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Comment by bin0 | Hacker News Reader

> The only way this is happening is if the planet gets depopulated of humans rapidly.

Please don't tell me you're one of those "earth would be better of were we all dead" people. I can't stand that kind of post-modernist, nihilistic garbage. I'm not mister optimist, but still, that's way too far.

Also, that kind of rhetoric is going to end up being a justification for some one very evil doing some thing very bad.

> The only way to fix this problem is to stop using fossil fuels. There is no politically viable way for this to happen.

Eeh, wrong. The fact that we're not there yet doesn't mean we can't get there. At some point, pulling energy out of thin air will end up cheaper than doing expensive drilling operations.

Post-modernists are the philosophical equivalent of the kid who gets mad when he loses at Monopoly, flips the board, and walks away.

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Would you please not take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar? I feel like we've had this conversation with you many times already. It's not what this site is for, so please stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"earth would be better off were we all dead"

The right answer to this is "for who?" and "why would it matter then?"

We don't save the earth for the earth. We save it for ourselves.

We also do it to preserve our unique prestine environment providing higher-order evolution. And we do it to preserve our ideas, our discoveries and our memories.

Then again, perhaps all worlds that develop truly high-order species require an quick evolutionary step wherein weird little monkeys fill the biosphere with plastic and get it suitably hot enough to being said high-order evolution. A period future historians will refer to as "the plasticene"?

I love that train of thought. Could be the basis for a sci-fi book.

> We don't save the earth for the earth. We save it for ourselves.

I was hoping that we were trying to save it (from us!) because this is simply the right thing to do.

Not trying to be the least bit facetious: What makes it the right thing to do?

For starters:

What says that we have more right to liver here, take the air, water and other resources than any of the other clearly sentient & intelligent beings among whom we live?

I have a hard time finding any good answers to that question that do not boil down to <might makes right>, i.e., we're more intelligent, capable, etc., so screw all the other animals and plants (upon which, BTW, our continued existence depends).

So, from an ethical POV, mere consideration of the other beings makes it hge right thing to do.

Even if we want to save it for only ourselves, we need to wise up damn fast. Look at the list starting with AGW shifting the climate faster than any time since the asteroid 65MM yrs ago (& now showing serious signs of runaway feed-forward effects), plastic debris and microplastics choking the food chain on sea and land, neonicotinid pesticides destroying the insect population & especially pollinators at well into double digit levels, monoculture industrial agriculture, massive habitat destruction... the list goes on and on. The result is that we are likely getting dangerously close to breaking the food web. When that happens (even without war) there will only be a few survivors, if any, and they likely not consider themselves lucky.

So, even if only for selfish motives, merely acting like it is right to preserve the earth's biosphere, is the right thing to do.

>What says that we have more right to liver here, take the air, water and other resources than any of the other clearly sentient & intelligent beings among whom we live?

Nature does. In the same way it gave wolves the right to eat rabbits. By providing us with the indisputable power to do so. It also gave us the ability to choose:

We can live a tiny existence as a species, completely eschewing any and all anthropological climate impact until we are eventually extincted by natural climate change just as every other species that ever lived on this planet was or will be.

Or we can consume the entire world in a few generations in a desperate bid to show each other the maximum number ads for ephemeral crap that doesn't matter at all.

Or something in the middle. I personally vote for the careful, intentional consumption of most of this world to further human sentience and aid it in expanding into the universe. (And grieve for the fact that we seem to be irreversibly choosing the "ads" option when either of the others would seem much more preferable.)

>> ...that do not boil down to <might makes right>? >> Nature does. In the same way it gave wolves the right to eat rabbits. By providing us with the indisputable power to do so.

So, how, exactly does that not boil down to <might makes right>?

I'm also generally for your Option 3, but looking at it realistically, we're quite fully committed to Option 2, consuming the entire world in a few generations.

Short of a massive global Marshal Plan level effort to eradicate poverty, educate everyone, and provide contraception so that every locale goes well below replacement reproduction (or a bio-engineered highly contagious virus that causes infertility), I see vastly insufficient efforts to put us on an even sustainable track.

And the problem is that when resources are exhausted to , e.g., a level 10% below what will sustain a polulation, it isn't a 10% die-off, but more like a 90% die-off, since almost all are under the sustainable level. We break hte food web, and we'll likely be part of the mass extinction.

