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Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

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Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#161

Post by alton-wells »

fasterik wrote: post #96
delegate wrote: post #84

When I was a child, I was spending my summers at my grandparents. They had a cozy house in the village. They worked the land, they had a few animals. They grew their food. They sold some wine and fruit at the market. They had a big house, land, clean air, clean water and they were healthy. They celebrated the holidays, had many friends, went to church, weddings, funerals, etc. Villagers always greeted them and stoppe…

This is a completely nostalgic, one-sided view of the urban vs. rural divide. It's also ignorant of the data on the impact of cities on nature. Cities have a lower carbon footprint per capita, lower land use per capita, people own fewer cars, use public transportation more often. If everyone lived in a city, nature would be better off. People live in cities because they are vibrant, they have culture, the arts, intel…

[dead]

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#162

Post by thewebguyd »

ericmcer wrote: post #113
delegate wrote: post #84

When I was a child, I was spending my summers at my grandparents. They had a cozy house in the village. They worked the land, they had a few animals. They grew their food. They sold some wine and fruit at the market. They had a big house, land, clean air, clean water and they were healthy. They celebrated the holidays, had many friends, went to church, weddings, funerals, etc. Villagers always greeted them and stoppe…

The only justification would be that we are in some liminal space and are living in the confusing period leading up to some tech utopia. You also can still live in the way your grandparents did. In the rural USA 10+ acres is going to cost less than a condo in the city. We are just terrified of uncertainty nowadays. Maybe all the technology and distractions keep us from hitting that tipping point of despair/discomfort…

> In the rural USA 10+ acres is going to cost less than a condo in the city

Cheap land is cheap for a reason, even in the middle of nowhere. We aren't in the old days of homesteading. Good chance that cheap land has no utility access and it will cost 10s of thousands to bring it in. Another really good chance you don't own the rights to the water beneath it, and spending $30k+ to dig a well that may not even hit a viable aquifer. The land could be cheap because its rocky, acidic, or maybe its prone to flooding.

What OP is also probably missing is that it's extremely difficult to grow enough calories to sustain a human life for a year. Most "homesteaders" actually still buy most of their calories at the store. Fine so long as your new farm (assuming you even can farm on the cheap land) can turn a profit for you, but now you've just traded one rat race for another.

Point being, the rat race is survival, and there is no escaping it. Happiness has to come from within, moving to the middle of nowhere and starting a farm isn't going to magically make your life better. It will probably actually make it worse.

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#163

Post by interiorchurch »

bovermyer wrote: post #131
jeffbee wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but unfortunately false nostalgia for subsistence farming is widespread and has traction in the discourse. I guess it's probably because every American who ever suffered from that lifestyle is dead, in other words the same reason that it is now increasingly popular to die from measles. In reality, the laser-leveled, fully-automated, county-scale factory farm is the only reason anyone on this forum has ever expe…

Farming is harder than people who haven't done it think, and surviving on the production of only your family's property is really, really hard. Source: I grew up in very rural areas, and I've seen what it entails. My grandparents lived through the Great Depression in a farming community on a homestead. However, I don't think that's the ask, here. You don't have to choose MEGASUPERTROPOLIS or remote solo farm. There's…

> However, I don't think that's the ask, here. You don't have to choose MEGASUPERTROPOLIS or remote solo farm. There's a huge gradient between the two.

The gradient is where you start to consume a lot of carbon unnecessarily.

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#164

Post by amelius »

abeppu wrote: post #44

I don't have any deep background in econ, but do we not need to switch from talking about GDP to talking about a version of Net Domestic Product where "net" includes: - changes to the value of natural and ecosystem resources (e.g. if I clear a forest to sell timber, we must acknowledge some lost value for the forest) - amount of economic transactions in service of mitigating problems created by externalities from oth…

You should also include who is profiting. Is it the wealthiest 1% or is it the entire population.

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#165

Post by tigerlily »

fasterik wrote: post #96
delegate wrote: post #84

When I was a child, I was spending my summers at my grandparents. They had a cozy house in the village. They worked the land, they had a few animals. They grew their food. They sold some wine and fruit at the market. They had a big house, land, clean air, clean water and they were healthy. They celebrated the holidays, had many friends, went to church, weddings, funerals, etc. Villagers always greeted them and stoppe…

This is a completely nostalgic, one-sided view of the urban vs. rural divide. It's also ignorant of the data on the impact of cities on nature. Cities have a lower carbon footprint per capita, lower land use per capita, people own fewer cars, use public transportation more often. If everyone lived in a city, nature would be better off. People live in cities because they are vibrant, they have culture, the arts, intel…

> eat 20 different types of cuisine

The city I live in, this can be 20 different variations on onions and garlic, and cabbage passes as salad.

