this is on the…

We've faced a similar version of this problem before, in the 1910s and 1920s. What happened in that case was a global depression, followed by reforms (in some places) and communist/fascist takeovers in others. Then we had a world war.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#165

Post by JeremyNT »

DavidPiper wrote: post #28
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,…

> Maybe it will actually be 2213 or 2313 instead. Our descendants (if one happens to have them) will find out. Peak-anything is just shorthand for "the first peak on record" because our culture and ability to record-keep has only really existed in a population and resource boom period. I agree that circumstances might mean that the global peak baby might be 200-300 years away, but the thing that makes the current rou…

> Peak-anything is just shorthand for "the first peak on record" because our culture and ability to record-keep has only really existed in a population and resource boom period.

Humans are presumably always going to want babies. There's nothing to really replace them.

On the other hand, coal/oil/pollution all seem highly likely to be a transient phase of industrialization. There's no reason to think we should ever go back to burning coal or oil once we have renewables.

Oil is tricky in that we do like plastic and there's no obvious alternate material, but the amount of oil needed for plastic will be minuscule compared to the amount of oil burned as we bootstrap to renewable energy sources.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#166

Post by bryanlarsen »

rgmerk wrote: post #86
Retric wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s misleading because they are idling their existing coal power plants more often. Essentially they are using new coal as demand following peaker plants rather than base load power generation. “In the first decade of the 2000s, plants were running around 70% of the time. They're now running around 50%.” https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants#... . By comparison China added 217 GW of PV in 202…

Apparently part of the issue is that the Chinese grid is very badly managed. They can build physical grid connections much more easily than we can manage (for the usual values of “we”), but they manage interprovincial transmission according to fixed schedules rather than responding to demand.

Which means that they have a relatively easy lever they can pull to significantly lower emissions even further.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#167

Post by shepherdjerred »

skissane wrote: post #7
Animats wrote: post #2

That's encouraging. - Peak pollution - check. - Peak coal - not yet. - Peak oil - maybe 2019, but aftermath of COVID affects numbers.[1] - Peak baby - 2013. [2] [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-04-19/the-status-of-... [2] https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/2022/11/12/the-stats-guy...

> - 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,…

> the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries, they could be the majority of the US population

It's so unhelpful to speculate about what the world will be like 100 years from now.

Think about what things were like in the 1920's and how unrecognizable the world is by comparison. Then, consider that technology is being developed significantly more quickly than it was in the 1920's.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#168

Post by bryanlarsen »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #73
Animats wrote: post #2

That's encouraging. - Peak pollution - check. - Peak coal - not yet. - Peak oil - maybe 2019, but aftermath of COVID affects numbers.[1] - Peak baby - 2013. [2] [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-04-19/the-status-of-... [2] https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/2022/11/12/the-stats-guy...

Peak Plastic?

Hopefully peak plastic pollution, anyways. Plastic is a very useful substance, the issues are that it is made from fossil fuel and that its pollution is significant. If we capture carbon and then use that carbon as a feedstock to create plastic in a form that won't end up as a pollution (aka not plastic bottles or synthetic fleece) we can turn it into a positive.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#169

Post by rufus_foreman »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #76
sidewndr46 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've never understood the panic over a declining birth rate. Are we to be scared that long after we're all dead and gone there would only be several billion humans on this planet?

The concern is increasing taxation of the young, productive population to sustain the old, non productive population causing political turmoil and decreasing national competitiveness on the global scale.

Good point, young people just out of college who have lived off of their parents and the government for a quarter of a century might get upset about having to support non-productive people.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#170

Post by S_Bear »

monero-xmr wrote: post #12
developerDan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is to say children today will have children of their own tomorrow? People who are choosing not to have kids “leaving the gene pool” (you say it as if they are some filth to be done away with) doesn’t change anything.

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…

Since my broken body is the equivalent to a genetic warranty replacement, I'm more than happy to leave the future gene pool.
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