But everyone has normalcy bias, so, enjoy it while it lasts, I guess.

So, how, exactly does that not boil down to <might makes right>?

It boils down exactly to might makes right, also know as "natural law". Everything else brings the argument into religious territory by assuming an absolute moral standard. (Which is fine by the way, as long as we explicitly call it out and argue from it in a consistent manner - and understand that we are crossing the border of science and philosophy when we do)

Actually, we can look to many studies of pre-linguistic children, primates, and birds showing that ALL of them show a significantly developed sense of fairness.

We can also look to vast quantities of documented examples of altruistic behavior in studies far "down" the animal scale.

There is substantial theory growing that religious and moral attitudes, cultural structures, and laws emerged from these innate qualities, rather than being some human invention.

Here's an article on just two: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/true-altruism-seen-c...

So, this "natural law" that you posit at the top/root of all behavior evaluation is actually quite shaky, and it is not at all clear that it has the priority you claim.

It looks far more like a justification for might being right. By that standard, it'd be ok for me to steal your pay, enslave you, or simply kill you for the $10 in your pocket if merely had the means & whim, with all concerns about fairness, ethics, morality, relegated to the minor realm of "religious territory".

Yet even a chimp, dog, elephant, or dolphin would know that it's wrong.

> At some point, pulling energy out of thin air will end up cheaper than doing expensive drilling operations.

A lot of people seem to believe that abundant clean energy is a sufficient solution for our environmental problems. A huge part of GHG emissions is due to deforesting and cattle, which has little to do with energy consumption.

History also seems to show that giving humanity abundant energy will only lead to it wrecking itself in some other way. Sustainability is simply not compatible with our crazy paradigm of unlimited growth and consumption.

> A huge part of GHG emissions is due to deforesting and cattle

Deforestation is clearly an issue, but I seem to recall reading about a diet with some/more/lots of seaweed essentially solved the methane issue of cattle?

If the deforestation is to have space for cows the answer is obvious: cow/fish hybrids. Or cows with scuba masks? No need to collect the seaweed, no need to destroy the forest.

You’ll need bigger fishing nets though.

> Deforestation is clearly an issue, but I seem to recall reading about a diet with some/more/lots of seaweed essentially solved the methane issue of cattle?

Don't get your hopes up. This story gets thrown around a lot, but it's based on a mini study with twelve cows.

Whether this will work at scale or permanently is pretty much an open question.

Had the same shower thought as you. If selective breeding can make a chihuahua out of the wolf, why not make aquatic cattle out of the whale? Plenty of pastures in the ocean.

Bonus: automatic surf and turf.

Cattle likely won't change. I'm going to keep eating meat. And deforestation may not change due to exploding population. However, that doesn't mean we can't capture carbon. I've seen numerous promising business ideas to capture carbon and convert it into useful materials; I think it's more feasible to do that than to force veganism on every one.

> I've seen numerous promising business ideas to capture carbon and convert it into useful materials; I think it's more feasible to do that than to force veganism on every one.

Yeah, we've all seen them - they make for fantastic headlines. None of them is as viable as protecting forests / planting trees by a long shot. They systematically fail to mention that the energy consumption is super high or that they're not scalable in another way - at least not in time.

> Cattle likely won't change. I'm going to keep eating meat [...] more feasible to do that than to force veganism on every one.

You don't need everyone to go vegan - we only need people to eat a lot less meat and diaries, and / or choose meat with a smaller footprint (e.g chicken). It's simply not reasonable to use 40% of arable lands to feed cattle given the environmental and food challenges of the 21st century.

If you're not willing to make the relatively small lifestyle change that is changing your diet, then let me tell you with blunt honesty: you're an instance of the most severe cause of climate change - privileged people not willing to give up on some of their comfort. This attitude is also collectively irrational, because climate change if not prevented will force us to much more radical lifestyle changes. I do hope you will reconsider.

60% of America is overweight or obese, and America throws out enough food to feed .. a lot of people, every day. Shame me for eating meat when you stop them from overeating food full stop - and all the farm machinery and transport and packaging involved in that.

I don't have children, I don't drive them to school in a SUV or to a holiday in DisneyWorld, I have never launched a SpaceX rocket, or lived on my own in a full size house. I have never been on a cruise. I don't live or work in an air-conditioned place.

