- Livestock farming: Methane is produced during the digestive process of ruminant animals such as cows, sheep, and goats. Therefore, animal agriculture is a significant contributor to methane emissions.
- Energy production: Methane is the primary component of natural gas, which is commonly used for heating and electricity generation. Methane can also be released during the extraction, transportation, and distribution of natural gas.
- Waste management: Methane is produced during the decomposition of organic waste in landfills, wastewater treatment facilities, and manure management systems.
- Fossil fuel production: Methane can be released during the extraction and processing of coal, oil, and gas.
- Biomass burning: Methane can be produced during the incomplete combustion of biomass, such as wood or crop residues.
- Agricultural practices: Methane can be emitted during rice cultivation, as well as through the use of fertilizers and manure in agriculture.
Ok, so let's stop using fossil oils and animal agriculture (let's ignore human farts for a moment).
How could that be detrimental for human flourishing, I ask? Are the burgers essential for humans to flourish? I don't think so.
> How could that be detrimental for human flourishing, I ask? Are the burgers essential for humans to flourish? I don't think so.
Disclaimer: I decided to interpret the comment as disagreeing with me because it seemed like the most plausible interpretation giving the ambiguous potential use of sarcasm, but it's very possible I misinterpreted.
The burgers and the farts were an attempt at humor.
A much more serious consideration (also in my original) is heating our homes. If you have ever been homeless longer than a day or two during cold months in a cold place (I spent 6 months this way), you pretty quickly learn how important modern climate controls are. I don't see how you can "fluorish" when you're freezing your ass off. Good luck getting the sleep you need to perform either physical or mental work, which currently is needed in order to fluorish (unless you think the homeless on the street are fluorishing). If you're lucky your employer will be able to heat their office so you could live there, but not everybody works for someone like that. The wealthy would be able to buy whatever they needed (electric heaters, solar panels, battery storage, the high labor costs of retrofitting all these things, assuming these are even still available after the long chain of dependency is broken) but the vast majority of people would not. Human fluorishing is not just comfort for the wealthy. The average person's life matters. Much of what advances our human condition come from people who aren't born into wealth.
How exactly do you propose to heat the average person's home when all fossil fuels are no longer available? And any derivative products of fossil fuels such as plastics? Keep in mind even bio-plastics made from corn and other products would not be nearly as available since we would lose orders of magnitude of production capacity by no longer being able to use fertilizers, tractors and other machinery, etc.
I guess we should probably establish what "human fluorishing" even means otherwise this discussion is pointless. If your idea of human fluorishing is where a massive perecentage of human labor is doing farm work again like in the 19th century, or going back to feudalism where we all work the Lord's land and pick his crops. My definition is where human quality and standard of life continually increases. We're not perfect right now (especially with life expectancies in the US dropping) but our current situation would look like a future paradise compared to what we'd have without any fossil fuel.
Atom & renewable sources. 256x256 km of solar panels is enough for whole world.
> And any derivative products of fossil fuels such as plastics
You mean trash (99% of plastics produced)? Stop producing it.
> fertilizers
Use regenerative agriculture. Agriculture can perfectly well function without fossil fuel inputs.
> tractors and other machinery
Electric tractors. Should have been here decades ago.
> your idea of human fluorishing is where a massive perecentage of human labor is doing farm work again like in the 19th century
Maybe we shouldn't insist on 70+ % of workers working bullshit jobs, and let instead few of them work in agriculture instead. Many would like it, if they could support themselves with it.
It's only because of the exploitation of the soil, natural resources and humans, that current agricultural practices prevail. If it would mean that our food production would not be dependent on use of poisons, i think that would be good thing for everybody.
> fluorishing
Humour?
> Electric tractors. Should have been here decades ago.
Those sound like great ideas. How about we roll them out first, and only stop using fossil fuels once they're able to totally replace them with no downside, instead of giving up heat and tractors indefinitely in the meantime?
We have to decide to stop using the bad stuff first, set the deadlines, or new stuff will never materialize.
Have you noticed how Tesla started electric cars, everybody laughed, and now they're the only way forward?
It will be the same with this ... sooner or later. And the change of focus will bring innovation we can't even imagine now.
