The idea that is bad that poor Indian and Chinese people now have access to anything from clean water to planes is absurd. You can sit there in your luxury house and cry about consumer culture but for millions of people its basic stuff that they have access to for the first time.
And in Europe, despite increasing quality of live, both total energy consumption and fossil fuel consumption is going down.
Now part of this is export of emissions to China but China own growth explains the majority of it.
Continued growth is good, and only continued growth and better technology will get humanity off fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels have been a net good for society and still are!
No one is against clean access to water...
the fix is also not complicated (remove GHG from the air, remove endocrine disruptors from the food cycle, etc.)
the costs are high though, but not that high, compared to - for example - the famines of past
but as population will peak - at least for now - and as we continue to ramp up renewable energy generation these problems are not insurmountable in any sense
...
places affected by storms and extreme heat/cold days need better infrastructure, but since urbanization continues to drive people to cities (as it did for the last few hundreds of years) these places need new and better infrastructure anyway!
Are you abstracting away the technical complexity when stating that it's not complicated? GHG removal tech that would scale simply doesn't exist if we intend to have some energy left to do anything else, as for removing pfas and microplastics from the environment, we are at the stage of running experiments in petri dishes.
And even if we abstract away the technical complexity, good luck convincing anyone to stop burning the free fuel we have lying around doing nothing now that we have everything-nuclear-solar and GHG removal at scale. We can barely convince our councils to build cycle lanes in dense areas if that removes any space for SUVs.
I wish I'd share the blind optimism of people like you, it seems pleasant to live in your heads...
it's a coordination problem as you mentioned
based on this I moved to a place where I think things are a bit less crazy with regards to that (well, famous last comments ...eheh)
> based on this I moved to a place where I think things are a bit less crazy with regards to that (well, famous last comments ...eheh)
Mind telling us pessimists where that might be? ;)
Still, the days for the uber-polluted Beijing are numbered. It will change drastically.
Second, "continued growth is good" is a hell of a thing to say on a planet with finite resources. There's a limit! And if you expand your worldview to include other life on this planet and not just society then we've pushed far beyond what's wise already.
But still, I'll bite - how so? Because I see videos like this:
https://x.com/Zlatti_71/status/1947556095779610961
or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiNrcHhDTsI
And I compare them to, say, any American city.
You can't watch those and seriously believe that there couldn't possibly be any aspects of Chinese life which are superior, and further, to think that's "insane".
Those aren't cherry-picked videos. There are thousands out there, if you care to look; watch xiaomanyc's videos and there's simply no denying your eyes. Their cars are better, their night life is better, their food is better, their housing is better, their daily lives are better, in many, many ways. Not every way, but in many ways - which is what I said.
You've been propagandized your whole life to think America is number one, but that was only even remotely true before 'we' pissed away our future on genocidal forever wars to make the 0.1% a little wealthier. Now most people see America negatively. Literally the vast majority of countries have an overall negative opinion of America; and we're seen as the number one threat to peace and stability.
Chinese people used to think they're hearing propaganda when they hear American's stories about health insurance, or the political scene - because to them, that's impossible to believe. Yet what you find impossible to believe is that they might have it better in some ways. I hope you have a good long think about that.
Cars are becoming prohibitively expensive. Housing is becoming a luxury.
Even consumer products are becoming increasingly expensive.
Safety largely improved but not craftsmanship.
https://electrek.co/2024/07/08/byd-launches-2025-dolphin-ev-...
The problems you mentioned are a local problem, not a global problem.
A Day in Life of Africa’s Wooden Scooter Crew
Indonesia’s Tricked Out Vespas
Adjusted for inflation, car prices are actually lower now than decades ago, especially factoring in huge safety and tech improvements. Entry-level models remain affordable, while buyers voluntarily pay more for SUVs and tech-heavy EVs.
> Housing is becoming a luxury.
Rising housing prices are mostly driven by land scarcity and zoning. The actual cost per square meter of construction (build quality) has improved and remains stable.
> Even consumer products are becoming increasingly expensive.
Nope. Electronics, clothing, and appliances have become dramatically cheaper. Quality-adjusted prices for TVs and computers have plummeted.
