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Comment by akiselev | Hacker News Reader

It's such a minor thing when it comes to our day to day but becomes truly terrifying when you put it all together and look at the big picture. I've noticed the same thing about wild-life in general whenever I visit my favorite places from childhood - whether it's the reefs around Australia, the tide pools in Baja, or the inland empire desert I grew up in. Looking at actual research just makes it worse: a third of microorganisms in the upper marine layer have died off from pollution, almost all species considered keystone predators are gone or going extinct, and the climate is jumping off a cliff.

At first I thought it was an effect of aging (changes in nostalgia and awareness) but after moving back to one of the cities I lived in and talking to the local bird watching society, it seems to be happening everywhere on massive scales.

And so, slowly, we boil.

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> And so, slowly, we boil.

Climate changing power, without the wisdom to wield it, is as plausible a Great Filter as anything.

Hard to develop a space program when you're spending all your production fighting over scarce resources, plugging leaks, and attempting to feed a planet with decreasing yields.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

I had two daughters before I came to the conclusion that this is the most likely path for humanity at this point. There is a possibility of a global awakening that might prevent this tragic loss of megafauna. But I'm already a vegan and don't drive much; can't think of more to do, and while I'm not too bad at dealing with this, it can be quite depressing.

I think we can do it... you can email me at my username at gmail if you want to chat but we can talk it out a bit here too.

Is there any aspect to culture that you’re personally drawn to? Food? Walkable communities? Forests? Wildlife? Durable goods?

I really respect that you grasp the magnitude of the problem and you empathize with those who will live with the consequences. That says a lot of you. But you can't stay in a framework where you are feeling depressed about it. That's probably not a good framework to work from.

That's barely the tip of the iceberg of what to do.

Public transportation or bicycling, avoiding one-time non-consumable items (one-time plates, forks, cups, cup-lids, straws, etc. are an absolute no-go—which means boycutting starbucks and similar if necessary), recycling, rallying against use of polluting materials (less polypropylene and soft plastic packaging in super-markets, for example), less materialistic imports (container ships use the nastiest oils to operate, as international waters have no emission regulations), thinking of ways to make being environmentally friendly simpler, etc.

And even more importantly, getting others to do the same. The difference from one person doing all this right will just be a drop of water in the ocean. If it does not spread, it does not matter.

Also, as someone who cares about the environment, I would suggest not putting vegan up front as your efforts. Regardless of cause or effect, "vegan" carries a stigma. "Vegetarian" communicates what is needed if the idea is to reduce pollution from cattle farming, and it is less likely to cause instant dismissal.

And, also, while replacing meat with vegetable farming has fewer gas emissions than cattle farming, that still does not deal with our farming techniques being unsustainable, or that many types of farming causing massive deforestation (soy, anyone?). Nor does it reduce massive oil pollution, stop the oceans from filling with microplastics, etc.

It's but one small thing on a very long list of things we need to fix.

Spreading behaviour is so important. Which means it's important to make it "cool" to be environmentally conscious. I think people sometimes underestimate the cool factor when it comes to spreading ideas.

You can do all the cool but it is going to have no result when industry is responsible for a third of GHG, agriculture about a fourth and transportation a fifth.

To stop those takes regulations and laws. Major investments too which won't happen if not forced either.

Best targeted results for efficacy of behaviour modification at a fifth. Good luck. This with self-efficacy training. You cannot do that with everyone so you're bound to fail. Worse if people cannot adapt at all. Tell a guy they now go 50 miles to work by bike is not going to work at all.

You cannot destroy a mountain by removing a few shovels of ground. The action and change has to be both forced and massive.

A note about diet:

There are some recent studies suggesting that globally, on average, the most environmentally friendly diets have some animal product component because of their ability to make use of landmass that we wouldn't be able to make use of directly. E.g., cattle can eat plants that grow in areas we can't grow human-friendly crops on.

I can't find citations to these studies offhand unfortunately. (this is an example but not what I had in mind: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5522483/) But what I remember is that globally, the most environmentally friendly diets had some small animal product component.

This also probably varies a lot by location too, so it probably is the case that for some people, the best diet might be vegan; for others it might involve more animal product.

Just pointing this out, because there are nonpolitical-psychological-sociological reasons for a "soft" approach on plant-based-diets.

This is true, but from what I've read it is only true for places that are small scale and local. Anything large scale, like feeding a city, would benefit greatly from a reduction, or elimination, of animal products.

