Even though you're grossly exaggerating what I've said in the comment, I'm still going to answer with a rhetorical question:

What good is all that shit if the price for that is the suffering and death of our children and eventual end of our species ?

This is what the article is really about. ...

My perspective comes from the summers spent with my grandparents - in the village where life was as it has been for thousands of years. They produced no garbage, they breathed clean air and drank clean water. Did they suffer ? Yes of course, from time to time, that's how it's always been.

Frankly, with all our advanced technology, knowledge, medicine, I think we are a lot more unhappier as a whole - you said it yourself, "my blood boils" - and for what ?

Anyway, I think you're angry at the wrong person, because I think we can have both magic and sustainability - if we just change our philosophy. We can look at the last 100 years or so as a 'growth spurt' for humanity - we had to break eggs to make an omelet; now it's time to get back into shape.

Use the best of magic and our ability to create new one and integrate it into a sustainable system, which treats nature as an organism and not as 'resources' and we might be able to survive it.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a time in history when life was better than it is today. And if you did find one, it would be so long ago than population levels were a fragment of what they are now.

We can't go back. Get that idea out of your head. The question is how can we steer the ship.

That's nice and dandy but what good is it if we can only sustain that maybe another 50 years if we're lucky?

Of course, the industrial revolution was a force of economic pressure, not a decision the world came together and decided on in unity.

So to prevent the industrial revolution would have required a suppression of freedom and property rights unlike has ever existed in history. On a world scale.

You mean how we can fix the leaks.

Thinking that organising a worldwide migration to another planet is going to be a practical option is as absurd as thinking that moving back to a pre-industrial society is.

"May you live in interesting times."

Seriously, get a grip and stop being self-absorbed. Read history before you long for something you've never actually truly experienced!

Leaving aside your silly anger about "hippie bullshit" (really?) and regardless of our history of "competing, losing, getting ahead", what would you propose? Are we just going to brace for pain, and then compete over diminishing ressources?

Consider: all of environment protection legislation that we take for granted now was once "hippie bullshit".

No, all the environmental damage we now defend and wish we could take for granted was once, and remains, valid science. Bio-time, bio-space, and the folding and unfolding of DNA across the ages are in fact hippie bullshit.

[1]http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richa...

In part; I think environmental policies and technologies are very strongly influenced by economics and capitalism. I mean they managed to monetize CO2 emissions via emission rights. It's making money out of vapor. There's probably a few people getting very rich off of the emission rights market.

The other one is alternative energy sources. Solar panels are a good example; they're expensive, have a limited lifespan (10-15 years), and yet provide a huge amount of goodwill and feel-good. There's a lot of people getting very rich off of a product that, in the end, is not actually sustainable and does little to nothing to alleviate the emissions problem - not when the production of a solar panel costs more energy than it'll generate during its lifetime.

I'd argue the only environmental protection stuff that is still primarily motivated by hippie bullshit is things like the ban on whaling and the conservation of nature areas. Neither of which has much of an impact on the environment, unless it's on a huge scale (like idk, spanning all of the Amazon plus all of the deforested areas of the past fifty years).

That is no longer true [1].

[1] http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/april/pv-net-energy-04021...

No, it's making money out of the process of assigning a limited resource to the most economically efficient use.

...not when the production of a solar panel costs more energy than it'll generate during its lifetime.

This is just rubbish. The embodied energy payback period of solar PV was already under 4 years a decade ago.

Your argument makes it sound like most people actually have an option to participate in progress or not (they don't realistically) or that the people making the decisions on tradeoffs are doing so in a rational way that benefits everyone. (They aren't.)

If you view progress as some kind of struggle of the species, like a force of nature, then yes it is indeed grand. If you view progress in the light of power struggle between factions in the species, then most progress actually benefits very few people.

I mean, despite the fact that people have known that plumbing is awesome for several thousand years most people still defecate in a hole in the ground.

I get it. That "captain-planet-mother-gaia" bullshit gets on my nerves too. But so does "economics is a science like physics". While the former is obnoxious, the latter is dangerous.

It would be if the gains were on the level that would justify the adoption of whatever was/is proposed. Give me any tech, green or not, with 10x improvement on what currently exist and I can bet you anything that no amount of capital or vested interest will be able to oppose it - there are exceptions ofc but I would argue that those are far from the norm (if they weren't no progress would ever take place which we know is not true).

>If you view progress as some kind of struggle of the species, like a force of nature, then yes it is indeed grand.

I believe indeed in this former view you describe here. We could argue which of the two views you present is more true than the other, but I think there is plenty that speaks for both. I choose to believe in this version as long as there is evidence to support it.

> But so does "economics is a science like physics". While the former is obnoxious, the latter is dangerous.

I could not agree more. In fact, I think you are the kind of guy who I could sit with and talk to for hours and we'd get somewhere. I don't believe economics is like physics. In fact, I believe economics, like politics, are more like religion. Case and point being the clusterfuck that is the rule of Keynesian economics for the past 80 years or so.

