Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The world has probably passed peak pollution

sustainabilitybynumbers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 383 posts

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#271

Post by missedthecue »

faeriechangling wrote: post #259
jandrese wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of panic over shrinking population where people project it out 1000 years and find there are only like 5 people left in the world. Steady state population should be the long term goal, at least until we start moving into orbital colonies or something. But unfortunately that's an anathema to growth oriented economies which makes it the bad guy in economics and politics.

I mean Japan hasn't been doing great but it's been doing fine, so I don't think the end of growth has to mean anything but a period of stagnation. The economy will be fine.

In your lifetime, Korea will have more than two 60+ year olds for every working person. They are screwed.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#272

Post by illiac786 »

NewJazz wrote: post #258
illiac786 wrote: post #120

I find this title highly misleading “peak emission” would be much more accurate. “Peak pollution” sounds like the amount of pollution in the environment will actually _decrease_ going forward. That is simply not true, it will continue to increase, just slightly less fast. Sorry if I don’t feel euphoric right now.

Isn't the concept of pollution highly subjective?

Doesn’t really matter here, I’m talking about the pollution the article is referring to. I am simply discussing the concept of reaching a peak in pollution vs. a peak in emission of the same pollutants.

Putting the above aside though, I would disagree. Everything is subjective except math (and even there, I think there’s a debate), but I would definitely not classify pollution as _highly_ subjective, that makes it sound it belongs to the category of things that particularly lack consensus, which is definitely not the case amongst the scientific community. Not to say there’s 100% agreement on all things, but I think there’s a broad consensus.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#273

Post by missedthecue »

wongarsu wrote: post #36
iiovemiku wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, seeing peak baby is a little scary honestly. I had always thought that low birth rates were a problem for only countries like Germany, Spain, Japan, etc. (at least for the time being). Seeing countries like India even out (and even going under replacement rate) gives me some heavy pessimism about population graying. I had always thought that heavy swingers like them would carry on the whole growing population th…

We still won't reach peak population until 2060 at the earliest, and more likely around 2100. [1] has a good graph by region on page 4, and a graph for world population near the end. Most regions haven't reached their population peak yet and subsaharan Africa is still growing strongly. Of course a lot of this is just delayed by higher life expectancies. Aging populations will require major social reforms in our lifet…

People live for 80-100 years, so the population will gradually tick up. But once the very top-heavy global population pyramid begins to die off, things get extremely ugly, extremely quickly. In our lifetimes, we are going to see a horrific amount of elder poverty.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#274

Post by abdullahkhalids »

BurningFrog wrote: post #203
grecy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wow, seeing peak baby is a little scary honestly Are you worried 8 billion is somehow not enough humans?

A big dividing line is between those who think people are a burden vs those who think they're an asset. I've grown convinced people are overwhelmingly an asset. In a rough sense that means they/we produce more value than they consume on average. I think debates about population size are mostly really about this difference.

The key phrase in your problem statement is "more value", which assumes that all value can be projected onto a single axis. Typically [1], this means that you can assign a dollar value to any change in the physical world [2].

The "debate" for many people is whether this simplistic economic model can be used at all. They say that value is multi-dimensional, and those value dimensions are not fungible. Concretely, if making a medicine factory results in the extinction of a specie, you can't say that it is okay, because the benefit of the former is incomparable to the loss of the latter.

Coming to population, more humans mean more destruction of ecosystems. And it is not clear whether destroying ecosystems can be fungibly compared to the additional human economic value those extra humans create. It's not about more or less, it the incomparability of the two.

[1] but not necessarily what you meant

[2] Just to be clear, the economics discipline already has a wealth of research that humans cannot in fact consistently assign absolute or relative dollar values to the same thing. Yet our political-economy and popular conceptions have this as a central assumption.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#275

Post by missedthecue »

Nicholas_C wrote: post #22
iiovemiku wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, seeing peak baby is a little scary honestly. I had always thought that low birth rates were a problem for only countries like Germany, Spain, Japan, etc. (at least for the time being). Seeing countries like India even out (and even going under replacement rate) gives me some heavy pessimism about population graying. I had always thought that heavy swingers like them would carry on the whole growing population th…

Will be very troublesome for countries with low fertility that can’t attract immigrants to keep the population from declining.

Countries like India, all of South East Asia, all of LatAm, a good amount of North Africa... all below replacement and falling fast. Argentina's incoming preschool class in 2024 is 30% smaller than the class of 2020. That's how quickly this is happening.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#276

Post by hi-v-rocknroll »

Recently launched MethaneSAT locates anthropogenic ultra-emitter methane plumes to their sources. CH₄ GWP is ~70 in 20 years.

Satellite images show biggest methane leaks come from Russia and US (2022)

https://archive.ph/eYig4

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-methane-tracker-2022/over...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nord_Stream_pipeline_sabo... (2022, 400k t)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliso_Canyon_gas_leak (2015-2016, 100k t)

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#277

Post by missedthecue »

grecy wrote: post #27
iiovemiku wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, seeing peak baby is a little scary honestly. I had always thought that low birth rates were a problem for only countries like Germany, Spain, Japan, etc. (at least for the time being). Seeing countries like India even out (and even going under replacement rate) gives me some heavy pessimism about population graying. I had always thought that heavy swingers like them would carry on the whole growing population th…

> Wow, seeing peak baby is a little scary honestly Are you worried 8 billion is somehow not enough humans?

People all age at the same rate. 8 billion old people is a very scary prospect indeed. It's honestly shocking we ever talk about anything else.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#278

Post by missedthecue »

nasmorn wrote: post #154
lotsofpulp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Clearly the old people of the future(us) will fight for their pensions in the thunderdome. Which also perfectly explains a lot of the ads I got recently about very muscular old guys

Really, they will fight in the voting booth. Imagine US politics right now, but the boomer generation is 3x as big. That is going to be reality in most democracies in the next 20-40 years.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#279

Post by hi-v-rocknroll »

missedthecue wrote: post #271
faeriechangling wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean Japan hasn't been doing great but it's been doing fine, so I don't think the end of growth has to mean anything but a period of stagnation. The economy will be fine.

In your lifetime, Korea will have more than two 60+ year olds for every working person. They are screwed.

Korea also has a cultural practice of extreme ageism. So much so that the elderly are frequently impoverished to the point of food insecurity and committing suicide by jumping from bridges.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#280

Post by missedthecue »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #178
nonameiguess wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you and your friends men? Unfortunately, the people who truly produce the next generation are largely absent from places like Hacker News, and history seems to show that, once they have any other options, spending 15-30 of their prime years doing the energetic equivalent of 40 consecutive Tour de Frances 9 months out of every 18, while being entirely dependent on a physically larger, stronger person who may or ma…

I find it funny when men talk about having as many kids as possible when they take on 0% of the health risk, have no expectation of quitting their job, and statistically have a low chance of becoming a single parent. Seeing it from the side of a Woman, it's no wonder birth rates are declining.

It definitely makes the policy predictions for how countries are going to deal with this much bleaker. Many countries have tried the carrot for years now. Get ready for them to start using the stick.
Post reply on HN