Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#221

Post by nebula8804 » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

FiggyPudding wrote: post #207

nebula8804 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this line of reasoning constantly from people who have had the system work for them. What they don't realize is that there is a huge portion of this country where the system is not working and thats where this discontent is coming from. Their misinformation campaigns wouldn't work if there weren't real core issues with the society. The internet has empowered a generation the sees whats behind the curtain. AOC…

Millennials also have high speed internet, smartphones, and video games to tune out local life that previous generations lacked. Did previous generations have the same regulations in place that cause companies to restrict employment in crappy jobs to less than 40 hours a week so you need to move between job sites or work unsteady 'gig' jobs on the side? To avoid some mandatory benefits?

Previous generations had significantly higher tax rates for the ultra-wealthy and had wages that were in line with inflation. Those wages have stagnated for decades and all those taxes have been pulled back. All of this started to happen around the time of Gen X onwards.

In exchange we have cheap Chinese produced crap that shows the mirage of wealth but in reality there are external costs to all this tech that is not priced in when you go to pay for it. Costs such as the slave wages paid to the people who produce them and the environmental cost to produce and dispose. If US consumers had to pay the true cost of all these toys then it would expose the wage gap much more clearly.

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#222

Post by Gravityloss » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

birksherty wrote: post #215

Gravityloss wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, many things in the environment are a lot worse now than 100 years ago, but some things are better. While there was much less industrial production, it was more polluting per output. Waste water cleaning, industrial process cleaning or in general taking care of garbage has improved a lot in the last sixty years in developed countries.

Why per output? To make it look better? Total is worse, more co2, more pollution, more oil spill in oceans, plastic in oceans even inside animals etc. It's better just for a selfish species.

Well, in many places, since population and consumption per capita has plateaued, total pollution has reduced a lot. Some local anecdotes follow.

Waste water cleaning plants were built, so human excrement wasn't dumped to the sea anymore. At some point district heating replaced coal and wood burned in houses. Double and triple glazing arrived. The metro started operating in the eighties, replacing a lot of buses. Lead gasoline was banned in the nineties as well. Cars got electronic ignition, fuel injection and catalytic converters. Diesel engines started having tightening regulations every few years. Waste water treatment was upgraded to even remove nitrogen. New bicycle highways were made, the metro is being extended, tram lines are being built, and just a few weeks ago many diesel bus lines were replaced by Chinese electric ones.

Some things have gotten better, some things have gotten worse. But not everything has gotten worse.

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#223

Post by esarbe » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

marcusverus wrote: post #155

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The world is better off today in basically every way than it was 100 years ago, and almost unimaginably better than it was 200 years ago. so this seems sort of like the old joke about jumping off the skyscraper and as you fall past the 10th floor say "so far so good", only now the person falling is doing cocaine and says "things are only getting better!"

GP is objectively correct. 200 years ago, ~95% of humans lived in extreme poverty. 100 years ago it was ~85%. Today only ~10% live in extreme poverty, and the number continues to fall. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

That doesn't change that fact that the ground is getting closer and closer and we're still accelerating.

We're burning the planet.

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#224

Post by fuzzfactor » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

nebula8804 wrote: post #219

fuzzfactor wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it was the Soviets that were in Afghanistan during the Cold War, not the US.

Are you seriously ignoring the US's role in arming the mujahideen?

Not at all but somebody else would have done it anyway.

The Soviet Army's fate was sealed not much differently than the US Army's was early into the operations.

Others having much more to lose through Soviet aggression would have stepped up to the plate except US arms dealers had first right of refusal for things like this.

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#225

Post by another_story » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #194

another_story wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are better off, but not our arable land, the fish in our oceans, the soil we grow our crops in, the animals in our forest, the forest themselves, etc... We're in a sports car hitting the gas as we head towards a cliff and you're talking about how much better the interior is on this new model compared to the last.

Production per acre of farmland has increased massively and is still increasing. The size of forests in developed countries has increased substantially. At the same time the rate of population growth has decreased and is projected to go negative within a few decades. Sure, lots of things are still getting worse, but "getting worse more slowly" is progress. No reason to get complacent but in my opinion doom sayers do…

Forest cover has increased after we cut much of it down. We've replaced much of it with monoculture timber that gets one maybe two growth cycle before the soil is depleted.

