Hacker News Reader

Comment by anemoiac | Hacker News Reader

There will always be enough until one day there isn't...

You never just run out of something one day. Demand goes up, supply goes down, and as you realize that, prices go up. As prices go up, alternatives are used and adjustments are made.

As an example, I've heard people say that if Russia shut off the gas supply, Europe would freeze to death. Maybe that's true at first glance, but it ignores that gas is used because it is the best option. But it's not like freezing to death is the second best option. Heated blankets that run on a fraction of the electricity of electric heaters, still exist. Wood stoves exist in older homes. Adults moving back to their parents homes with wood stoves exists. On and on. Most people aren't just going to give up because one resource dies out. Theyll just move to the second best option, that's more expensive. And that's ignoring innovation even.

Wood stoves aren't just a relic of old homes. They are becoming increasingly trendy in the UK again now.

They were really, erm, hot over a decade ago. I've always wanted one having grown up in a house (UK) with log fires. But the particulate pollution is really bad and that sadly killed the dream for me. Many areas ("smoke control areas" under the Clean Air Act) don't allow them any more as they were bringing down air quality considerably.

https://www.gov.uk/smoke-control-area-rules

There’s a considerable amount of the U.K. that are not inside the smoke control areas.

My friend runs a shop that sells indoor and outdoor wood burners. I picked up a rather nice Belgian made outdoor heater from him too. It’s got a super tall chimney and is surrounded by glass panelling. Looks amazing.

Tell that to the inhabitants of Easter Island.

> A settler on Easter Island stood beside the island’s last tree. He or she looked around the treeless horizon, every one of those trees removed by man, and chopped it down anyway. Afterwards, the island died — the nutrients washed away, the landscape stripped. The population collapsed into warfare and cannibalism.

I have always had a hard time believing this story. It assumes these Easter Island people were really dumb and irrational. It might be that this story is not what really happened.

> It is a compelling tale, but may be completely false, according to research published yesterday. The Easter Island population did collapse, not due to this “ecocide”, but instead something less remarkable: the arrival of Europeans, bringing syphilis, smallpox and slavery.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/european-disease-led-to-d...

The thing is trees take a long-ass time to grow, and if you need wood now to make tools to produce food, what are you gonna do, starve to death so someone else can make tools in 50 years?

Man-made deforestation of islands is fairly well documented. Iceland was largely deforested by early settlers as well.

Deforestation alone may not be what killed the settlers of Easter island, but it sure as hell didn't do them any favors to not have access to wood.

>It assumes these Easter Island people were really dumb and irrational.

No it doesn't. It assumes a tragedy of the commons. Everybody who cut down trees did so out of rational self-interest. The same kind of thing happens even in supposedly advanced civilizations, e.g. with the Atlantic cod fishery. Coordination problems are hard to solve.

There is a very big island called madagascar that has experienced extensive deforestation.

https://youtu.be/L9zWDtDKDS8?t=65

I mean, yeah, it perfectly describes humanity - we'll die on this planet while knowing there are unlimited resources outside of it.

But it was a small island and they couldn't even read/write.

but if the island originally had enough resources to produce a seafaring vessel, but due to the mismanagement, they failed to save and invest enough, and finally squandered so much that there's not enough left to build one, then they're stuck on the island until everything runs out.

So do we have, today, enough resources on earth extract resources away from the island called earth? What if we run out of petroleum before we built enough rockets and launch systems and fuel?

One needs to be very careful when making statements like that because early accounts of Easter Island are varied and subjective. However what is known with greater certainty is that they saw lots of visitors who brought diseases like smallpox and who took substantial numbers of Easter Island natives into slavery.

I don't understand, are you saying the trees got smallpox and were enslaved and that's why they are gone?

My point is that some of the accounts do report trees. While the stories of deforestation are true it’s a far cry from the island being baron and inhabitants turning into savage cannibals. That’s the subjective part.

Yet we do know with certainty that hundreds, if not thousands, of inhabitants were taken as slaves and the remaining suffered from rampant diseases that were introduced to that island.

So what killed them might not have been lack of resources but rather the same old story of more powerful nations exploiting them.

Well this is a discussion about trees. The post I replied to suggested we start chopping down trees when we run out of other resources. Hence my suggestion that this may not be a good idea.

I don't understand where you're getting the cannibalism from.

Your opening comment was terse enough to be ambiguous and cannibalism is often (subjectively) cited as the end game of Easter Island. That’s how.

To be fair, gas isn't just used for heating. Germany needs it for industrial work, as far as I know. But yes, heating alternatives are available aplenty.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com