31–40 of 286 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have an idea of your share of the embodied energy of all the items you use in the course of your life?
To give you an idea, if you have bought a new laptop and phone, that's around another 3000kWh already.
+products, so it will be 5-6k in total. Still not much.
Somewhat tangentially related: I wrote this in a private note to a friend last year. I don't believe this 100%, but the idea is worth exploring in my opinion: 1. Corporations desperately pursue continuous growth, even when they're already profitable, and do so at the expense of the environment, employee welfare and sometimes, the rule of law. 2. Corporations pursue growth because investors demand it. 3. Investors dem…
Give up population growth. This really is key but too often overlooked.
Natural population growth is not occurring in rich countries
Kind of amusing that this idea is posted here on Hacker News, the center of people seeking jobs and companies that are the definition of growth. If you didn’t have growth, you’d all be waiting for your promotion at the power plant when someone dies and frees up a position for you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the "empty" space on the map world is an inhospitable desert. Sahara, Australian Outback, Namib, the Arctic, North American West, Tibet, Kazakhstan, Antarctica, Patagonia. Granted, a few pockets of wild forests left, Amazon, parts of Central Africa, New Guinea, Siberia. Under intense development pressure. Hard to call that "most of the world".
There certainly are ways to live there. Granted, it needs some colonization effort - still easier than colonizing Mars, and actually producing some technologies for that.
PS. Mars colonization is folly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the world is empty: https://geoawesomeness.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/world-... We just need to learn to be efficient.
Most of the "empty" space on the map world is an inhospitable desert. Sahara, Australian Outback, Namib, the Arctic, North American West, Tibet, Kazakhstan, Antarctica, Patagonia. Granted, a few pockets of wild forests left, Amazon, parts of Central Africa, New Guinea, Siberia. Under intense development pressure. Hard to call that "most of the world".
Southern California is an inhospitable desert, but tens of millions of people live there nonetheless.
Give up population growth. This really is key but too often overlooked.
Somewhat tangentially related: I wrote this in a private note to a friend last year. I don't believe this 100%, but the idea is worth exploring in my opinion: 1. Corporations desperately pursue continuous growth, even when they're already profitable, and do so at the expense of the environment, employee welfare and sometimes, the rule of law. 2. Corporations pursue growth because investors demand it. 3. Investors dem…
They are all absolute statements, but I don't believe they're true most of the time.
1. I think most corporations are small companies
2. Microsoft didn't grow for almost a decade. Then they tippled in size. Are you suggesting that Microsoft didn't grow for a decade because investors didn't demand it, but were ready to triple in size whenever their investors showed up and demanded it?
3. This is true of any investment and not just true for professional investors.
4. This is true of everyone.
5. Most corporations pursuing continuous growth is a fallacy. The competition you describe is called Capitalism and it has many benefits. Not least of which are lower costs and better products/services for the consumer.
6. I disagree with the premise so I disagree with the conclusion.
7. Capitalism can amplify greed and greed can lead to acting immorally, which is bad, but I maintain this is rare.
8. I've been toying with the idea of the benefits of curving inflation in my mind. You're going to have to define what 'social justice' is and what restoring it looks like.
The argument is based on looking a the world as a whole. In developed world energy intensity of GDP is decreasing even when you take into account imports. Post-industrial economies can grow while decreasing energy use. What the author is suggesting is that the developing world should stop growing. I can't agree with that. They need their electricity and washing machines. GDP per unit of energy use (constant 2011 PPP…
Somewhat tangentially related: I wrote this in a private note to a friend last year. I don't believe this 100%, but the idea is worth exploring in my opinion: 1. Corporations desperately pursue continuous growth, even when they're already profitable, and do so at the expense of the environment, employee welfare and sometimes, the rule of law. 2. Corporations pursue growth because investors demand it. 3. Investors dem…
I've long been of the opinion that the public trading of companies is directly responsible for much of the social injustice we see in the West. As soon as there's a fiduciary duty to maximise ROI, morals go out the window. If you as an officer resist, the collective of shareholders will replace you with someone who will make more money. There's a dissolution of responsibility that comes with the distributed nature of…