Production of food has increased along with our unsustainable use of fossil fuels and the other products needed to do so. Topsoil is disappearing at an alarming rate.

I don't think a person sounding the alarm that we'll have depleted our fish stocks within 25 years, or are losing an incredible amount of topsoil each year, or are heading for dramatic climate changes that will cause an increase in disasters is a doomsayer. They're just living according to what every scientific report says. Being optimistic won't change a disruption in food supply or mass migration due to shifting weather patterns.

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#226

Post by wyager » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 11:45 PM UTC

esarbe wrote: post #210

wyager wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since the middle of the 20th century, we've lost about 75% of biomass This is clearly an absurd claim. Did you mean to qualify this somehow, like “non-livestock mammalian biomass”? That would still be incorrect, but at least might not be off by orders of magnitude. > Water is beginning to get critically scarce Not really. Even desalination is cheap enough at this point (on the order of 1kL/$, last I checked) that w…

> Did you mean to qualify this somehow, like “non-livestock mammalian biomass”? That would still be incorrect, but at least might not be off by orders of magnitude. Not necessary. The loss in biomass in fish[0][1] and insects[2][3] and tropical rainforests[4] can account for that. Birds have also taken a deep dive[6]. The most visible I think it is for fish. There alone we've lost an approximate 80% since the 1950ies…

“Fish and insect population” != “biomass”

No non-trivial total biomass change occurs on scales shorter than thousands of years

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#227

Post by grecy » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 11:53 PM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #204

grecy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this too shall pass As long as the world remains human habitable, I agree with you. If even 10% of the landmass where humans currently live becomes uninhabitable due to the impacts of climate change like flood, heat, drought, stable society as we've know for ~50 years has little chance. Hundreds of millions of people will have no place to live, no food, and no water. The only possible outcome would be immense uphea…

There is another possibility: Governments lift their hostile immigration policies, and grant refugees a place in their society. Sure there will be tension, but a major upheaval and wars can absolutely be avoided if governments act humanely.

What you describe would certainly be nice, though the realist in my simply can't believe it will ever happen.

Every country on earth is going to suffer and struggle, and I find it impossible to believe any government would welcome millions more people who are struggling when their own system will already be stretched to breaking point.

Governments have not done so in the past for civil war, natural disasters, humanitarian crises, genocide and much worse.

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#228

Post by birksherty » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:22 AM UTC

Gravityloss wrote: post #222

birksherty wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why per output? To make it look better? Total is worse, more co2, more pollution, more oil spill in oceans, plastic in oceans even inside animals etc. It's better just for a selfish species.

Well, in many places, since population and consumption per capita has plateaued, total pollution has reduced a lot. Some local anecdotes follow. Waste water cleaning plants were built, so human excrement wasn't dumped to the sea anymore. At some point district heating replaced coal and wood burned in houses. Double and triple glazing arrived. The metro started operating in the eighties, replacing a lot of buses. Lead…

Some things are better only for humans. For every other species it's worse. The whole ecosystem is worse than ever. The better things will also become useless in few dacade as the climate is tracking the worst case scenario of the IPCC report.

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#229

Post by birksherty » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:36 AM UTC

Isinlor wrote: post #188

polytely wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't all this progress bought with the destruction of our environment? It isn't sustainable at all and we are basically betting we can switch to a sustainable model before everything starts breaking down.

Climate change is no good, and we have to do better, but the past was even worse. Try to imagine near 50% child mortality on a global scale in 1800. That's the past. Today even the poorest regions in Africa have "only" ~15% child mortality.

The better things will not remain so for long. Many of the industry and technical progress came at a huge cost. It's the future generation who will bear it. Data conclusively indicates real-world climate change is tracking the IPCC's worst case scenario.

https://youtu.be/fliCxyAwBWU

Re: Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

#230

Post by pcrh » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 7:25 AM UTC

nebula8804 wrote: post #218

pcrh wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>so many unrelated events spanning multiple generations. That's the point; the world has always been turning. In terms of post-WWII economic history, the current "crisis" in the west is neither special nor very great.

This academic view of things does not matter to the people who are living a reality where their parents have done better than them. You seem to be ignoring this fact.

Plenty of people are living a reality where they're doing better than their parents. I should think that includes a lot of the well-paid software industry readership of HN.