Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

Why are the techno-barons so focused on human health? Not that there's anything wrong with these efforts, but human disease is much less of a threat to our species and planet than an ever-increasing human population. What I'm saying is that humans have little difficulty reproducing; it's a solved problem.

What's not a solved problem is our disappearing fisheries[1], rhinos going extinct all over the place[2], farmland desertification[3], tropical deforestation[4], ocean acidification[5]... From my back of the envelope math, it seems that longer lives and a larger population will exacerbate our environmental and resource issues.

I'd like to see billionaires purchase large tracks of land simply for preservation. Cleaning up industrial waste from rivers. Foot the salaries of anti-poaching efforts. Get clean fusion energy production up and running. That sort of thing. Perhaps we should get our planet's shit together before tackling immortality?

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/06/03/t...

[2] http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/16/africa/kenya-northern-white-rh...

[3] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34790661

[4] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/indones...

[5] http://fm.kuac.org/post/increasing-ocean-acidity-threatens-m...

Bill Gates has teamed up with Mark Zuckerberg to form multi-billion-dollar clean energy fund: http://www.sciencealert.com/bill-gates-has-teamed-up-with-ma...

It sounds like they are doing exactly what you request.

Investing in new energy technologies is not an effective way to address any of the problems he mentioned.

So clean energy isn't beneficial in tackling 'farmland desertification[3]' and 'ocean acidification[5]'? You have heard of climate change, right?

It might be marginally beneficial but it's not an effective way to combat climate change. Something else is needed to stop USA, Saudis, China and Russia from digging up the cheap oil and coal. And to stop everyone from doing all the wasteful and co2-increasing things with agriculture and deforestation etc.

We need intergovernmental coordination and limits on market forces much more than we need an energy MacGuffin.

> "Something else is needed to stop USA, Saudis, China and Russia from digging up the cheap oil and coal."

So you don't think cheap and effective clean energy technologies are very useful to encourage moving away from oil and coal?

Sure, I believe it's useful in that rich western countries continue their leisurely transition to cleaner energy as it becomes cheaper, combined with gas taxes and carbon trading and such. Billionaires investing more money in cleaner energy can be marginally beneficial, though there is already large and increasing amounts of capital allocated by the markets toward this end.

But the deciding factor is can we make everyone stop using the cheap fossil fuels that are basically free money lying in the ground. Oil price will follow demand. It might get cheaper if western countries cut consumption, but someone will still buy the rest with the lower price. And there is nothing in the horizon that would displace oil and coal at their minimum profitable production prices for developing countries (where most people live) in the requisite timeframe. If we leave it to markets, this is the case by overwhelming odds, Zuckerberg or no Zuckerberg.

Think what needs to happen on the world stage in order to enact a global ban (1) on oil pumping and coal mining within 20 years. That's the job. Interests of nations addicted to the oil income, interests of nations whose agriculture is entirely dependent on cheap imported oil, etc. Easy UN consensus?

And this is just the energy sector, there's more to climate change drivers. So fixing this is necessary but not sufficient. The same political measures that are needed to coordinate the energy sector will also work for the other sectors. But energy tech won't.

(1) A very high tax really, that 99% prevents use in fuel applications. Ban is a simpler word.

edit: added bit about fossil prices reacting to demand in west

> "Think what needs to happen on the world stage in order to enact a global ban (1) on oil pumping and coal mining within 20 years. That's the job."

You could aim for that, or you could aim for a steady stream of improvements leading to larger change once momentum is built. Or in other words, revolution vs. evolution. If you want to pursue revolution, go for it, I'll continue to pursue evolution.

Are you uggesting we don't have give up fossils that quickly, or are you suggesting we could wait 19 years and then shut down fossil fuels with a large change which would bring cheap fossils replacements for even third world countries?

I do favour ramping down incrementally, and we should get started ASAP.

I'm suggesting that instead of waiting for dramatic political and/or economic changes I will support every opportunity we get to move in the right direction, regardless of how small those changes are. The key in my opinion is building momentum. Research into clean technologies are likely to pay off eventually, even if the changes in the near term are negligible.

Remember that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. If you truly want your revolution, then lead the way by action. I'll continue supporting change in my own way.

Dirty energy isn't the (main) problem; intensive agriculture and aggressive fishing is the main problem.

Humans need to eat less meat and fish. Much less. Like, in rich countries, at least 95% less.

> "aggressive fishing is the main problem."

That is a separate problem from ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is directly linked to pollution from fossil fuel usage.

Yes, aggressive fishing is a different problem (but a problem nonetheless).

Ocean acidification however, is caused by the fact that the oceans absorb the excess of CO2 present in the atmosphere; and livestock are responsible for more CO2 production than all of transportation.

> "Ocean acidification however, is caused by the fact that the oceans absorb the excess of CO2 present in the atmosphere; and livestock are responsible for more CO2 production than all of transportation."

There's a common misconception that all CO2 is bad. CO2 is a natural part of the bio cycles found on Earth, what's bad about using fossil fuels is the rapid expansion of CO2 (and other gases) in the environment where life lives, which causes instability and damage as the Earth adapts.

I heard that healthy human is the key to sustainable population. Less-healthy human condition tend to make human have more babies since mortality rate on their babies are higher.

The cynic's answer is that human health is something that really rich do not have much control over. (SJ is just one shining example)

In other words you get billion dollars but realize it is all for naught as you will be worm food in 100 years.

So some go full Kurzweill, some find/found religion, some do a bit of everything.

This problem is not unique to billionaires but they can attempt to roll a bigger rock up the mountain.

Manoj Bhargava is doing something similar: https://imgur.com/gallery/teGsT

Bill Gates is actually very concerned with reducing population growth.

I think you have an OK point and the more intelligent rich people like Elon Musk are the ones furthering your agenda. Bill and Zuck were always too conventional to think big like this. Their conventionality was part of their success--they are both too uncreative to come up with something new but instead they know how to steal the ideas of others and make a more competitive business out of them.

Ted Turner bought a bunch of land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_growth_model

You make a very good point. Currently, the largest threat to long and happy life is a destroyed habitat.

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