[Luis Dias]

Now if you originally meant to say that you are scared of geo-ingineering [sic]

What really annoys me in this passage is that you speak as if the conversation isn't stored up here for everyone to follow. If you take the actual effort of reading what I said and in what context, you'll realise it's ****ing obvious I was referring to Mongoose's geoengineering comment. So please bear in mind that conversations are pretty useless if "reading" isn't taking place?

Also, the analogy between "smoking addictions" and fossil fuels is absolutely asinine. If you stop smoking, your body doesn't enter in a coma, which is what would happen if you were to cut off any co2 emmissions. Smoking is a practice made for pleasure, while we emit CO2 in every major most important functions of our economy,  circulation, energy, food industry, etc. To paint "co2 emmissions" as being something of an "addiction" like "smoking" is severely underestimating the ordeal of cutting "the addiction", while also painting the civilization with a misanthropic obnoxious color (we don't even have the guts to stop our addictions!).

Lowering emissions is almost impossible at this point. While some efficiency may drive lower emissions in the developed world, the developing world is skyrocketing their own emissions, and due to their lower efficiency and higher population numbers, soon their emissions will dwarf anything the developed world emits (let alone "cuts"). To ask them to stop emitting would mean leaving them impoverished, good luck with that.

[Aardwolf]

If everyone consumed less, emissions would decrease.

Impoverished... so like if a bunch of industrial jobs dried up... bleh. Maybe they'd be better off with a total economic collapse. You don't need money to get food, water, and shelter¹... maybe you need money for decent medical care, but... bleh.

BLEH


¹Talking about living off the land, not 4-finger discount

[Grizzly]

To ask them to stop emitting would mean leaving them impoverished, good luck with that.

Why not cut straight from the fossil fuel burning crap to alternatives which are far less reliant on natural resources? More profit for the whole world in the long run.
Short run too.

[The E]

Why not cut straight from the fossil fuel burning crap to alternatives which are far less reliant on natural resources? More profit for the whole world in the long run.
Short run too.

This is a complex issue, but basically, it boils down to "No, not really, and not for the whole world".
See, the thing is, the cleaner, more efficient tech we're used to is only available from western producers. So a developing country can either stick to simple, if unclean, tools and get their economy going, or they can go into debt to first world countries in order to get tech they can't really service. Guess what, taking up credit is not exactly something that these people want to do, and getting told by the first world that no, they aren't allowed to bootstrap themselves to modernity using the tried and tested methods is also not exactly endearing.

[jr2]

Time to fire up Powolskis Nucular Reactor.

[Luis Dias]

To ask them to stop emitting would mean leaving them impoverished, good luck with that.

Why not cut straight from the fossil fuel burning crap to alternatives which are far less reliant on natural resources? More profit for the whole world in the long run.
Short run too.

There's a slim hope that if solar (+storage) continues its skyrocketing progress then it will be something that can be used by developing countries. Probably the best hope we have, that and nuclear.

[Aardwolf]

I feel ignored/unappreciated

Seriously, what's so bad about letting development stagnate?

[Scotty]

I feel ignored/unappreciated

Seriously, what's so bad about letting development stagnate?

I'm trying to think of a way to answer this that isn't condescending, but I can't.

[Mongoose]

Life without the Internets and vidya games isn't even worth living as far as I'm concerned.

[Luis Dias]

I feel ignored/unappreciated

Seriously, what's so bad about letting development stagnate?

Believe me, ignored and unappreciated is way better than the alternative. Your comment was not unseen. Fortunately, I can forget it.

[Aardwolf]

Ok, let me try an example:

If development stagnates, jobs will dry up. Unemployed people will run out of money and not be able to afford things like food, medicine, or shelter.

See? Easy. Not condescending at all. Then I could respond with something like this:

But people had food, medicine, and shelter before those jobs existed, and the population increase that has occurred during the current period of rapid development is not large enough to rule out returning to the means they used beforehand.

But if you start with these "I can't think of a reply that isn't condescending" charades, it doesn't work.

[General Battuta]

People actually didn't have food, medicine, and shelter at a modern standard before these jobs existed, so your whole chain of logic breaks down. Famine and pandemic were defining aspects of historical life. The 20th century saw some of the worst famines in history triggered by attempts to forcibly realign economic structures.

You're neglecting the fact that economic improvement isn't simply about more money. It's actually about real increases in productivity. And much of what's produced is vital for sustaining a decent standard of living. This fact is so basic that I can't blame people for being shocked you'd neglect it, and worse yet is the ramification: that you would prefer to see most of the world return to the era of routine mass death in order to maintain modernity in your own piece of the Earth.

[Aardwolf]

The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.

s/white man/capitalism

and worse yet is the ramification: that you would prefer to see most of the world return to the era of routine mass death in order to maintain modernity in your own piece of the Earth.