When I say economics I refer to the rational human ability to understand trade-offs. Not all agents are equally capable of it and not all care as much. But, with that said, it does not take a genius to understand what I wrote above (which you originally replied to).

I firmly believe that most of these hippie green suckers wouldn't want to live in the world they themselves describe as ideal. I think they vastly underestimate the prices of things and how much of their living standard is dependent on energy as a whole. It is short-sightedness that pisses me off. You see people complain about living cost being too high in one thread and later on see the same person talk about how we should be greener regardless of cost. This cognitive dissonance buggs me to no end...

Being able to see the trade-offs beyond what is in front of you is what, in my book, classifies as economics. Perhaps I should have been clearer in my definition. But I hope that this clarifies to you where I stand on the matter!

Despite the fact that I'm about as liberal as a person can get, my problem with the fossil fuel argument is that places like New York state ban fracking but buy natural gas from Texas and Louisiana. So it's OK for us to screw up our environment, but it's not OK in their back yard. Louisiana is so captured by the energy companies that its one of, if not the most, polluted states in the country. New Yorkers get to make money off of energy, use the energy, and complain about how its produced? Fuck that in the ear.

The thing that bothers me the most, though, is the way that we (meaning the democratically elected government) can't use the levers of power to force the massive economic engines that are the energy companies to finance the shift to other technologies. Like a sovereign wealth fund, or something like that. The way it works now, the people fund research and give tax breaks to companies in lots of sectors that are then allowed to privatize the profits that get generated from that investment. Why can't we get part of the profits? Instead of fighting over taxes, it should be viewed as actual ownership and return on investment.

I know that the idea would make a lot of libertarians throw up in their mouth, but I don't think that you can really ever keep government out of markets. It makes the markets. If it operated from an ownership perspective then it can use that ownership to make the public's concerns a real fiduciary issue. It's already picking and choosing winners and losers. It always has. The question, at least as it seems to me, is on whose behalf is the government going to intervene? It's going to intervene. Should that be only to benefit the wealthiest, or is there a way that we can force the markets to honor democratic will without completely screwing it up. I don't know, but I can say this. I don't believe in business anymore as a means to solve any problem. Over the course of my life I have only seen business prove time and time again that short sighted, short term, growth is more important than any other factor.

Even with the way that government has colluded with business to help create the situation we are in, at least government has even notionally democratic institutions while business are inherently un-democratic. I'm not a shareholder of Exon by birth, although I am an American.

I don't know. I'm not optimistic. I do agree with you though about the faux hippie thing. That kind of woo woo BS ends the conversation just as fast as saying "Jesus will fix it".

This guy gets it; he's laffin.

"We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath - a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

We want to hymn the man at the wheel, who hurls the lance of his spirit across the Earth, along the circle of its orbit.

We will sing of the vibrant nightly fervour of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.

Look at us! We are still untired! Our hearts know no weariness because they are fed with fire, hatred, and speed!... Does that amaze you? It should, because you can never remember having lived! Erect on the summit of the world, once again we hurl our defiance at the stars!"

(Which is where we should head, by the way, before our lease here expires.)

Either you believe that we are not heading to a near extinction-level event, that we will prevent it before it happens, or that such an event is a fair price to pay for enjoying a century of computers and iphones.

The first option seems blind, the second baseless optimism, and the 3rd... I don't really know what to say. Is there a 4th?

I have seen predictions expecting mass forced migrations, decrease in sustainable population, etc; but unless you're literally expecting the vast majority of the worldwide population to die, it's not an extinction-level event, it's not near extinction-level event, it's an entirely different ballpark.

It might be a horrible catastrophe, it might change civilization as we know it, that's for sure, but there's really no valid reason to mention the term of extinction in this context. There are some risks/potential events that have a (low) chance of threatening extinction, but the expected climate change is not one of them.

It is debatable how close we have been, during various past crisis, to an actual large-scale nuclear conflict. I don't think we can deny our raw capability to cause a near-extinction-level with our existing technology (nuclear, biological or otherwise). Our political and military ecosystems, flawed as they may be, have kept that capability in check.

But would such a "horrible catastrophe" stress that ecosystem way past the point where it will remain confidently under control? Absolutely yes, I believe that beyond any reasonable doubt.

With our global structure out of control, is there is a significant probability for that destructive capability to be put into action? Absolutely yes, I believe that probability to be significant, beyond any reasonable doubt. I don't see how it can't be otherwise.

* climate change may lead to a "horrible catastrophe" of unknown substance with probability A

* this "horrible catastrophe" may lead to a nuclear war with probability B

* the nuclear war may lead to humanity's extinction with probability C

* you are claiming that A * B * C is very close to 1

If that's right, I call bullshit. There is a ton of potential triggers for nuclear war besides climate change, we didn't have one yet and I can't see why climate change should be the biggest concern in this regard. Moreover, nuclear war is hardly an existential threat to humanity and may even cool the planet a bit.

