Re:London's Thames, once biologically dead, has been coming ...
by Dylan16807 on Friday November 12, 2021 @04:19PM
(#29204660)
Talking about "scaling up" seems like a very misguided definition of sustainable to me.
Maybe if it was more like "if everyone in similar circumstances lived this kind of lifestyle".
If a forest can safely supply 1000 trees a year, and a certain lifestyle has 300 people depend on that forest and each use two trees per year, then that's sustainable. It doesn't matter that 3000 people per forest wouldn't work. And if a million people all live this way, then they're splitting three thousand forests, so that's fine too.
It's not reasonable to worry about infinite population density, because then nothing is sustainable. And prehistoric practices weren't using up fossil fuels; trees grow back if you let them.
Though even the sustainability of gas is more complicated than "it's not". As far as CO2 goes, there is an amount that could be safely released per year. And if we were at that level, oil reserves would last a long time.
Maybe if it was more like "if everyone in similar circumstances lived this kind of lifestyle".
If a forest can safely supply 1000 trees a year, and a certain lifestyle has 300 people depend on that forest and each use two trees per year, then that's sustainable. It doesn't matter that 3000 people per forest wouldn't work. And if a million people all live this way, then they're splitting three thousand forests, so that's fine too.
It's not reasonable to worry about infinite population density, because then nothing is sustainable. And prehistoric practices weren't using up fossil fuels; trees grow back if you let them.
Though even the sustainability of gas is more complicated than "it's not". As far as CO2 goes, there is an amount that could be safely released per year. And if we were at that level, oil reserves would last a long time.