About your important points: yes, the industrial revolution (roughly 1750-1950 as you say) was when most scientific, industrial, medical and engineering advances were made, and this happened in England, the US and Western Europe. All true, but, even here, it was not as if these changes were driven solely by a spirit of inquiry or general altruism, and it was not as if the rest of the world had no role to play. It was greed and the competition amongst nation states that drove a lot of the change; and it was financed to a large extent by systematic exploitation of people from other parts of the world - through colonisation, slavery, etc. India itself was under British colonisation during most of this period (1750-1950). And whole swathes of Africa and Asia were similarly colonised in that period.

About cholera, if it was "imported from India", it was the British themselves who did the importing of it and their people suffered the consequences. On the other hand, the indigenous people living in Australia and the Americas did not ask the British and Europeans to come to their lands and bring in small pox with them, but they did anyway; and it devastated whole populations there.

Not snide. A statement of historical fact, noted for irony given the nationality of the person I was responding to. I was relying principally on James Burke's statement in episode 7 of The Day the Universe Changed, "What the Doctor Ordered": http://fixyt.com/watch?v=wM2UZ26b1EQ (19 minutes)

It's readily corroborated:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/bio_cholera.htm

Cholera is a disease caused by the bacteria Vibrio cholera. The disease first emerged in the 1800s from Calcutta, India where it had caused disease for centuries. Since then, 7 cholera pandemics have swept through the world.

I'll note that even recent epidemics are traced to south Asia. The cholera epidemic in India was imported from Bengali UN relief workers:

Cholera strains isolated in Haiti were genetically most similar to strains detected in Bangladesh in 2002 and 2008; thus, cholera was most likely introduced into Haiti from southern Asia (2). Despite the genetic similarity in the strains, no attempt was made by the researchers to ascertain and rule out the source of the outbreak in Bangladeshi policemen stationed at Mirebalais between September and October 2010. Another, although less likely, source for the introduction of cholera into Haiti could have been travelers or relief workers who may have recently been to southern Asia.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3310591/

I'm not blaming India for the epidemic, and I'm well aware that England was engaging in uninvited management activities in the region at the time. Though it's interesting to note that one of the first effects of globalization was importation of a mass epidemic -- we're dealing with similar issues today (various influenzas, SARS, AIDs), and there were earlier and other cases (syphilis imported from the New World, smallpox exported to it).

On Greer: he's very unorthodox. I'd suggest weighing his concepts on their own merits, and as I've noted in another response, the idea of catabolic collapse is really him putting an identifier and mechanism on a trend and mechanism others have noted.

it was not as if these changes were driven solely by a spirit of inquiry or general altruism

I am making absolutely no assertion that this is the case generally. The question of why industrialization emerged where and when it did is a fascinating one. I've been revisiting Burke's Connections and viewed The Day the Universe Changed both of which spend a great deal of time covering this period. I'm well aware of the social inequities which accompanied the transition.

In the large view, though, that's incidental to the larger problem: we (humans) have to figure out how the hell we're going to get past a confluence of multiple impinging crises: dwindling fossil fuels, climate change, other resource limits (water, topsoil, phosphorus, copper, "peak everything"), and underlying all of it, a fundamental problem of population, per-capita resource consumption, and equity in allocation both within and between nations. I'm very strongly pessimistic for the future, spanning a period probably roughly paralleling the duration of the Industrial Revolution -- the next 250 years. Though depending on what decline scenarios you subscribe to the fall could be more or less gradual.

One very real possibility is that the developed world make concessions to the undeveloped / developing world in terms of carbon emissions. Another is that the parties fight it out. Pursuing growth for its own sake will, simply put, backfire in the worst possible way. It's one of the larger prisoner's dilemma games ever constructed.

On Greer, what specific references do you have to his "non-evidence-based healing techniques"? I haven't run across those myself yet (he's a recent discovery of this past year).

If they're false, it's a lost cause. People are not going to lower their living standard, especially not in India, to comply with new limitations.

So let's see.

