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Comment by jupp0r | Hacker News Reader

It always amazes me how pessimistic people can be in terms of where the world is heading, especially people who tend towards populism (on the left and the right). In debates, I eventually point out actual data about living conditions[1]. Looking at data instead of news stories, it becomes clear that extreme poverty, vaccination, child mortality and education are vastly improving for a majority of humans on this planet. This leaves aforementioned populists with nothing to argue about but the validity of the data they are seeing, unable to reconcile reality with their world view.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...

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Because whenever I look into statistics, I lose faith in them http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/08/exposing-gr...

If you include all sentient beings in your analysis there's no question that the world has gotten _much_ worse over the past 50+ years. The number of animals living lives of unending torture has gone up and up during that time period. Any gains made by humans are a blip in the statistics.

I'm somewhat hopeful that we are in the middle of the time when that start changing, but until it does, I think it's quite clear that things have gotten worse, not better.

To add to your point, the affect of the amount of animals bred into existence coupled with how they are treated is devastating the environment.

Indeed. None of these apparent positive gains will matter for very long if we destroy our own ecosystem in the process

My point exactly. We are not alone. We are surviving on top of a holocaust the like of which was never seen and never even imagined. And we're also poisoning the well and destroying the future for everyone, our own species included.

For me the pessimism stems from the fact that having 8 billion or so well off consumers is not environmentally sustainable. We are polluting on a grand scale. Plastics, toxins, and trash are doing great harm to the environment. Right now it appears we are headed for a crash. Maybe not in my lifetime but within 100 years or so will the planet be so polluted that living in it is hellish?

This assumes that humanity will not find a way to reduce, recycle, convert, or find better uses for trash in the next 100 years.

Coming from a country where nearly everything that can be recycled gets recycled, and having seen this change take place in a span of less than 30 years, your assumption does seem a bit too pessimistic.

The same kind of pessimistic assumption underlines the ridiculously high death tolls that people often predict will be caused by global warming. Most of those deaths are attributed to infectious diseases such as malaria. This assumes that humanity will not find a way to prevent and/or cure such diseases on a large scale in the next 100 years.

The reverse is also true. You assume humanity will find a way to deal with the trash. Not just the trash that will be made but also the trash that has already found it's way into the oceans.

The number of people who recycle a lot is quite small in relation to the total population. Is the increase in recycling enough to offset the increase in trash and toxins? I'm skeptical that this will happen soon enough.

Since you come from a country where nearly everything is recycled I'm going to assume you come from a wealthy country. If so then you, yes you, consume far more than most humans. You are a drain on the resources of the planet. Your consumption leads to strip mining, deforestation, and industrial pollution. This damage has been conveniently shipped off to poor regions of the world but the ultimate cause is consumers like you and I. Your recycling hardly makes up for the damage that is done for your consumption.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810

From the above article:

“If the levels of consumption that...the most affluent people enjoy today were replicated across even half of the roughly 9 billion people projected to be on the planet in 2050, the impact on our water supply, air quality, forests, climate, biological diversity, and human health would be severe.”

No, I don't assume that humanity will find a way to fix all those problems in a timely manner.

I'm pointing out that both are assumptions pulled out of thin air, and that we should not be too quick to get all pessimistic (or optimistic) based on mere assumptions.

People 100 years ago could not have had imagined the kind of technological and sociopolitical changes that we take for granted now. What more right do we have to make assumptions about what we'll have 100 years from now? Heck, I can't even trust anyone who says what will happen 10 years from now, whether good or bad.

Let's stop pretending to be prophets and actually start working on the problems. Only then will we know which of the assumptions were correct.

It's not prophecy. It's a fact that at current trends things are looking dire. The trend may change but only if people heed the warning. I don't know what will happen in 100 years. I do know that without a significant change in behavior/technology soon then a crash is coming.

100 years ago, some people made dire predictions that most cities would be buried in 9 feet of horse shit if people didn't act quickly to fix their reliance on horse-drawn carriages.

A quarter century later, cars replaced horse-drawn carriages, averting the horse shit crisis. Not because people heeded the warning, but simply because cars were faster and sexier. Of course, we've just traded CO2 for horse shit, and now we've got a different problem.

If history is any indication of what will happen in the future, we'll probably trade some other type of pollution for CO2 this century, and then another type.

Hence, the “current trends” portion of what I wrote. Also, history is not a guide in this matter. The creation of new tech depends on knowledge and it is not predictable whether or not enough new knowledge will be gained to offset current trends. It’s possibke but looking to the past is not an indicati9n that this will happpen in a particular area.

Also, I was talking about solely about CO2. I was talking about deforestation, massive dumping of toxins, plastics and other forms of waste. It is without a doubt that at current trends humanity’s future is dire,

We in the developed world are working hard to make sure we won't have to replicate the levels of consumption over so many people; both by reducing our natality levels way below replacement, and by encouraging wars in other places.

It isn’t pessimism, it’s foresight, combined with an awareness of history.

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