But Tesla was super successful even though ICE cars still aren't banned.
>> Electric tractors. Should have been here decades ago.
> Those sound like great ideas. How about we roll them out first,
> and only stop using fossil fuels once they're able to totally
> replace them with no downside
All these things are already here. Nuclear power is nothing new, renewable methods of generating energy are growing fast, and electric tractors are already on the market.
How expensive they are and how fast they are common does not depend only on the market, but also on the policies we have.
There are subsidies and policies in place to protect the status quo. Without demolishing the existing barriers of entry no progres can be made.
If we accept "cheap" energy from coal plans as standard, and wait for new miraculous technology to compete with subsidized coal energy on price, without any support, it simply won't (and didn't) happen.
But say you'll phase out coal plans, and almost miraculously the effort materializes and is redirected to new areas and new solutions are found.
Wait for it to happen on it's own, and only thing you'll get is cancer from the soot and scorched earth.
Benefits of burning fossil fuels are extremely obvious, so I shouldn’t even need to list these — for one thing, they make the discussion we have now possible in the first place. Many of current uses of fossil fuels can be replaced by other sources of energy, though at higher cost. Higher cost of energy necessarily means we get to spend less on other things, which entails less flourishing in aggregate.
Wealthy billions. The poor ones don't eat as much meat and dairy. And it's a good thing ... if they did, we would need not one, but 4-5 Earths to feed everyone.
Eating meat is a culture. A story we tell ourselves. It cost us all of megafauna, half of our forests, it threatens thousands of animal species with extinction, and it should go. It can't go for much longer if we want to have any future.
> Higher cost of energy
Costs are human construct. Money is just a record in someone's database. Goverments can make as much as they want. It means nothing.
> necessarily means we get to spend less on other things
We will learn what has value when we'll eat the system to the ground.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying: less energy consumption pretty much directly translates to less human flourishing. You seem to be arguing that this is a good thing (which I disagree with), but you keep supporting my claim with more evidence, so please, concede this.
> Costs are human construct. Money is just a record in someone's database. Goverments can make as much as they want. It means nothing.
This is not so. If that was the case, poor countries could become rich by their governments printing more money. Zimbabwe tried, they did get more money, but did not get any wealth.
The point here is that money represents something very real and significant, which a claim on value produced in the economy. If you just “change records in someone’s database”, you’ll only have more money chasing the same amount of goods, ie. inflation. If you, however, force people to use different, more expensive sources of energy, the impact is very real: less of stuff in total gets produced, and so the society gets to consume less in aggregate. This means less flourishing.
> less energy consumption pretty much directly translates to less human flourishing
You're like the man who floats on the sea on the raft made from coconuts. The more he eats, the more he thinks he flourishes.
Sharks are meanwhile patiently circling around.
> Zimbabwe tried, they did get more money, but did not get any wealth
Not everybody has the guts and means to organize few coups & occupy some countries first, steal their oil and other natural resources, then build mega army and spread it around half a world.
But if they did, then it would work. It's a recipe that works everytime.
Inflation is irrelevant. I've studied economics ... it's hogwash.
I call the above statement hogwash. Let’s take your proposal to the logical extreme. If inflation is hogwash, then why do we have to tax the citizens? Why not just print the money we need to run the government? Why do we have a national debt if we could just print the money we need to pay it off? We could try your proposal by I don’t think it would end well.
Instead I'll recommend works of David Graeber [0], mainly his treatise Debt and The Dawn. [1][2] I'll throw in his Bullshit Jobs, just because. [3]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything:_A_New_...
Actually no, I don't think you would because raising/using cattle would not be allowed if we stopped all methane emitting activities. Also your farts can contain methane, so you'd have to hold them in ... forever. If you've ever had to do that during a long meeting, you should know it is negative to human fluorishing.
Giving up hamburgers and farting is not the only thing we'd have to do. I get the feeling you didn't think very hard about GP's comment before arrogantly and ignorantly dismissing them as bullshit. If you honestly think a world where only the wealthy had heated homes and many other products that everybody now takes for granted won't negatively effect human fluorishing, I'd be (truly) interested in hearing why, such as what would either replace those things or why we would no longer need them.