> Safety largely improved but not craftsmanship.
Craftsmanship is alive and well, if you are willing to pay for it. Which most consumers are not; they prefer being able to afford more things at lower prices and quicker tech cycles.
In snowbelt (and even somewhat sub-snowbelt) regions, cars would pretty much rust out at 50K miles and starting when conditions were wet or cold could be an adventure.
And, while I have the option of buying an expensive "handmade" (with the aid of expensive CNC equipment) dining room table--which I have done--I also have the option of buying a sturdy and nice-looking mail-order bed for $300 that I assemble.
Housing is the main thing but, as you say, that's mostly a matter of location. There are a ton of cheaper locations but many don't want to live there--even if they're fairly accessible to a major city.
Or maybe the additional price should be based on the number of rooms instead. Adding empty space by making the rooms bigger is cheap, but extra rooms are usually more valuable to those on a limited budget.
Where I live in California, construction itself has become unaffordable. Even if the land were free, construction and permits are now so expensive that it's impossible to build affordable housing without subsidies.
Do you have a source? And are you considering expensive markets (cough, Los Angeles)?
And so are salaries. Just compare what kind of job you needed to be able to afford a car 40 years ago to today.
Reality is still reality, people live in it and face it everyday.
Wealth inequality? The majority is from comparing those starting out to those at retirement. Likewise, the majority of income inequality is hours worked. (Not to say that there aren't other factors, but in both cases when you compare apples to apples it explains more than half the range.)
My parents, both PhD's. AFIAK first car (they had lived where they didn't have as much need of one) was in their 40s. First house in their 50s. We bought our first house (bigger and better than anything my parents ever owned) when I was still in my 20s. (She's older but did not come with any assets beyond her education.)
It's not. Saying something isn't expensive because its the same price after adjusting for inflation is a slap to the face of millions, perhaps even billions who are effectively making less now than they were ten or twenty years ago after they adjust for inflation.
That phrase is not the silver bullet you seem to think it is.
safety... maybe. tech? no. Having to plug in an expensive proprietary diagnostic device to diagnose problems, dozens of computers, hundreds of sensors many of which can render the vehicle bricked and inoperable if they're not working correctly.. None of this is better.
For housing, there are 2 things that happened: regulations made houses more expensive to build (I personally built 3 houses in the past 35 years, I saw the increase in cost) and second thing is house prices are totally disconnected to cost, my current home is evaluated (for tax purpose) about 3 times the real cost to build it. Except the buyers, everyone is happy to have a huge increase in housing cost, builders make more money, local governments raise more taxes, buyers are screwed from all sides and not many people go build their own, even if it many places is still possible (I currently planning to build a house for some friends).
But in a way building a house is cheaper: tools, technology and new materials make it faster and cheaper to build. It should make houses more affordable, if the other factors would not completely eat this saving.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/what-makes-housing-so...
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-homes-in-west...
This isn’t true. There are dozens of car models near $20k today, and most of the base model inexpensive cars in the US have always cost around today’s $20k-$30k in adjusted dollars. Even the Ford model T: https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0512/how-inflati...
Quality of cars today is unquestionably better, and the number of features and conveniences is unquestionably higher. Cars last longer than they used to, a lot longer on average. There’s ample stats on this.
The average price of cars has gone up slowly relative to inflation because there are now better cars to choose from, and people choose to pay more. But you can’t even buy something as bad as a 1930s or 1950s or 1980s car today, and you can get a much better car now for less money than you could then.
Most of those "good 'ol" goods exist, but probably are pretty/too expensive for what we are used to pay.
For many products, the market went with cheap and crappy, and quality became a niche that is no longer available in the general economy, and can only be found with great cost and effort.
But what’s often mistaken for a decline in quality is really a shift in priorities: toward affordability, efficiency, and accessibility. And that’s fantastic. Products that were once expensive and exclusive are now available, at good-enough quality, to billions more people around the world.
Yes, that trade-off can mean shorter lifespans or less repairability. But on balance, widening access is a moral win, and one made possible by the very progress the article seems to mourn.