To put it bluntly, f' off about calling people "the most severe cause of climate change" for eating a beef sandwich without considering anything else. It's unhelpful, provocative, and completely incorrect.

I didn't attend an international destination wedding this year, which a lot of my family did. How many bacon sandwiches does that earn me compared to my family?

If your answer is none because climate change is a global catastrophe and everyone has to pitch in, then what incentive does that give anyone? If any carbon slack of my reduced comfort is just getting eaten up by other people's indifference, aren't I better off being indifferent as well?

Yeah, I agree with what you are saying. This approach has put all the responsibility on the individual and has comfortably concealed the fact that a problem of this scale must be approached from above and in a systemic way. Yes, individuals can make a difference, in mass. So can laws that force them to act in a certain way and laws which actually touch the interests of the big polluters. Making the powerless majority feel guilty about their insignificant choices is not the solution, and it is just a way to not face the responsability of the big and influential culprits.

> f' off about calling people "the most severe cause of climate change" for eating a beef sandwich without considering anything else. It's unhelpful, provocative, and completely incorrect.

That's an entire mischaracterization of my argument, which was about willingness to change one's lifestyle in general, not specifically about eating a beef sandwich.

As in recent headline, Carnival Cruise Lines emit more pollution than all the cars in Europe[1].

Ten times more.

And I'm "with blunt honesty: an instance of the most severe cause of climate change"?

No. Just so much no.

[1] https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/news-opinion/carnival...

> privileged people

I don't eat a ton of beef, but no, beef is relatively affordable (at least in America). But I do eat a lot more chicken, and not a ton of beef. With that said, I want a good steak once every few months and a burger once a week. More importantly, I don't want the government saying "thou shalt" about my beef consumption, nor do I want people finger-wagging at me about it.

America can sustainably raise cattle. She has requisite land. It seems that people are saying that because everyone else can't do it, we need to change.

This is also the tragedy of the commons. If I emit less, others will feel they can emit more. I refuse to be "the sucker" that loses this game theory problem. With that said, I don't emit that much (all things considered). My biggest carbon outputs are driving (which I have to do) and air conditioning (I will not give this up; come live in hundred-degree Texas summers without it and then tell me to give it up). So I don't consider myself to be a catastrophic contributor to any thing. Besides, would money not be better spent curing cancer? I'm not sure that I believe the "impending doom" stuff about global warming. Humans are the most remarkably adaptable species on the planet; we will adapt to a hotter earth if need be.

> This is also the tragedy of the commons. If I emit less, others will feel they can emit more. I refuse to be "the sucker" that loses this game theory problem.

The whole point in the tragedy of the commons is that if everyone follows their own self interest (as you are doing) then everyone loses. That is why it is called a tragedy.

Saying you are going to avoid losing by taking what you want completely misunderstands what the problem is.

> come live in hundred-degree Texas summers without it and then tell me to give [air-con] up [...] we will adapt to a hotter earth if need be

Are you sure about that? It seems like we'd adapt by using more power, deepening the problem.

> It seems like we'd adapt by using more power, deepening the problem.

Not if it is solar/wind power as is the case for 50% of the power already (in my country). With 100% renewables you can waste as much energy as you like.

> With that said, I don't emit that much (all things considered)

Cool, how much? IIRC, sustainability would require an individual average below 2 teqCO2/year.

> Besides, would money not be better spent curing cancer?

Look at what the world would look like if climate change is not prevented: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/what-the-world-will-look-l.... Think of the consequences in famines (whole countries transformed into deserts), flooding, and the mass migrations and wars that would ensue. So no, cancer is not the priority, not when people will die by the hundreds of millions before reaching the age for getting cancer.

> I'm not sure that I believe the "impending doom" stuff about global warming.

Then you are in denial, and need to be exposed to more science. Again, sorry for being blunt.

> Humans are the most remarkably adaptable species on the planet; we will adapt to a hotter earth if need be.

Yeah sure, we can't individually give up on our beef sandwich, but we will have no problem adapting collectively to most of our current living spaces becoming uninhabitable.

You repeatedly crossed into personal attack in this thread. That's not ok, regardless of how right you are. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended when posting here?

> https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/what-the-world-will-look-l....

