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I’m always skeptical of economic models of the present let alone the future. Past performance is not indicative of future results and all economic models have very poor prediction performance over longer terms because of this. Black swan events completely eclipse and wipe out any growth that was sustained over the longer term.

If we miss something in the forecast that results in a rapid ecological collapse, then reality will look different. Additionally, a slowing down of progress is actually a worrying sign if it’s driven by pushback from our world. The reason is that even if we stopped all human CO2 emissions, climate change would continue to get worse because it takes time for the climate to stabilize. And we’re not at net 0. We’re still pumping out more each year than any other in the past and we’re just starting to level off the acceleration of that growth. My point being here that even if one or two might be slightly better, three or four might be slightly worse and the downward slope from there is significantly faster (easier to increase entropy than decrease it).

The only thing that gives me the tiniest bit of hope is that two generations of progress is a significant amount of time for scientific breakthroughs. If we can really unlock our green energy production (which we can with nuclear fission today and hopefully fusion not too far off) and get our sequestration up by many orders of magnitude (which with fission and fission we could conceivably enable but there are other logistical roadblocks), then we might be able to unwind some of the damage. Some damage will be permanent obviously. Still, I think betting on that outcome is a fool’s wager. The outcome scenario of a loss is quite bad. Much better to try to arrest the damage as hard as possible now.

Life was much better for those in Europe who survived the black death. They lived longer, healthier lives. They were paid more due to labour shortages. By nearly every measure their lives were better off than those who lived before the plague. That is small comfort to those who suffered and died during the plague.

We're in a similar boat. The winners (survivors) of the climate change disaster will be better off. But if we're to be good Rawlsians [1] then we shouldn't assume that we will be among the survivors.

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

The black death is a bad analogy. At the time, population was at the upper limit that could be sustained with the technology of the time. If a farmer wanted a larger harvest, they would need to farm a larger area, denying its use to others, thus causing them to starve. Conversely, the large number of deaths directly increased the resources available to everyone else. It was a zero-sum game, with one person's loss being the other's gain, and vice versa.

We no longer live in that world. Assume climate change kills off 100 million people (more than any estimate I could find), i.e. slightly more than 1% of the current world population. The resulting increase in resources per capita would be less than a single year of global GDP growth. This is very much not zero-sum. If a farmer who used to till the fields by hand switches to using a tractor, they're feeding many more people than they harm with the tractor's greenhouse gas emissions.

> Assume climate change kills off 100 million people (more than any estimate I could find), i.e. slightly more than 1% of the current world population. The resulting increase in resources per capita would be less than a single year of global GDP growth.

I presume this is highly dependent on which 100M people are killed.

I was talking about the difference between (world resources)/(world population) and (world resources)/(world population - 100 million).

Of course if you personally kill a very rich person and take their stuff, that might be a life-changing event for you, but unlike during the black death, the average person's income is not significantly derived from dead people's stuff.

100M deaths may make sense if we're ignoring the extreme likelihood of a third world war caused by climate. But given what we know of the history of resource depletions, and the fact that some of countries which will be first affected will be India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, which have minor skirmishes even today and two of which are armed with nuclear weapons, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that such a low number is going to prove anywhere near accurate.

I don't see how they could be better off than us in any of the following dimensions, or the ones you mention, and likely many more:

* Health/medical technology and access

* Abundance and variety of food

* Education

* Life expectancy

* Quality (in terms of health) of life

* Child mortality

Looking at life expectancy alone, I'd be surprised if their life expectancy was higher (is this what you had in mind? https://sc.edu/uofsc/announcements/2014/05_sharondewitte_bla...). Certainly some individuals would live longer lives than some individuals, but I wouldn't expect the life expectancy to be higher, nor would I expect the quality of health of that life to be better.

In some ways I could imagine they'd be better -- e.g., amount of land they could own. If you have some data or information about their life quality, I would be interested in seeing it.

Regarding Rawls' veil, I did say, and do think, that we should be ensuring that everyone gets brought along. For someone who isn't convinced about that, the veil may be a good thought experiment to help them along.

You're missing their point. They're not comparing those who survived the black death to us, but to the people who lived before the black death struck.

Similarly, the people who will survive the coming climate catastrophes may well live better lives than we do today, and thus some future Economist may well claim that it all turned out OK in the end. But that analysis ignores the billions of people whose lives will likely end because of global warming.

> But that analysis ignores the billions of people whose lives will likely end because of global warming.