I think a key component here is just minimizing the meat-component of the diet.

Meat would not at all be a problem if produced in smaller amounts. The current level is just absurd waste (I would guess mostly to support fast-food production?), and we absolutely do not need this amount of meat in our diet.

It is, however, extremely nutritious, so a small meat consumption would both be sufficient and much more sustainable. Even just 1/10th of the current scale would likely reduce any problems to be insignificant.

> avoiding one-time non-consumable items (one-time plates, forks, cups, cup-lids, straws, etc. are an absolute no-go—which means boycutting starbucks and similar if necessary)

Starbucks gets a lot of flack, from a lot of directions, but it's worth noting that companies go that could contribute a lot to this problem, they do a lot to promote better usage patterns. For example, you can bring your own cup to get filled at Starbucks, instead of using one of their cups (which uses recycled content).[1]

> And even more importantly, getting others to do the same.

And that's the reason I'm commenting. Really, I could care less whether people go to Starbucks. I'm there once a month or two (but I do gets treats for the kids there about once a week). But if we are supposed to be willing to change our behavior to make a difference, we should definitely be willing to look into whether a company is trying to do something good for the environment before denigrating them as a problem with regard to the environment.

If a company is taking steps in the right direction, we should call that out as a positive example, to encourage them to do more and others to follow in their example. Ignoring their positive actions, or worse, using them as a negative example, will not encourage positive behavior on their part.

1: https://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/environment/cups-an...

> Starbucks gets a lot of flack, from a lot of directions, but it's worth noting that companies go that could contribute a lot to this problem, they do a lot to promote better usage patterns.

In that case, I do apologize. I have never in my life gone to a Starbucks, but my point was avoiding one-time use devices of any kind, regardless of what convenience it may bring, with the exception of when it is truly necessary (such as medical packaging).

However, do note that this also includes whatever one-time devices the company themselves use to run their service.

It would be a quite standard PR stunt to present visible environmentally friendly options (that potentially largely go unused), while not doing anything at all to the less visible parts of the company.

> It would be a quite standard PR stunt to present visible environmentally friendly options (that potentially largely go unused), while not doing anything at all to the less visible parts of the company.

Sure, but it's good to start somewhere. If we get companies competing on a level of environmental friendliness, then it quickly goes beyond being superficial, as those gains are quickly achieved and further ones are sought.

To some degree I think that's part of what's going on with Starbucks. They've positioned themselves as an environmentally aware company, and one that cares about world issues (carrying specific types of beans, etc). Part of this is obviously playing to their audience (and part is it starting in a locale and with a CEO that cater to these attitudes), but that's about all we can expect from most companies. Thankfully, it's something that can be worked with. If consumers express interest, companies will respond.

There's no reason for you to apologize, I just wanted to point out that we should be careful to not draw that line at those companies who are "good" or "great". We're at the level were we should be very welcoming of those that are only acceptable in their behavior with regard to this, but that's still worlds ahead of most, and that's how we move the average.

Something like 75% of all non-meat food grown in the US is fed to animals for later eating. When you complain about soy destroying forests, you are complaining about meat consumption:

> Just over 70 percent of the soybeans grown in the United States are used for animal feed, with poultry being the number one livestock sector consuming soybeans, followed by hogs, dairy, beef and aquaculture. The second largest market for U.S. soybeans is for production of foods for human consumption, like salad oil or frying oil, which uses about 15 percent of U.S. soybeans. A distant third market for soybeans is biodiesel, using only about 5 percent of the U.S. soybean crop. In 2013, soybean exports reached record highs, exporting 43 million metric tons to overseas markets. China remains the largest export market for U.S. soybeans.

https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/coexisten...

You'll find this same thing over and over again when discussing clearing land for crop growth. The vast majority of it is to support meat production. Going vegan is probably the number one thing you can do to fight climate change and pollution in general, as an individual. Especially since switching would eliminate vast amounts of farming, and the associated chemicals and water loss. edit: and deforestation.

It is not a small thing, not at all, and to diminish it is to deny the massive sea of change that is required to actually fight climate change with 7B people on the planet.

Sure, there is a lot of cultural blowback against veganism, but I think it is manufactured via marketing, just like the anemic belief in climate change in the United States.

