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Comment by denim_chicken | Hacker News Reader

The article should be titled, "The World is Not Becoming More Violent".

Violence among humans is only one of many metrics to gauge the state of the world. Other metrics show trends that are not as rosy. Let's not forget, for example, that we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction event, exhibiting a rate of species extinction 10x greater than during any other extinction event.

If we especially ignore our anthropocentric biases one can make a convincing case that the world is falling apart.

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This is certainly not a popular view, and I might be wrong, but I don't think the current state of technology allows you to increase democracy, standard of living as we define it now, without the climate tradeoff, and I think that's ok.

Industrialization and the internal combustion engine has been one of the greatest drivers of prosperity in human history, and largely to drive subsistence farmers into less manual work and into cities. These shifts improve access to health services, networks etc... for all involved and has been the biggest driver of for example Chinese productivity growth and PPP improvement in the past 20 years. The downside is increasing carbon emissions. The biggest impacts of these emissions, in the climate sense, dis-proportionally affects groups like pacific islanders, current subsistence farmers and other groups on the boundaries.

Very few people look at this issue in terms of what we gain from industrial processes that cannot be cheaply implemented to reduce carbon emissions, and the gains in quality of life for the groups implementing them.

It's definitely preferable for emerging countries to generate power, do water processing, transportation etc... in a clean way, but right now the cheapest way to do that is through burning fossil fuels. If the alternative is to slow progress in these nations to prevent a few million pacific islanders from having to move, I think it would be more efficient for nations to assist those who are impacted from the climate externalities.

That would be fine if the problems caused by climate change are limited to "a few million pacific islanders", the reality is likely to be much worse.

are limited to "a few million pacific islanders"

Well I did say..."pacific islanders, current subsistence farmers and other groups on the boundaries", but for brevity left all that out of the last part. Of course in current discourse, you have to lay everything out each time to excruciating detail otherwise people nitpick.

the reality is likely to be much worse.

My previous post was not intended to be exhaustive, but if you read the IPCC information [1] the bulk of the conclusions are that marginalized and poor regions are the ones who have the impact - and largely as a compounding factor for political, societal, governmental problems, not the only factor.

So if we bring 200M people out of poverty in China and closer to health and democracy, I think that is worth drought and famine for 10M people.

[1]http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg2/ar5_wgII_sp...

We are decimating ecosystems around the globe, overfishing, turning the all the arable land into giant farms and monoculture.

Why do you think this won't have unforseen effects like collapse of ecosystems and balances (of oxygen, say) in the world? Or maybe we won't be able to grow enough vegetables for everyone?

Don't you think that the population explosion poses a huge danger just like with any other species? Or are you willing to bet humans will fix everything all the time?

I never said it wouldn't but if that does happen, the demand and incentive exists to solve it - for example exactly the type of situation that led to GMO crops, nitrogen fixing etc...

So while I won't say we will fix everything all the time, history seems to indicate that these things get solved.

We are not gods. What makes you think we can solve all the problems every time? I think we are still in ok territory, for now, and we are overconfident. If one thing goes seriously out of whack, and then another and another we might not be able to reverse it. But with our capitalism and resource use, how are we going to stop the freight train? Only one way ... if more people start using contraception. But many religions say you shouldn't.

What makes you think we can solve all the problems every time

As I said: "So while I won't say we will fix everything all the time"...

To your other point, prosperity is the #1 way to slow population growth historically [1]. Prosperity comes from development and access to heath services and technology, all of which are energy intensive.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradox

The bit about having kids is a red herring. It's not the poor people directing the consumption of resources, but the rich. The problem stems from wealth inequality and capitalism creating obscene incentives (and granting the power to pursue them).

Of course, less humans would help but it's not like the beggars in India are consuming all that much.

It's not just rising sea levels caused by climate change [0]: extreme weather will likely become more common, and will disproportionately impact the societies least prepared to cope with it.

[0]: Though just try searching for "Climate Change Map" and see the likely effects in your parts of the world. Florida? Gone in some predictions, along with major European cities like Hamburg and vast swathes of the Netherlands, low lying land on the African coast and countless examples the world over. "A few million pacific islanders" this is not.

will disproportionately impact the societies least prepared to cope with it.

This is the point. Those societies least prepared, have traditionally been impacted by these events disproportionate to all others see: Katrina, Galveston, Luzon, Florida etc.... They won't become prepared without additional energy expenditure significantly beyond what they have now. They have to determine what that costs and "clean" energy production is significantly more expensive than "dirty" production currently. Or, they could decide not to build on the beach or in a flood plain.

If we can get to more clean fuels or nuclear that is cheap and plentiful, then great! It doesn't seem to be happening though and until it does, the only way to move communities up the quality of life scale is dirty.

That doesn't me we should give up or not try to build better sources of energy or more efficient distribution methods (so we don't lose 60% of production), on the contrary, we should. Lets be real though when trying to balance global mobility.

And by the way, saying that climate change is going to turn the earth into Mars is as hyperbolic and fantasy as saying that Climate Change is not happening and a conspiracy.

What about the poor animals who suffer? Are they to go extinct so that a couple billion more of this filthy chimp species can have a good life?

Yes. When forced to choose, humans win, everytime. Sorry.

I don't necessarily agree. The life of a lion is worth more than the life of a Zimbabwean citizen. Harsh, but true. The lion is worth more monetarily, and more morally.

They'll adapt.

I would make this argument slightly differently. The industrialization of the world has allowed us to support more humans per square mile of land, at a standard of living (health, welfare, education, and longevity) than would be possible without that industrialization. This has allowed us to develop technologies that should, if utilized, allow humans to survive the extinction event[1] that would have otherwise killed them off.

[1] that includes the set anthropogenic climate change, 'natural' climate change, asteroid strike, super volcanic eruptions, solar immolation, and plague.

Well said and much more concise.

we are also having more people climb out of poverty, health care is more prevalent in the third world, and some major diseases are on their way to being history.

So there are just as many other metrics to show improvement, not to suggest there aren't other areas we can improve. As for the mass extinction event, while some claim it they eventually call out numbers showing the previous five so swamped what is happening now that we are just simply better are recording events and it may not be as dire. It would take over two centuries at current and project rates to equal any previous mass extinction event and that is only if the dire projections are correct.

The article should be titled, "The World is Not Becoming More Violent"

Moreover, I've seen some convincing analyses that suggest the world actually IS becoming (slghtly) more violent, but that advances in trauma medicine are minimizing the fact by reducing the death toll.

I will round up citations when I can.

Out of curiosity, what's the evidence for 10x extinction rate?

Even that view is Biocentric. Furthermore, the language of "the world is falling apart" is quite Geocentric, I mean c'mon, what year is it 2015 or 1515?

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