...that number is not even remotely plausible. Where did you get billions from?

Example: 250,000 extra deaths estimated between 2030 and 2050. That means an extra 5 million deaths in that period (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-cha...).

Another: 83 million extra deaths by 2100, and I suspect that's under the more pessimistic scenario (https://www.forbes.com/sites/dishashetty/2021/07/30/climate-...)

Action on climate change is very slow, but happening. Climate change is not going to be even remotely as close to as bad as you appear to think it will be.

Those numbers are assuming only natural causes. Under current scenarios, there is basically a guarantee of a hot war between nuclear powers at least in South Asia.

Also, you're right, I did miss the point of the other person's post!

> The world has been getting better, and continues to get better

...and as a result of that, the world's population has been growing and growing (and the standard of living of this population has also on average improved), which leads to more CO2 emissions, a higher consumption of finite natural resources etc. etc. Now there are two possible theories:

(1) things will continue to get better, if any problems will come up along the way we will surely be able to solve them.

(2) we are accelerating towards a brick wall which we can't see yet, but when we see it it will be too late to avoid the crash.

>as a result of that, the world's population has been growing and growing

At first yes, but not recently, now the opposite is true, if anything. We haven't had exponential growth since the 60s and are currently headed towards a steady state population because of improved standards of living. Turns out health and properity leads to smaller families.

We do still have significant growth, but that is largely because we're filling out the older demographics in many countries, the birth rate is largely under control already, and once the current generations spread through we'll be in a stead state (around 11 billion). In fact, there's no way to _stop_ this growth now, short of killing or sterilising people, since the birthrate is already under control, we're just waiting for the last exponential generations to get old.

see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI

Long term, we probably should encourage (slightly) sub-2 children per family to let the total population shrink, but that will take a long time (unless something disasterous happens)

Here too (as with anything) there are different opinions, all more or less scientifically founded:

https://www.science.org/content/article/experts-be-damned-wo...

Has the world also been getting better for other species we share the planet with?

https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity

> "The world has been getting better, and continues to get better."

Perhaps the tiny surface of the world you interact with now has more conveniences than before, but that is very distant from a reality where things are getting better.

Your perception depends on taking many factors for granted, not acknowledging we depend on multiple concurrent progress traps.

If you go to the supermarket and the shelves are empty, if there's no water running through your pipes, if there's no power coming from your outlets, if there's no internet connectivity, and so on, your reality bubble will be popped.

Overusing topsoil, overusing fresh water, killing all the pollinators, pumping aquifers dry, overfishing, using fossil fuels, having pollution festivals like halloween, air travel for trivial reasons, etc. We live our lives thinking the natural world will adapt to our stupid wasteful lifestyle which gets more wasteful every day. But that won't do. Everyone will have to adapt and have a lifestyle that is more sustainable, and that lifestyle will be very different to the one we have now.

Every society is 3 meals away from revolution, and that revolution is coming in our lifetimes when we finish ruining the planet for ourselves. Terraforming mars won't do shit for the political instability that will unfold as a consequence of failed harvests, water exhaustion, topsoil death, etc. War for the resources that are left is inevitable as resources become scarce.

Toxic optimism won't make things better. Only acknowledging problems instead of hiding them behind layers of abstraction will.

> Perhaps the tiny surface of the world you interact with now has more conveniences than before, but that is very distant from a reality where things are getting better.

By MANY measures, the world has been getting gradually better for just about everyone: https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit.... When we look at the facts globally, there is a clear and obvious trajectory.

> Toxic optimism won't make things better. Only acknowledging problems instead of hiding them behind layers of abstraction will.

Who isn't acknowledging problems? My optimism doesn't mean I think there aren't serious, present, and pressing problems (I do!). These problems must be identified, and we must take action to resolve them. I'm just optimistic that we will continue to do so, as we always have. I believe in doing the work involved, and my optimism makes me think it's worth putting in the effort, that it's worth doing the hard yards.

But we are very visibly NOT doing what needs to be done, particularly in the effort to stop climate change. The world's largest polluter per capita by far is actively opposed to virtually any measures which could stop climate change, and it's using its vast influence to more or less indirectly convince others not to do so. Europeans are also patting their backs for how green they are, while still mostly producing more CO2 per capita than China and India combined.

Again, you are not acknowledging the progress traps.

Our solution has always been to migrate to the next place that has resources. But soon there will be no such place.