Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by lanfeust6 » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 12:43 AM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #57

lanfeust6 wrote: post #13

This ignores innovation, which drastically reduces externalities over time (as it has historically; see smog and pollution from England Industrial revolution). Granted that can benefit or even require investment from the State to expedite things. R&D spending was better in the 20th century. At any rate you cannot divorce said innovation from growth and consumption. By contrast, "degrowth" would inflict harm and make…

> see smog and pollution from England Industrial revolution I love how people keep using the "it was worse during the industrial evolution" argument as a gotcha for every environmental and societal issues... no shit my dude, really? even in the middle of the "dark ages" we didn't send 8 years old kids down mines for 10+ hours a day or make people work 12 to 16 hours a day, 6 days a week... WW2 era Poland was literall…

> I love how people keep using the "it was worse during the industrial evolution" argument as a gotcha for every environmental and societal issue

Maybe you think I'm saying something I'm not.

> They had 0 smog and 0 pollution before all these innovations

That's not true. Man-made ecological disasters go back a long ways, but they did not scale up as much until the population growth exploded following the invention of ammonia and the industrial revolution. Until then, 80% of people worked the land. If you understand the reasons behind the deadly plagues that decimated numbers in middle-age Europe, it was clearly not pollution-free.

With technological progress, and policy, total emissions are falling in developed countries despite growing population. They were still growing rapidly in China until recent years where fossil fuel use has plateaued.

Now emissions are growing because other East Asian countries are getting rich, e.g. India, Vietnam. Fortunately they are not missing a beat taking advantage of renewables either.

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

#212

Post by joquarky » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 1:06 AM UTC

epolanski wrote: post #167

fasterik wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

Chuck Palahniuk has a few words on this.

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

#213

Post by api » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 1:15 AM UTC

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 answer is that most people did not live like what you remember.

For most of the last many thousands of years most people worked very hard for very little and died young of disease and war. If you got injured or sick there was no real health care. Women had a high chance of dying in childbirth. Your kids had a high chance of dying before 10.

That stressful city life is better than how most people in history have lived.

Of course we could make it quite a bit better still. We are nowhere near an optimum. A lot of our wounds are self inflicted: addiction to constant doom scrolling, hedonic treadmill for bling, real estate hyperinflation because we refuse to build enough housing.

But that description of the past is very sugar coated and selective.

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

#214

Post by api » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #100

fasterik wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

It’s an extremely privileged kind of nostalgia. Only the wealthy can romanticize poverty.

The solution to nostalgia for farming is for people to try it.

I used to live in Asheville NC years ago. There were a lot of hippie back to the land types that came there to find themselves. It’s that kind of place. Sometimes they’d decide to become farmers. This usually lasted at best one year. Sometimes it lasted weeks.

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

#215

Post by pfdietz » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

boringg wrote: post #200

pfdietz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe's tree cover is increasing. https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-upda...

Tree cover != forests. That is movement in the right direction though!

Ah, the No True Scotch Pine argument.

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

#216

Post by scoofy » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 2:22 AM UTC

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #208

scoofy wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can't recycle to infinity. The lifespan of the earth is not infinite, pretending it is is foolish. We have about 5 billion years on earth before it will be consumed by the sun. Presuming an infinite earth creates a very obvious, simple, and wrong conclusion about something that is actually very difficult problem. >The logical conclusion is that at some point we run out of resources. The point of renewable resour…

You’re not really addressing the obvious though: that at the rate that we are consuming and polluting the earth, we could be pushing ourselves into extinction faster than the sun could just naturally swallow up the earth. I don’t think anyone is debating this eventual death of our star, but our astronomers would very much like to live long enough for us to find another home planet and develop the technology to get th…

I mean, I’m advocating for renewable resources… that doesn’t me arbitrarily stopping consumption. It means reorienting consumption to being responsible.

Mechanized farming, for example, prevents famine because it’s wildly more efficient than subsistence farming. Arbitrary “degrowth” does not address the fact that consumption isn’t arbitrary.

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

#217

Post by gnarlouse » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 2:55 AM UTC

Geee wrote: post #135

gnarlouse wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the intention here is to capture and spend more time respecting the negative externalities that are associated with growth.

Sure, externalities should be priced somehow, and this is the core problem, but demanding or forcing people to limit consumption is wrong.

I mean, doesn't that fall out of pricing externalities sort of naturally? What's the difference if you're told all new cars cost $500k, vs being told not to buy a new car? You can't reasonably afford it either way.

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

#218

Post by 627467 » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 3:31 AM UTC

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…

> Your picture of the friendly villagers might be true in your experience, but in reality a lot of those people are nasty when they encounter any kind of cultural diversity or difference.

Cities are all the things you describe, including the myopic perspective and the inflexibility on display in this quote.

And thats why city states - which is what effectively those you describe are - eventually collapse into "dark ages" and future generation of people can't understand why

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

#219

Post by 627467 » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 3:39 AM UTC

awongh wrote: post #71

philipallstar wrote: post #2

> European Union members have signed off on a report that warns focusing on unchecked economic growth is contributing to the destruction of global biodiversity It would be good to know which members of the EU are currently experiencing unchecked economic growth.

The lie of Europe is that they get to launder their environmental and humanitarian responsibility through other countries. If not for their amazing growth then for the maintenance of their current lifestyles. Sometimes just through simply getting raw materials and finished goods from the third world or china in the open market, then still claim to be "green". Or also directly from neighbors; Looking the other way whe…

You forgot to mention the part where EU model is to export demographic deficit which is "purchased" by the young generations of other countries stiffling their growth and displacing the dwindling younger european generations.

"Dont buy cheap tshirts from bangladesh just bring its youth in" is apparently morally superior model

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

#220

Post by gib444 » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 4:07 AM UTC

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…

> but in reality a lot of those people are nasty when they encounter any kind of cultural diversity or difference.

This is so so true

Many villages in England it takes min 2 generations to begin being accepted as a proper local