It would be horrible, it would be comparable to the largest mass killings of 20th century, but it wouldn't be anything that different from what we have survived in the past and it wouldn't be a "near extinction event". "Just" a horrible catastrophe.

yea, just toss an opinion aside as blind because you don't like it. That will get people listening to your point of view!

But you anger makes no sense: your world view is winning. Opinions like the one you replied to are definitely in the minority.

People value their iPhones and disney cruises way more than the natural environment.

This is a emotional statement rather than a practical one. I think you'd probably get people to give those up if it would have a measurable, provable impact that wasn't 200 or 300 years in a possible future. The real bulk of emissions are caused by the everyday use of things that make modern life and the current population levels possible. Giving up an iPhone is one thing giving up electricity, transport, sanitation, modern farming, refrigeration, climate control, and sending countless billions into abject poverty while causing a few billion more to starve is a politically untenable position.

I believe few people actually truly hold these beliefs as suicides among environmentalists don't seem to be abnormally common and yet it is probably the most carbon friendly course of action possible. The idea seems to be that someone else should do without and that someone else is typically the working poor and middle class families at home and the majority of the world that lives in poverty abroad.

Yes, they do. It's just that destroying the planet and letting the future generations suffer for a more comfortable and convenient life right now is not a trade that they are willing to make.

source?

Groundwater depletion: https://water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html

Antibiotic resistance: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23231044-000-antibiot...

Shall I go on?

Humanity faced a lot of problems in the past. Let me remind you just a few:

* multiple plagues decimating European population

* wheat rust (and unpredictable famines ensuing)

* guano depletion

However, we engineered our way out of them. I can't see why the problems you've listed are any different.

Plagues could still happen again. We know more about how they occur and how to contain them, but we don't have any magic bullet against all future plagues that will occur.

Rust is still a problem. I'm not sure why you think it isn't. We have more resistant lines and fungicides but the rust is adapting rapidly.

The difference is, apart from maybe the guano depletion, none of the problems you list of the past were due to human actively making things worse. All of the problems I listed are due to action right now that will cause major problems in the future.

https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels/dp/1591847443

Which gadget do you feel is worth that?

People are very bad at estimating the probability of catastrophic events. We base our estimates on things that have happened in the past, but that doesn't help predict things that have never happened before. Hundreds of millions of years of pent up carbon have never been released into the atmosphere over the course of a couple centuries before. It is hubris to the point of suicidal to think anyone can predict the effect it will have on a complex, nonlinear system like the global climate.

Sure, maybe it will be fine. But the burden of proof should be on the people claiming that it's going to be fine, not on those recommending caution before screwing with something we don't understand.

The gamble we're making is that we're smart enough to survive in the most dire conditions.

That's a stupid gamble, but we might win. Plus we're on a roll so far.

Earth is just a bootstrap.

All of that said, I'm not arguing against pursuing actions to protect the environment. Just pointing out that "preventing the extermination of the human race" really isn't a terribly good justification for doing so when you look at the big picture.

If you accept that premise, the question then becomes: "what are the good arguments for pursuing actions to protect the environment / reverse climate change?" That is, what arguments will persuade people to care about protecting the environment for future generations that don't exist yet, in a time beyond their own limited lifespan?

The iPhones and Supermarkets are of the dream reality.

A world without consequences, where the Foxconn Factory Workers (or the mines of Congo) do not exist.

And yes, I would definetly say it's a problem if workers in a factory can not afford the goods the factory produces.

Even if the factory is producing high end sports cars or precision engineered industrial machinery?

For that matter I doubt even the CEO of Boeing could afford most of the 'goods' made in his factories.

The CEO of Boeing can probably still afford to take a flight on a plane made by his company, and that probably is true of an average worker of a Boeing factory as well.

So let me rephrase: if people working in a factory can only afford the very basic necessities and the actual goods the factory produces get shipped to the other side of the globe (and waste gets left behind), something is not right.

I mean I kind of get the point you are trying to make, but Foxconn and iPhones aren't really a good example of that.

I'll bite. What's the dream reality?

So, while some aspects of what we know from neuroscience and modern medicine map pretty closely to some eastern practices, those practices are embedded in superstitious religions that are no different from their counterparts in other regions.

The real goal is to procreate. There is no soul or divinity or whatever. While we can say that yes to a degree the world as experienced by my brain is like the concept of Maya and the synthesis of my inputs into consciousness are my subjective reality, that's really it. You can't get from there to "the real goal is to see the perfection of things".

The practices of meditation, visualization, etc do have benefits but they don't have to be rooted in the mysticism that spawned them. In fact, that's one of the things I like about zen. it rejects those notions because of the way that people assign baggage to them and start to worship the baggage instead of doing "the thing".