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#167

Post by epolanski »

fasterik wrote: post #96
delegate wrote: post #84

When I was a child, I was spending my summers at my grandparents. They had a cozy house in the village. They worked the land, they had a few animals. They grew their food. They sold some wine and fruit at the market. They had a big house, land, clean air, clean water and they were healthy. They celebrated the holidays, had many friends, went to church, weddings, funerals, etc. Villagers always greeted them and stoppe…

This is a completely nostalgic, one-sided view of the urban vs. rural divide. It's also ignorant of the data on the impact of cities on nature. Cities have a lower carbon footprint per capita, lower land use per capita, people own fewer cars, use public transportation more often. If everyone lived in a city, nature would be better off. People live in cities because they are vibrant, they have culture, the arts, intel…

+1, I think you're spot on.

Albeit I feel like OP was right on something else: his grandparents weren't heavy consumers, but that transcends city vs rural debates.

I see us modern people, except very old folks being extremely heavy consumers.

Sometime I pay attention to my friends and relatives and how much do they consume.

E.g. I spent 5 days with my mother in December at my grandmas and I've noticed that she just bought stuff non-stop, but her metric is money, not "stuff".

So, e.g., she bought a new pillow for my grandma even though my grandma didn't need/want one (she doesn't use it), bought plenty of plastic toys for her own dog, bought a set of new dishes just because the old ones were old, changed her worn phone leather case for a new one, bought plenty of Christmas lights because she didn't want to dig for the old ones she couldn't quickly find, bought some kind of table hook for purses for herself and her friends, etc, etc.

At the end of the week she didn't even spend 250 euros (her metric), so she doesn't realizes, yet, the amount of borderline useless stuff she bought was major and her ecological impact quite huge, especially for how little to none the payoff or utility is.

I had colleagues in my office, back when I was in the office, that just had Amazon packages coming every single day...And here's a smartphone holder, here's some gadget that keeps your mouse cord, here's a yet a new pedal for the drums, here's a set of pens, here's a rubber duck to talk to when debugging, etc, etc.

I mean, I have even a difficult time pointing out that there's something wrong with any of those items per se in isolation, but when it's a lifestyle of non-stop consistent consumerism I think the trend is worrying.

There's so many things that are so cheap nowadays that it's hard to say "why not?", yet they feed into this endless life style that's toxic for the planet but feeds this neverending more more and more.

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#168

Post by izzydata »

ghurtado wrote: post #156
lich_king wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> If we didn't have cities, we also wouldn't have eight billion people in the world. Could you break down the logic that leads you to this conclusion? Im sure it's deeper than "if cities disappeared right now, a lot of people would disappear with them"

This is obviously not a reversible trend. People having close proximity to one another, creating economies of scale where everyone does what they are best at instead of everyone doing everything for themselves is what allows big cities to be possible.

I'm sure all of this was inevitable as there likely hasn't ever been a time where humans were not getting together to form communities when it was beneficial to do so.

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#169

Post by rapht »

ericmcer wrote: post #128

What are we trying to achieve as a species? If we can't answer that question then we can't really judge our actions effectively. If we view humanity as the most intelligent life form not just on the planet, but in the entire universe, then we are the only source of order in an infinite chaos. All of reality is just entropy and mindless cruelty except for humanity. Viewed in that lens we almost have a duty to expand b…

That is the right question to ask. My temptation is to respond "Obsession with nature is destroying humanity's prospects." Now what?

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#170

Post by pjmlp »

graemep wrote: post #147
pjmlp wrote: post #3

Of course, the MBAs pushing for growth missed on physics class that it is impossible for everyone to growth expontentially.

Maybe they know about Malthus saying the same thing and being proven wrong? We have had millennia of exponential growth. Slower in the past, and positive over the long term for a long time (since the bronze age collapse at a global level?). Technological advance allows growth that is far higher than increases in resource usage. We often do the same thing on far lower resources than it used to take - sometimes far bet…

The people at the layoffs side when growth doesn't meet the exponential quarter targets, or destroyed villages to build a few hotel chains that deplet water banks for their golf fields, haven't noticed it.
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