I could not see any graphics/media (the website is a mess. It tries to load a dozen 3rd party resources). But the article is pretty optimistic:

> Now is the time to buy property in Greenland – before it too turns green...

> Yeah sure, we can't individually give up on our beef sandwich

I'm sure there will be cities in these new deserts. And people in these cities will still eat beef sandwiches.

If somebody talks like that, my impression is always that it's more about restriction and reduction than about saving the world.

> Cool, how much? IIRC, sustainability would require an individual average below 2 teqCO2/year.

Cool, is there a CO2 calculator somewhere?

I used this one: https://www3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator/

I found one with metric measurements. I consume about 12 tons Co2 per year. Is a little more than average (12 hours flight this year).

Dividing household total (according to the EPA calculator: https://www3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator/) number of people, about 5.7 tons/person/yr. This is less than the American average. This is also considering that people in said household are required to drive long distances for work (I'm talking 300-mile distances several times per month). We do, however, drive mostly diesel. None of us are willing to give up our jobs. Transportation is most of our emissions; AC is the runner-up.

How about you?

> Look at what the world would look like if climate change is not prevented

I think global warming is over-exaggerated by alarmists who seek to push a political agenda. I'd say it's reasonable to say there's an issue, but certainly not of the magnitude many pretend. I hear 97% quoted a lot, but believe many are simply afraid to contradict the narrative blasted at every one from all major media outlets. 97% it may be, but it wouldn't be the first time the "scientific consensus" was wrong.

> You are in denial

Nope, see above

> we can't individually give up on our beef sandwich

I don't want to, and even if I do, someone else will feel like he is now able to emit more. As I said, tragedy of the commons. And I just don't buy the idea that our living spaces will "become uninhabitable". Why the predictions of a global desert? Greenhouses tend to be damp and flourishing.

I read this comment yesterday and I keep coming back to it because it depresses me at a fundamental level. "I don't wanna change and even if I was going to I reckon _they_ wouldn't so I still won't" is the tragedy of the commons yes. But that's not a _defence_ of your actions, it's an admission of your culpability.

The "I'm not in denial, I'm just denying the science" is just cream on the top.

There are reasonably credible proposals for minor dietary changes for the cows that will drastically reduce methane emissions. A tax on cattle methane emissions could easily make this happen.

There was an article about a small change in cattle diet that vastly reduced it's methane emissions. Something related to an Australian algae. Here, I found it:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/environme...

It's easy when you just focus on doom thinking and relegate everything else as fake or irrelevant.

The proposed solution of depopulation is based on a flawed premise. It isn't necessarily true that a growing population needs greater access to fossil fuel. Rather, as access to fossil fuel grows so can the population.

What you describe is not postmodernism. Antinatalism is certainly not nihilism. You seem to be confused

You use "post-modernism" like Jordan Peterson uses "post-modernism"... incorrectly, and likely without having read any of it.

If anything, reducing population (not through genocide obviously) for expedience is actually a very neoliberal idea

> You use "post-modernism" like Jordan Peterson uses "post-modernism"... incorrectly, and likely without having read any of it.

Incorrect on both counts. And I use it to describe the philosophical base that essentially, there is no absolute truth and nothing can be taken for reality. Which, ironically, post-modernists use their only absolute truth.

> reducing population (not through genocide obviously) for expedience is actually a very neoliberal idea

What makes you think I'm a neoliberal? And what does that have to do with what I said? More importantly, how would you reduce it? It took hundreds of years for the West to reduce birth rates. Cultural factors often mean people have many children, even if they have access to birth control. See the attempts to do this in Africa. There has been some success, but not a ton.

"Incorrect on both counts. And I use it to describe the philosophical base that essentially, there is no absolute truth and nothing can be taken for reality. Which, ironically, post-modernists use their only absolute truth."

Ok so remind me what that has to do with population control or believing that things would be better off without humanity. Also feel free to refer me to major post modern philosophers who advocate for such a thing, because I've never read them. Most post-modernism is very life affirming in a very backwards way. The people I hear advocating for this sort of ideology is actually many in the mainstream "left" (read Democratic) in the US.

I didn't say you were a neoliberal, just that such a policy is. In the sense of "for the greater good" and it's insistence on dehumanization and erosion of any non-Capital based relations

There is liberal in neoliberal, and there would be no population control like the one child policy with more limited intervention from the state.