It's unfortunate that more people don't internalize this fact. One of the first things you learn in middle/high school ecology is that 90% of available energy is lost between each step in the food chain. Producers can only convert about 10% of the sun's energy to useful electrons in photosynthesis, herbivores only get 10% of the energy it takes to grow their food, and carnivores only get 10% of the energy herbivores take in. Some factors like the decreased non-predatory death improve those numbers for industrial agriculture but not by much.

In US agriculture, we have some estimates for the ratio of output calories to the input calories [1] that are astounding. For every 100 kcal of feed stock, we get ~19 kcal back from chicken, ~7 kcal from beef, and a whopping 1 kcal from shrimp.

Essentially, every 1000 kcal of beef takes 14,000 kcal of corn/soy/alfa-alfa and 1000 kcal of shrimp takes 100,000 kcal of whatever it is shrimp eat.

[1] From the book Diet, Energy, and Global Warming by Eshel and Martin

1. You mean "going vegetarian". Going vegan is something entirely different, and entirely unnecessary in this context.

2. Food is being massively overproduced, so a few thousand people boycutting meat is unlikely to even remotely affect the production amount, thus having no difference at all. A much bigger difference would be made by trying to fight food waste. Fight profit-optimization by over-production, go for local sellers rather than supermarkets with absurd over-stocking, etc.

3. You don't need to boycut meat to solve that problem. Just reduce it. From what I've read, the US consumes absurd amounts of meat, which fuels a giant meat production industry. If you cut the average meat consumption in half in the US, the meat industry would no longer be the primary consumer.

Meat itself is not to blame for the absurd over-production and over-consumption we see today. It is instead a result of the usual corporate greed, profit optimization, and our total ignorance for the side-effects of our convenience. Vegetarianism is entirely symptomatic treatment, rather than dealing with the root-cause.

(For the record, I respect the choice to not eat meat for other reasons, but I am only considering the environmental impact here.)

`. I don't mean "going vegetarian". I mean "going vegan". Milk, eggs, and fish have some of the same problems environmentally and ethically. When I say ethically, I don't just mean our responsibility not to bring harm to other species on the planet, although I feel that is important, but also our responsibility to future generations.

2. Yes, food is overproduced. Yes, too much food gets thrown away. However, this is massively dwarfed by the wasted food that we feed in animal lots, by a huge degree. Yes, me and my family going vegan doesn't have a huge impact, but it certainly massively reduces our carbon output, at a time when it just seems to be going up on a person to person basis. Last I checked, the amount that I was personally outputting was around 50% the US average. The only major difference was that I was vegan.

3. To maintain 7B people, most people will have to not eat meat, or eat it so sparingly as to be effectively vegan/vegetarian.

Let's present evidence:

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...

> A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use.

> It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car.

I don't care if you eat meat, but do it with honest realizations as to the cost. In a couple generations the costs will be clear, and our actions today regarding animal food production will be viewed for the atrocity that it is.

As someone who's been through several cycles of climate related depression this year, I just want to reach out to fellow HNers and say it's not the end of the world.

Our society, and our civilisation is going to change, in massive ways in the coming century, one way or another. And all of us are going to live in less luxury than we do now - simply because such luxury is unsustainable. But it doesn't mean or children are all going to starve or drown.

We don't know what the future holds. Go back to the boundless optimism of the fifties, where everyone thought we'd live on the moon by now, drive spaceships to work and have robot butlers. I feel like today some of us are at the other end of the spectrum, in boundless pesimism.

Do all you can to pollute less, and encourage those around you to do the same. Drive less. Don't fly. Buy second hand. Replace your oil boiler. Grow veg. Write to your representatives But don't give up on your children's future. Just because the world of their twenties won't resemble yours, doesn't mean they won't find happiness. In 30 years the world could be ugly by todays standards but you and i and our kids will probably all still be in it.

And for your own mental health, don't let HN comments drag you down. I've seen people on here literally advocating suicide over this issue. We as tech heads are typically of a personality which is susceptible to these negative feedback loops, and reading posts on here can break a person. I'm breaking my own rule today even being here but I'm feeling good for once and wanted to spread it.

Be well, have fun with your daughters, watch them grow up.

How do you know at least some of our children are not going to starve, or worse, be forced into warfare over crucial resources?

I'd like that crystal ball you have. Blind optimism is still blind. Facts are not on our side.

50s optimism and status quo dropped us into most of the current problems. (combined with population boom which has now ended)

The trends as they are now are not reassuring and there seems to be no political will to touch anything meaningful.

