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Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

politico.eu

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

#81

Post by carlosjobim »

boringg wrote: post #5
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.

They already destroyed all of their forest natural resources a long time ago. Maybe they are trying to warn north america of their own mistakes.

Northern Europe has been completely reforested, and has a forest cover which is larger than ever before. Because of the switch from wood heating to electric heating. Forest products remain one of the largest exports.

As for central Europe, yes they need to reforest their own countries before they go flying all around the world screaming about the Amazon, while drinking the finest champagne.

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

#82

Post by h2zizzle »

Arubis wrote: post #36
selectodude wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We stopped deforesting the US in 1920. We have more forest here than we did 100 years ago.

We do in terms of acreage. A lot of that is reclaimed farmland. Old-growth hardwoods are still down overall, and will remain so; that can take multiple hundreds of years to recover, since cleared forests regrow in phases.

Right. And tree coverage is not the be-all-end-all. My family visited the plantation where a few of our ancestors were enslaved; it had been turned into a state-run forest preserve (partly as a bid for the prior owners to hide the extent of the operation). Unfortunately, the farming practices employed back then have scarred the land; near where one of the slave cabins had stood, we were shown a large anthropogenic ravine that had been created by farming-related soil erosion. These places aren't quite the same forests as they were before European settling.

There's also the case of the near-loss of the American Chestnut.

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

#83

Post by JoelMcCracken »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #77
kruffalon wrote: post #72

It would be nice if this meant anything. My old cynic, grumpy mind can't see this as anything but virtue signaling. I would be overjoyed to be wrong. One corner stone of the EU is the 4 freedoms[0] that among other things denies public institutions the ability to look at anything besides the monetary cost when deciding who to contract for anything. And as JIT[1] no longer only applies to goods but also to people noon…

You know? These days I actually prefer virtue signalling to the trend of not having any virtues at all and being proud of it.

I do think there are absolutely instances of people virtue signaling.

But, after observing society over the last few years, I've come to think that people who _whine_ about virtue signaling are so full of vice that they cannot possibly believe someone _else_ isn't also as base as they are.

Its all such a shame. It seems like society has no ability to have reasonable, sensible conversation. I really wonder how the enlightenment even _happened_.

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

#84

Post by delegate »

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 stopped for a quick chat when they met on the street.

Now compare with life in a big modern city.

I design complicated distributed systems using AI in order to provide shelter and food for myself. Those are tools which other people use to achieve their goal of providing shelter and food for themselves.

Tons of cars, the air is polluted, constant noise, fake bling, restaurants selling food at 20x price, stressed, depressed, lonely people. Each in their own digital rabbit hole on their phones all the time. Smiles for money only.

I'm really struggling to understand what we've grown into and why this rat race is considered 'better' than what people have had for millennia without destroying nature in the process.

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

#85

Post by lstodd »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #77
kruffalon wrote: post #72

It would be nice if this meant anything. My old cynic, grumpy mind can't see this as anything but virtue signaling. I would be overjoyed to be wrong. One corner stone of the EU is the 4 freedoms[0] that among other things denies public institutions the ability to look at anything besides the monetary cost when deciding who to contract for anything. And as JIT[1] no longer only applies to goods but also to people noon…

You know? These days I actually prefer virtue signalling to the trend of not having any virtues at all and being proud of it.

At least accepting that one lacks virtue is intellectually honest and saves resources otherwise wasted on deceitful proclamations of nonexistent and imaginary virtues. It's not like anything was meant to be done either way.

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

#86

Post by pfdietz »

projektfu wrote: post #73
pfdietz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when LtG came out, there was a study of the limits imposed by resource availability. The conclusion was that, to first approximation, the only resource that we had to worry about was energy. Fossil fuels would have to go, but everything else was either available in effectively unlimited amounts or could be substituted with things that were. An example of the latter was mercury -- effectively all previous uses ha…

When is the world population expected to decline? Or are you talking about a specific country?

I'm talking about the entire world.

Almost everywhere, the total fertility rate is well below replacement (which is around 2.1). UN estimates that say global population will peak around 2084; they assume global TFR increases back to 1.6, but there is no evidence for this assumption, so global population will likely peak sooner. Every first world country will be in population decline by 2050; some already are.

There's something about global civilization that's acting like a kind of human pesticide. People just aren't having kids, and this is getting worse, not better.

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

#87

Post by therealwhytry »

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…

simple, boomer brain rot subsidized for the last 50 years via currency debasement that leads our "leaders" to feel it is the only path forward.

that is probably an easy path forward in their mind, as they are on death's door holding the ladder they pulled up behind them.

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

#88

Post by disconcision »

Aurornis wrote: post #59
canadiantim wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or biology class to learn that resources grow linearly (arithmetically) but populations grow geometrically (exponentially). So it is possible for everyone to grow exponentially, it's just not sustainable and generally leads to mass famine, disease or war.

Yet population growth is slowing while our access to resources is growing rapidly. Human population growth is not exponential. That’s so obvious that it’s hard to take anything about this argument seriously. Biology isn’t a good proxy for society-scale economic changes.

we had nearly 2 centuries of roughly exponential growth. ended in the 60s but not everyone got the memo

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

#89

Post by modeless »

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 lifestyle you describe is very cheap and you can certainly afford it, if you wanted. There are plenty of rural small towns you could choose from. Why not do it if it's what you think you want?

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

#90

Post by yoyohello13 »

lstodd wrote: post #85
yoyohello13 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know? These days I actually prefer virtue signalling to the trend of not having any virtues at all and being proud of it.

At least accepting that one lacks virtue is intellectually honest and saves resources otherwise wasted on deceitful proclamations of nonexistent and imaginary virtues. It's not like anything was meant to be done either way.

Pretending to be good at least may influence/shame other people in to actually being good. When everyone is just rolling around in the muck there is no incentive to be better.
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