Neoliberalism is a fairly conservative ideology ironically enough

> post-modernist, nihilistic garbage

This argument predates postmodernism by two centuries.

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

If anything, postmodernism wouldn't acknowledge a way to classify people into "worth-living" and "not-worth-living"; if not by ethics or humanism, because it would find most or all criteria in the filters to be bullshit.

Malthusianism more or less espouses an equilibrium - short on food, people die, more food available, people have more kids, cycle repeats. Not that all the humans need to die. There's also a great deal of difference between "I believe there may be a lack of food" (but not passing a value judgement on the situation) and "I believe people need to die" (claiming the "greater good").

I don’t think the parent you responded to meant by depopulation the TOTAL extinction of humans. It’s likely they meant, say, massive increases in family planning and women’s education leading to people having fewer kids later. Child mortality has been greatly reduced, someone should tell many African men! Religion plays a big role in this as well, around the world.

We have learned how to live on a credit card at the expense of our children. We imagine we have “escaped the Malthusian trap”, but the bill comes due!

More people means more factory farms, overfishing, desertification, deforestation, plastic pollution, garbage and releasing greenhouse gases. The accumulation of garbage and the depletion of resources can throw delicate ecosystems out of whack (bleached corals, for instance, or collapse of bee colonies).

Ar best, we are reducing biodiversity greatly and turning the earth into a monoculture of fatory farms for feeding a growing population of humans.

At worst, that’s one unsustainable step away from collapse.

If these people really believed that overpopulation was the problem, then why don't they start depopulating with themselves?*

It sounds terrible I know, but it serves to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the stance. Like George Carlin said,

"I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me."

* note: don't actually do this if you believe this wretched, damned worldview, go seek help, I don't really want anyone to off themselves because they think it "helps the world"

Perhaps, having had no say in their own conception, it's reasonable to allow them as much a chance of a life as anyone else?

Overpopulation is clearly a problem, probably the problem, but you don't solve it by guilt induced suicide, mandated death or shipping people off to camps (not in the "civilised" world anyway). You discourage excess procreation. Tax after the first child, free birth control, and advertising campaigns should reduce numbers. After all many nations did all that in reverse to encourage more children, but they didn't make breeding compulsory. There is no hypocrisy in the stance. I'm sure there's other non-dystopian possible approaches that stay safely away from holocaust and eugenics.

The hypocrisy is pretending a finite planet has infinite space for expansion where we keep expanding until there is a catastrophic crash. Perhaps some wildlife will remain, perhaps not. Far better to have a controlled stop and seek to find a sustainable population - where earth can regenerate what we use, and we still have sustainable wildlife, insect, sea and plant populations and some wilderness.

Humanity keeps on demonstrating they can't do self-controlled, so your worldview wins. Future crash it will be then.

For the same reason a regular Progressive who believes in Medicare for All isn’t going to opt out of private health insurance and give 30% of their money to the government. There is no program in place for the money to go to. Under a progressive tax system, they might not owe all that much, if anything. And the goal is to put the program in place and require everyone to participate. Look at the success of the Toronto Protocol banning CFCs to save the Ozone layer. How do George Carlin’s arguments apply there? “If you are really worried about the hole in the ozone layer, just stop buying hair spray, and stop pestering the rest of us!”

I'm a huge fan of George Carlin and many of his observations are spot on but it should at all times be remembered that his main mission was to entertain, not to make political statements designed to impact future policy. Yes, there is some hypocrisy involved (people that vote green, drive Porsches and go on two airplane holidays per year) but at the same time he benefits from the caricature, and that is too broad a brush to paint very large swathes of the population with.

If the planet is overpopulated then that is a problem, regardless of whether people observing this fact or reaching that conclusion see themselves as part of that problem, and regardless of whether or not they take themselves out of the genepool to remove the hypocrisy.

Suppose we have enough people and resources to support the current population, but not enough to support 20% more at the same level of luxury ... you don't think we should bother to try and keep the population at the level where everyone can benefit?

I think we should improve our tools/planing/everything to support 20% more of us at a higher level of luxury..

And we'll do it with our infinite levels of resources and energy, yay! /s

> You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat.

IMO that’s the wrong conclusion to draw. Its just natural behavior. Its simply an argument for localism and accountability.

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