If your premises have led you to an absurd conclusion, e.g. that Aardwolf is a colossal dick (see quote above), you should probably reëxamine those premises, e.g. stagnation¹ must always lead to poverty, famine, etc..



¹Stagnation, the cessation of growth. The world economy cannot expand indefinitely.

[General Battuta]

If you continue to push an absurd argument that makes you look like a colossal dick, perhaps you should reexamine your argument. Let me quote you directly: you advocated returning to the means they used beforehand.

Most of the economic growth we experienced in the last century was due to increased productivity per unit input. We had to spend fewer units of labor, resources, and land to get a given output. If we rolled that back - let's say fifty years - we would be looking at a massive decrease in productivity per unit input. We would need to use vastly more resources to maintain exactly the output we have now. Or we would need to step our output down: and that includes the very output used to distribute necessary resources, which we are already not doing very well at.

You are advocating for a collapse in productivity per unit input: in other words, a return to the time in which we had to work much harder to feed, heal, and shelter a given number of people. You are advocating for a return to famine, pandemic, and demographic disaster.

Let's say that instead you advocate for a freeze on productivity. Freezing development exactly where it stands - with the developing world lagging in life expectancy, per capita income, available education, happiness, and every other population metric of real interest to assessing human suffering - would maintain a broken status quo (which is cause enough to indict your agenda). In fact, it would exacerbate that unjust status quo, because it would prevent the developing world from creating and reinvesting capital.

Your fundamental mistake seems to be the belief that economic development is a process of increasing resource input. Development is about getting more out of a given volume of resources. Civilization was only able to break out of the Malthusian trap when economic growth was able to boom ahead of population growth. This was the key to demographic transition and to massive quality-of-life improvement.

Let me restate this as succinctly as I can:

By advocating stagnation in the developing world, you are calling for the termination of improvements to public health, food supply, sanitation, and education. Without this kind of capital development, societal equilibriums will be maintained by pure Malthusian limits - in other words, by the population slamming up against the subsistence cap and dying to equilibrium.

And your basic fear of unsustainable infinite expansion is baseless. The world's population will not expand indefinitely. This is the key to sustainability, not shackling ourselves to a Malthusian trap - and the way to a stable population is not backwards, it's forwards.

(all of this without touching on the massive additional problem of what would happen after imposed stagnation - )

[General Battuta]

Maybe this is the simplest example that can drive the point home:

A steady-state resource economy, one which extracts resources only as fast as they are replaced, can still experience economic growth. Resources can be used to develop ways to better use resources.

A resource economy that pulls resources less quickly than they are replaced can still experience economic growth.

The key is in increasing factor productivity. And over the past century, increased factor productivity has been responsible for the lion's share of growth, not increased resource use.

[666maslo666]

¹Stagnation, the cessation of growth. The world economy cannot expand indefinitely.

First, economy can grow also based on increased efficiency, technological progress etc. Even if our CO2 emissions stagnated, economic growth would be slower but it would continue for a long time to come, perhaps even indefinitely. Economic growth is not inherently bad for the Earth. Unsustainable economic growth may be.

People in the past did not have abundant access to food, shelter and medicine like we do. Many people in the present still dont. Maybe you can make an argument that wealthy nations should prioritise sustainability over economic growth (and we already do so to some degree, CO2 emmisions per capita or GDP or total are stagnant). But many third world people cannot afford this luxury. And it would be very unethical to ask them to do so.

[Grizzly]

(and we already do so to some degree, CO2 emmisions per capita or GDP or total are stagnant)

I am afraid that this temporary dip had only something to do with the economic depression and not with a call for increased effeciency.

[666maslo666]

(and we already do so to some degree, CO2 emmisions per capita or GDP or total are stagnant)

I am afraid that this temporary dip had only something to do with the economic depression and not with a call for increased effeciency.

When it comes to developed nations, CO2 emissions are stagnant for decades, ever since 70s. It is not due to economic depression.

[Luis Dias]

(and we already do so to some degree, CO2 emmisions per capita or GDP or total are stagnant)

I am afraid that this temporary dip had only something to do with the economic depression and not with a call for increased effeciency.

Curiously, the biggest drop in CO2 emissions for the past 30 years were not due to the depression but due to the gas fracking revolution, the one which the greens are having aneurisms for. But that's the greens for you, always against anything remotely new that can disturb the status quo.

[AdmiralRalwood]

(and we already do so to some degree, CO2 emmisions per capita or GDP or total are stagnant)

I am afraid that this temporary dip had only something to do with the economic depression and not with a call for increased effeciency.

Curiously, the biggest drop in CO2 emissions for the past 30 years were not due to the depression but due to the gas fracking revolution, the one which the greens are having aneurisms for. But that's the greens for you, always against anything remotely new that can disturb the status quo.

Yes, I'm sure that's the opposition to fracking; the fact that it changes the status quo.