It is all fixable but the upheaval is likely going to be massive. We have no idea which form.

> How do you know at least some of our children are not going to starve, or worse, be forced into warfare over crucial resources?

Of course I can't know that, I have no crystal ball. I'm saying that assuming that we're all doomed is as bad as assuming everything is fine and denying the problem.

> 50s optimism and status quo dropped us into most of the current problems.

I wasn't advocating 50s optimism but rather saying it's an extreme and we've swung to the other extreme, at least on HN. I'm not optimistic about the future but I'm not fatally pessimistic about it either, at least not anymore. Reading comments here is a good way to trigger that fatal pessimism, make you want to quit your job, buy a gun and go live up a mountain.

> It is all fixable but the upheaval is likely going to be massive. We have no idea which form.

Exactly my point. There will be upheaval. We have no idea. And it won't be a magical fun time. But it might not be a hellish nightmare apocalypse either. Just bear that in mind, comment readers. Don't fall into despair about the future.

Don't be optimistic that we'll overcome resource depletion without suffering, be optimistic that our efforts can reduce that suffering. There isn't time to dodge the blow, but we can lessen the severity, and everyone who is capable and willing to support that goal is needed. Seek solutions, teach, enable others to do the same.

Somewhere between some layers of bedrock, is a old dinosaur and a young dinosaur:

"Dont you worry, young one, its not so bad. Look up there- a shooting star, now make a wish, while it lasts-"

"I want life to never change-"

Should mummy dinosaur have immediately drowned him in tar just in case?

I read the book 'World War Z', and at the risk of ruining the book for someone, there was a statement near the end that really stuck with me. Some guy was reflecting on how they'd won, and he said 'Tell that to the whales', paraphrasing.

I cannot deal with the guilt of the loss of megafauna. I just can't. If justice only includes humanity, then it isn't justice. I feel as if I've reached this place using sound ethical logic, and I'm culpable for what we are doing to this planet. We are bacteria in a petri dish.

> I'm culpable for what we are doing to this planet

You didn't ask to be born, and you're doing your best to avoid harming the planet. You can't hold yourself responsible for the extinction of another species. Humans are of course responsible. Without us, earth would be a verdant paradise full of wild animals eating each other. But to blame yourself for centuries of humans consuming, burning, polluting, building, paving and getting rich off the misery of others is morally flawed. You're no more responsible for that than the child of a murderer is for his father's crime. And by being vegan, driving less, espousing green values to those around you (as I'm sure you do) you're having a net positive effect, even while you consume the resources you need to survive. Earth might be better off without humans around, but humans are better off with you around.

> I'm already a vegan and don't drive much

Since 71% of pollution is coming from 100 companies[1] I don't think that you can stop global warming by being vegan or driving less. Blaming us single individuals is easy, but we a are not directly responsible for this. The most we can do is stop buying stuff from these polluting companies.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...

So I went back to the original PDF, https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1..., to look at the list.

I see lots of companies that sell oil there. Or coal. Or things. But none that really emit pollution as a side effect.

Someone like 3M could pollute less by changing the way it produces each packet of yellow stickers. The pollution is a side effect, it's something the company can change by internal decisions.

Someone like Shell cannot pollute less by selling 1l of petroleum (I assume that pollution during production is a rounding error in this context). The pollution is inherent in the product sold. The act of polluting is identical with the act of selling.

Which implies that your last sentence should be "the most we can do is stop buying polluting products".

> The act of polluting is identical with the act of selling.

The act of polluting is identical with the act of consuming.

For the final customer, yes.

> Blaming us single individuals is easy, but we a are not directly responsible for this

Companies are comprised of people. Governments are comprised of people. We absolutely are responsible and we have the power to do something about it. Stop being so passive and dismissive, if you care.

People with power have more, much more say than a typical person. Unfortunately, many of them are sociopaths or just do not care if there is no direct gain for them.

Are you advocating for general strikes here?

> Are you advocating for general strikes here?

I'm saying a passive approach may give you a moral high but it doesn't actually do anything. Saying "Only someone else can fix this problem." is part of the problem, not the solution.

>> Blaming us single individuals is easy, but we a are not directly responsible for this

> Companies are comprised of people. Governments are comprised of people. We absolutely are responsible and we have the power to do something about it. Stop being so passive and dismissive, if you care.

So what do you suggest? Blow those 100 companies up with TNT?

The individual approach is part of the divide and conquer method used as a defensive of the capitalistic system.

