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Comment by tucaz | Hacker News Reader

How much can we use and at what rate can we use resources from the planet?

Given this is obviously too vague/broad a question to be answerable, I get the feeling you're just asking so you can say, "Gotcha, you don't know, environmentalism is bullshit!"

On the off-chance that you are actually asking this question in good faith to try to learn something, I'd start by looking at the Wikipedia page on Global Warming[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

I think the question asked is rather important if we want to know where we should get to. Maybe it is not easy to answer - but then you can rather ask how do we know it is too rapidly now - and then really you can answer the question by saying we know if X happens it is too rapidly, so we can only use it at a rate below what would cause X to happen.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, global warming is not caused by the rate at which we are using natural resources but by the amount of CO2 we are putting in the atmosphere.

> I think the question asked is rather important if we want to know where we should get to. Maybe it is not easy to answer - but then you can rather ask how do we know it is too rapidly now - and then really you can answer the question by saying we know if X happens it is too rapidly, so we can only use it at a rate below what would cause X to happen.

I don't think the question asked is important, because it's not even specific enough to be coherent. For starters, what is X? If X is "oil", the answer is a lot different from if X is "sunlight", and asking about "resources" as if that broad category is a coherent entity is not going to yield any useful information.

> Also, correct me if I'm wrong, global warming is not caused by the rate at which we are using natural resources but by the amount of CO2 we are putting in the atmosphere.

Well, yes. But they're related questions: consuming fossil fuels and meat produces a lot of our carbon emissions.

One of the major forms of natural resource is ancient sequestered carbon, held in easily usable hydrocarbon form, that we consume (burn) to put that CO2 into the atmosphere.

Yes, and due to CO2 there is presumably no ideal rate at which to use it other than 0. Great. If the person I replied to meant oil, they should have said oil. Not resources.

There's many measures of environmental impact, some good, some less so, some that try to be wide ranging others more focused. One of the oldest is Earth Overshoot Day which imperfectly marks the point each year, that we pass the earth's ability to recover what we have used that year. Or that we go into ecological debt each year if you prefer. We've been running a debt, and accelerating its growth since the seventies.

It gets earlier nearly every year. This year was July 29th. In 1987 it was October 23rd. So right now we need 1.7 earths to sustainably supply what we are taking.

This measure focuses on renewable resources. Our point of non-sustainability may worsen markedly if we include non-renewable resources and other forms of pollution.

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

We've used up our budget of CO2 we can add to the atmosphere without major consequences. Anything we add from here on out is CO2 we have to recapture and put back, or live with even more expensive consequences.

Water is more of a local problem. Desalination is getting cheaper, but any region that just drains their aquifers without transitioning to either a sustainable amount of water use or a sustainable water source will be in for a lot of pain.

Our consumption of metals is honestly fine. Most are easy to recycle, and it looks like we will figure out asteroid mining before we come close to running out of anything.

Oil will take care of itself through economics as long as we figure out how to (re)capture the released CO2.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712 has a pretty good discussion of this question.

> Compare the lifestyle of a subsistence farmer with that of a wealthy city-dweller in a developed country. More land is required to grow the city dweller's food

Maybe I'm misreading this - but is the productivity of Subsistence farming so much better than that of more industrial farming methods, and if so why would we not just switch all farms to using same methods that Subsistence farmers do?

Without digging into the topic in depth, ten will get you twenty it is primarily a question of diet rather than technique. Maybe less food waste. The lessons from the diet will be ones you probably already know (eat less meat, especially beef), and not all good. The reasons for less food waste aren't particularly useful, unless you want to adopt the hyperlocal production implicit in subsistence farming.

> unless you want to adopt the hyperlocal production implicit in subsistence farming.

Will it have better crop yields than modern farming techniques? Then maybe? I mean for that efficiency it may be worth it. I still find the claim astounding and I would love to see some citation for it though rather than some anecdotes on waste less.

There are easily three major reasons you could find for why the statement in the BBC article (per person, fewer acres are used growing food for a subsistence farmer than a city-dweller):

1. Diet (subsistence farmers probably eat less meat, beef in particular; beef has an absurd environment footprint in on basically all metrics).

2. Food waste (the transport of food and delay between production and consumption of food is a major source of food waste; food doesn't spoil in the grocery store waiting to be bought if it is never in a grocery store).

3. Better per-acre yield (which would be surprising, given that for major crops, per-acre yields increased by 3-10x over the last century of industrial farming).

I'm saying I don't think 3 is the case at all, and that mostly 1 and maybe 2 explain the difference adequately.

"More land is required to grow the city dweller's food, more materials are used to build the city dweller's home and workplace, more energy is required for transport, heating and cooling."

Presumably, American city dwellers waste more food than subsistence farmers, but that factor is dwarfed by such measures as CO2 production. As the article describes.

The claim is not that they waste more food but as you quoted that "More land is required to grow the city dweller's food".

Which as I pointed out I find hard to believe and would like to see supporting evidence for.

Futher, if the CO2 production of subsistence farming methods for the same output is so much lower - why not switch all food production to those?

I really would like to see something to support the claims in this article.

About half of what we're doing, as a rule of thumb.

The answer to this question is far too vast and complex for a hacker news comment. The real problem is that the people who hold the levers of power to create change are far too invested in the status quo. They may have an ethical and humanitarian reason to respond to the scientific communities concerns and data, but they have literally every other single interest pointed in the exact opposite direction.

I think we're rapidly approaching the point where the youngest people are going to abandon "civil" methods of change. They're being faced with a world they won't be able to live in, and are derided, mocked, parodied, and of course denied any kind of power to exact the changes needed.

Power isn't denied, authority is.

They are denied authority on public media platforms.

What is authority if not a kind of power?

What is the “uncivil” way of stopping climate change? Might as well go to the beach and punch waves as they roll in, it would be the same result.

Civil unrest. Protests that devolve into riots.

Ever seen the painting "Bastille Day"? There are always options when the powerful fail the powerless. Large amounts of modern society were put in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but if the leadership is intent on making those protections ineffective, well, there's always guillotines again.

For those who consider this uncouth or believe there must be another way: even if the answer is to come through reforms, having a tangible threat of revolution on the table helps bring meaningful concessions from those who have thus far preferred symbolic gestures to placate.

What use is a guillotine against a hydra?

I believe Hercules solved this one by cutting all the heads off at the same time. So, in theory, you just need one guillotine per head.

He cut the heads off and his nephew, Iolaos, cauterised the wounds so they wouldn't grow back.

So you'd also need fire.

Because "Of course you should fight fire with fire. You should fight everything with fire".

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