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Plans you're not supposed to talk about

dynomight.net

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Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#21

Post by mdavis6890 »

calibas wrote: post #7

>Cutting back on CO2 emissions would clearly work, but it’s expensive and painful. This is so painfully backwards. "Saving the Planet" doesn't mean spending tons of money and doing tons of work, quite the opposite. The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover. Obviously that's a bit ex…

This is a bit like saying that the planet would be better off without humans. And maybe that's what you believe, I don't know. It might even be true!

But I don't care: I'm a human and I love other humans and I want humans to prosper as much as possible. Which requires activity which contributes to our shared prosperity. Ideally that prosperity would also include a nice planet to live on though. Earth is a reasonable choice.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#22

Post by jeffreyrogers »

calibas wrote: post #7

>Cutting back on CO2 emissions would clearly work, but it’s expensive and painful. This is so painfully backwards. "Saving the Planet" doesn't mean spending tons of money and doing tons of work, quite the opposite. The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover. Obviously that's a bit ex…

> The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all.

The planet doesn't care what lives on it or if anything lives at all. There is no best for the planet outside of goals humans set for it.

> It's so odd that all our frantic doing is what's thrown the Planet out of balance

The planet has never been in balance. And even if we stop anthropogenic climate change something else will throw the planet out of balance again too.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#23

Post by Swenrekcah »

slg wrote: post #17
calibas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be the standard response, I've certainly heard it before, but all I'm suggesting is doing less. I'm not a luddite, I'm not arguing for a "pre-modern agrarian societal model", I'm arguing for a post-modern agrarian society that balances technology, industry and the ecosystem. We consume enormously more than we need, and far more than the Planet can handle. I feel like the one of the few sane people when…

Funny enough you are falling into a similar situation as item 5 from that list. You are "pushing a view that has absolutely no advantage to anyone". You feel like one of the few sane people because you are of course technically right. However no one will listen to you because "even if that’s true, there’s no profit in thinking about it" as it is currently impossible from a societal standpoint. There is no way to get…

Some part of modern consumption however is not really making lives any more enjoyable at all, for instance all the low quality clothes and items sold in large quantities to fill some internal void for people for a short while.

If there was for instance a carbon tax on the raw materials and transport then I’m fairly sure the price difference between high quality and low quality items would become minimal so people would start buying more sensibly for the planet because our systems would make it more sensible for them individually.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#24

Post by dejj »

calibas wrote: post #7

>Cutting back on CO2 emissions would clearly work, but it’s expensive and painful. This is so painfully backwards. "Saving the Planet" doesn't mean spending tons of money and doing tons of work, quite the opposite. The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover. Obviously that's a bit ex…

If by:

> do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover.

you mean: let humans go extinct. Then yes, that would work. It has the elegance of Multivac’s answer to Asimov’s “The last question”

“And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.

But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- would take care of that, too.”

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#26

Post by jvanderbot »

The underlying issue, and one that bugs the hell out of me, is Policy vs Truth.

You can say true things all day, and convince nobody. You can enact policy based completely on Truth (e.g., Trust the Science), and completely fail. People don't care about Truth, they care about what changes they need to make, and who is asking them to make them.

Good policy is only partially based on truth, it's more based on easy implementation and high acceptability. In the article, you don't talk about the real reasons (truth), you do what you need to do to steer the ship. That probably includes bullshitting, compromise, apparent-hypocrisy, etc.

I'm afraid we've completely forgotten to separate the means from the end goal.

I've tried to explain this to people, and I've been met with blank stares from even the most intelligent folks.

As suggested though, it works wonders if you're at least a little good at magical thinking or self deception. (If I run these 3 miles, I'm much more likely to get that raise)

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#27

Post by [deleted] »

calibas wrote: post #7

>Cutting back on CO2 emissions would clearly work, but it’s expensive and painful. This is so painfully backwards. "Saving the Planet" doesn't mean spending tons of money and doing tons of work, quite the opposite. The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover. Obviously that's a bit ex…

[deleted]

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#30

Post by abyssin »

calibas wrote: post #7

>Cutting back on CO2 emissions would clearly work, but it’s expensive and painful. This is so painfully backwards. "Saving the Planet" doesn't mean spending tons of money and doing tons of work, quite the opposite. The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover. Obviously that's a bit ex…

The practical issue for me is: how to do less and still feel like I’m a member of a functional group of people? Doing less is easy. Being part of a group of people that do little is doable. But I’ve yet to find such a group that isn’t made of crazies or depressive people.

Doing stuff and consuming resources and spending is a religion. We don’t have temples to make offerings. Our entire cultural environment is dedicated to the symbolic activity of producing and sacrificing. Taking part in it is a requirement to be recognized as a legitimate member of society. Problems that are seen as legit are all related to this religious endeavour.

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