I've got my own very serious doubts as to how much energy can be delivered, and at what EROEI, from renewable / sustainable sources. The good news is that we've got technology, science, and understanding now which we didn't have 250 years ago, and the odds are very good that they'll survive even a profound decline in industrial and economic capacity. But to think that national and/or global economies will continue plugging away without energy sources of some stripe (and fossil fuels are going to become untenable whether for environmental, supply, extraction cost, EROEI, or other bases) is sheer fantasy.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/07/1214314/-World-s-La...

A remarkable statement from the largest coal company in the world. Coal India produces more than 80 percent of India’s coal, and not only is it turning to solar as an efficient business practice, it understands India cannot power itself by coal.

That's not quite what I said.

> but the first two alone provided the lion's share of life-expectancy gains in England and the US.

Longer lives => contributing to pollution for a longer period... Are you making the point that modern medicine has contributed to global warming?

> The other thing we're very well aware of now is that 1) continuing to extract fossil fuel resources...

You replied to me. So I think you're responding to something I said. I don't see to what.

As for the Indus Valley Civilization, there are many hypotheses about its collapse, but there is little consensus in academia for its contributing factors. Each person seems to float his own pet theory about the matter, quickly contradicted by another person showing evidence to the contrary. Maybe "catabolic collapse" is a real phenomenon. I looked up John Michael Greer on Wikipedia, and lost all interest in it for now.

It's a direct (though partial) anchoring quote to identify what portion of your comments I was addressing. You said it. Exactly.

Longer lives => contributing to pollution for a longer period

That's one effect.

Another is that life becomes far more predictable. Risk and uncertainty are both factors which tend to work against the development of a rich and advanced culture. If a family can be reasonably assured that the children it births will live to maturity, the costs of food, housing, education, etc., are more likely to reach fruition and payoff. That's a large part of the dynamic that's though to lead to the demographic transition (see Hans Rosling and others). I've got my own concerns about DT, and theories about the reduced birthrates of highly concentrated cultures (Western Europe, non-hispanic US, Japan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere), but as a first order approximation it seems to hold. Once you've stabilized the population you can look at both reducing it (critical to long-term survival) and enriching it.

Are you making the point that modern medicine has contributed to global warming?*

There's very little in the history of the past 250 years that hasn't contributed in some way. It's complicated. My overarching point, however, is that we now know far more about what our limits are and can address them.

So I think you're responding to something I said.

Fossil fuels are the primary driver toward anthropgenic global warming, which is in fact the matter at the heart of this HN article. They've also been the driver of most economic (and population) growth of the past 250 years, by making a vast, clean[1], reliable[2], readily utilized, and highly fungible form of energy available. So yes, it's complicated. And it's a question I'm looking into at more length. And it's specifically fossil fuel use curtailment which India is fighting in international accord proceedings.

Indus Valley Civilization

An instance of the collapse of an advanced culture which happens to be proximate to your presumed location (I take it you're in India or have spent considerable time there). There are others. I strongly recommend Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies (his work is referenced strongly in Jared Diamond's Collapse).

Greer

He's not an orthodox thinker. I won't speak to all of his beliefs, but I've found his blog to be useful reading (and recommend you look at it) and the concept of catabolic collapse specifically useful. As I indicated, it's got credence in Marc Andreesen's "software eats everything" concept, in financialization, see books of the past decade or two on Wall Street / financial market shenanigans from Mark Lewis, and others (The Big Short, Hollowing Out America, etc.).

Orthodox economics certainly has its own set of fantastical beliefs (and gross distortions). Something I've more than a passing relationship with (I majored in the subject).

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Notes:

1. As compared with animal power for transportation. "Mud", a/k/a dung, was a huge pollution and public health problem prior to motorized transport. The polluting effects which are experienced from fossil fuels occur at levels of utilization which simply had not been attained by its precursor fuels and energy sources. That said, yes, in sufficient quantity it can be quite bad (acute effects) and the chronic effects of CO2 release are now understand to be of vast significance.

2. Not subject to seasonal or other variability as with growing fuelwood, grains, water, wind, or direct solar energy. Until the point at which stocks of fossil fuels are practically exhausted.