CO2 isn't pollution. CO2 is causing massive greening of the earth.

Yep. This is something people get wrong about the old Limits to Growth study: they assume it's just about running out of resources. Actually a key feature of the model is that you spend more and more resources on dealing with the effects of environmental damage.

The interesting result was that, given that dynamic, your economy keeps growing and everything looks great, then suddenly it all crashes down.

>>Hard to develop a space program when you're spending all your production fighting over scarce resources, plugging leaks, and attempting to feed a planet with decreasing yields.

All the more reason to develop your space program.

At the risk of pointing to Movies, but yet, one of the underlying themes in the movie Interstellar is some day there will be no option but to leave.

So its about time we think seriously about mining asteroids, space colonies and having some kind of permanent self sustaining and growing colonies in space.

Sure Humans are still likely to have the same problems, but you have eliminated the biggest threat to our existence, and we now have thousands of years at our disposal to plan the next steps.

It would take a whole lot for Earth to become less habital and more expensive than anywhere in space we can reach. Interstellar also included Matthew McConuhagh communicating quantum gravity info to his daughter in the past from inside a black hole. That’s not a realistic scenario.

Agreed. I loved "Interstellar", but leaving Earth is a hopeless prospect.

How do you move 8 billion people to another planet when it costs a $billion to send just 5 people into Earth orbit? Worse, there's nowhere enough sunlight and water anywhere in this solar system to sustain more than a handful of people.

No, if mankind can't make it here, we can't make it anywhere.

The same way we explored the earth. Every one won't move at once.

These are gradual things that unfold over decades to centuries.

See, exploring Earth takes almost no energy, mostly time and will and supplies. Ships at super efficient.

On the other hand, getting to 1st cosmic speed takes a lot of energy released in a relatively short burst or some kind of space elevator which we cannot build yet.

You cannot make this "gradual" really. You either get to orbit or don't. The "gradual" phase of getting into space is done. We got to orbit.

We need a major economy and scale breakthrough now or you cannot even try sending people off anywhere. So major that small improvements as done by SpaceX will not get there in centuries.

Totally agree. I have a couple visions of attainable infrastructure evolutions, we should have every city and county helping sponsor X Prizes that would help us attain incredible improvements: • elevate all city infrastructure up off the ground, 100 feet or more. If you figure that out you get arable, natural landscapes back and you keep your city too. • How to bring light down to the ground underneath it all? I say we build transparent canals, use their shape to lense light through and around. • these canals, there could be extra channels/tubes added to store and process dirty, utility and drinkable water • create food programs that bring growing, harvesting, finishing and cooking down into the crowds of us who’d want to participate. Can we reduce the cost of food by orders of magnitude?

We can definitely colonize space. And we can make space travel vastly cheaper.

But I'm extremely doubtful we would ever reach a point where moving everyone off of earth is easier than fixing whatever is broken with earth. Or that it would even get within a factor of 10.

Moving everyone off-planet, no. Getting a presence up there, and creating off-planet production sites on the other hand, would be quite handy on the other hand. That way we could reduce the impact industrial production has on the planet.

Right, if it's possible to sustain a colony on mars, shouldn't it be even easier to sustain a colony on earth?

> slowly

My grandfather, who raised me, was born in 1919 and died in 2003. He didn't say much about anything, but he watched, listened and observed, always.

He lived most of his adult life in suburban Southern California, but thanks to a 30 union job, and an early retirement, we spent each summer, all of it, camping in the eastern high sierras. Growing up with them, I first went in 1970, and (with them) last went in 1990.

He noted on more than one occasion how much less wildlife there was in the deep woods we used to hike together. He said it was 'quiet', and I sensed anxiety from the old man as he said it.

This moved the young me, profoundly, because my grandfather was the most stolid person I've ever known. No surprise: he spent his teenage years in the dust bowl, following a 5 mile trap line in the often brutal Nebraska winters, with a rifle, by the age of 14, in order to help keep the family from starvation. As a young man, he survived some of the most brutal battle in the Pacific.

A man who, faced with armed and dangerous gangs in the neighborhood he bought into decades earlier, showed no fear.

A man connected to the land in ways most of us can't even imagine today, he was worried about how the land was changing.

Thus, I effectively automatically, by default, became a young person who cared very deeply about the environment.

> we boil

I consider all of this, and my 16 year old son, and no clarity is apparent to me.

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