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The world has probably passed peak pollution

sustainabilitybynumbers.com

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Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#351

Post by adrianN »

bamboozled wrote: post #343
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has domestic coal reserves, so they build coal. It's the same reason as West Virginia and just as bad. If you have any amount of energy storage then the time delay doesn't matter. You turn on the alternate generation method when the storage is starting to run down. It doesn't matter if it takes an hour to come up to temperature because you still have two hours of storage left. The actual problem is that "shortf…

This is what makes me think it’s all a lie. It makes no economic sense to use coal as a “backup”?

If you don't want to be dependent on foreign gas (in case you want to invade a neighbor for example) and you have coal at home it makes a lot of sense.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#352

Post by adrianN »

Kailhus wrote: post #329
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has domestic coal reserves, so they build coal. It's the same reason as West Virginia and just as bad. If you have any amount of energy storage then the time delay doesn't matter. You turn on the alternate generation method when the storage is starting to run down. It doesn't matter if it takes an hour to come up to temperature because you still have two hours of storage left. The actual problem is that "shortf…

Let’s hope their renewable strategy works out because they’d otherwise be burning a lot of coal

They're building more renewable capacity than anybody else. I'd say they have a fair chance of succeeding.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#353

Post by adrianN »

nostrademons wrote: post #321
svnt wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll have to provide a lot more context for this to be believable. Maybe it is an unrealistic goal for animals who aren’t interested in having a stable global population.

It follows naturally from differential equations that describe population: dPop / dt = fertility rate * pop (birth rate) - deaths Note the "current population" factor in that. As long as the number of births depends on the current population (i.e. anyone has a chance to give birth), this equation will result in an exponential curve. If the fertility rate is greater than replacement rate (that "deaths" term that I've…

Luckily there are many fertility rates that are indistinguishable from "stable population" over a span of a couple generations, say 100 years or so. That means there is plenty of time for policy shifts to incentivize or disincentivize having children.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#354

Post by adrianN »

jandrese wrote: post #257
faeriechangling wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shrinking population is fine, this planet has its limits. A rapidly shrinking population is not ideal.

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.

Moving to orbital colonies won't save you in the long term if growth remains exponential. You can expand at most in a sphere growing at the speed of light so at O(t^3). Eventually the O(c^t) population growth will outpace the rate of expansion.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#355

Post by missedthecue »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #341
missedthecue wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't just the total number, it's the demography. The population is getting very old at a breakneck speed. I'm not sure how healthcare and pensions are supposed to be provided for old people when the tax base gets smaller and smaller every year. The end result is pretty terrible elder poverty. Not to mention the changing political dynamics of having a lot of old people outnumber younger people by 2 or 3 tim…

> The population is getting very old at a breakneck speed. https://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/united... Looks fine to me. What's your definition of "old" here? Are you specifically worried about Korea like you mentioned in another post? I'd worry about the implications of a global 1.6 birthrate if they were actually going to happen. I don't think that's very likely, though. I don't know if we're ev…

Since the mid 1980s, the median age in Italy has gone from 34 to 46 and the trend is accelerating. This is despite massive immigration. Expect this to happen everywhere in the next 40 years. India and China are already below replacement. All of LatAm, Europe, and South East Asia as well.

Unless someone thinks of a democratic, scalable solution it's going to be a lot of pain for a lot of people for a long time.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#356

Post by xeornet »

xeornet wrote: post #138
ISL wrote: post #88

We may not yet have had the war that ends all wars. Whenever I think about protecting the environment, I think about preventing the catastrophes that are wars.

It would seem politicians, especially in the West do not care at all about that concern.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/four-western-provocations-le...

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#357

Post by xeornet »

zizee wrote: post #146
xeornet wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would seem politicians, especially in the West do not care at all about that concern.

Especially in the west?

The war in Ukraine was created by the US/Nato. It's incredibly naive to assume that Russia was the sole malicious actor here. I wonder how we would react if the soviet union was tipped to expand into Mexico.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/four-western-provocations-le...

That being said, this is the wrong forum for this both in terms of audience and topic. Awaiting the mass downvotes for an argument that holds merit but is difficult to swallow for the US public.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#358

Post by illiac786 »

akira2501 wrote: post #281
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.

> will actually _decrease_ going forward. The ratio of (pollution/living person) will decrease. Unless you want to start unaliving people then this is a fixed fact of the world we live on.

You mean “emission of pollutants”. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere for example will continue to increase at a slightly lower speed.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#359

Post by illiac786 »

consf wrote: post #301
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.

The idea of having passed peak pollution could suggest that we are beginning to see positive changes...

Agree, but it’s like hurling toward a brick wall at 100mph instead of previously 110mph and saying “we’ve reached peak risk”. Sounds a lot better than “we’re braking but currently we are still going to hit the wall and life expectancy of passengers still currently is measured in second”, but what we need is to push people to brake more, not sugar coat the situation.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#360

Post by dragonwriter »

xeornet wrote: post #357
zizee wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially in the west?

The war in Ukraine was created by the US/Nato. It's incredibly naive to assume that Russia was the sole malicious actor here. I wonder how we would react if the soviet union was tipped to expand into Mexico. https://www.cato.org/commentary/four-western-provocations-le... That being said, this is the wrong forum for this both in terms of audience and topic. Awaiting the mass downvotes for an argument that holds merit…

> The war in Ukraine was created by the US/Nato.

No, it was created by the Russian Federation invading Ukraine in 2014.

It was exacerbated by the Russian Federation launching a larger scale, broader invasion in 2022.

> It’s incredibly naive to assume that Russia was the sole malicious actor here.

Whether or not there is some standard by which some other actor is “malicious”, Russia is, in fact, the aggressor in the war.

> I wonder how we would react if the soviet union was tipped to expand into Mexico.

Mostly wondering where the Soviet Union hid out for the last 33 years.

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