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All those three points are a problem because they threaten the environment. The environment is the thing that enables us to EAT.

You can't destroy the underlying ecosystem without killing yourself. I can't believe I am even writing something so super trivial.

> I can't believe I am even writing something so super trivial.

How much can you write about the role of fossil fuels in the food chain? Because this comment reads to me like you're not totally across how artificial our food production is. Nature does not keep 8 billion humans fed.

I, personally, think we should have built a lot of dodgy nuclear plants 20 years ago, aimed for too cheap to meter with the occasional meltdown, and try to go for hydroponics. It'd be a better strategy IMO than what we have actually done. I can live with it not working, but the fact that the West choked the nuclear industry with excessive regulation upsets me. I want to be investing in nuclear tech, I see real issues here that we could have solved with technology that is 50 years old at this point.

> You can't destroy the underlying ecosystem without killing yourself.

I haven't visited a natural ecosystem in months, I live in a city. Now we can argue about how natural the ecosystem is that my food comes from, but I think it is more likely to weather climate change if we have cheap, cheap electricity and fuels. Hopefully solar can provide that because we now have a lot of eggs riding in that basket.

We feed ourselves with systems that we create using whatever energy we have on hand.

> I, personally, think we should have built a lot of dodgy nuclear plants 20 years ago, aimed for too cheap to meter with the occasional meltdown, and try to go for hydroponics.

Ok? But that isn't what we are talking about now. The cheap energy we have now is fossil fuel.

> [lots of things about food production]

Yea it's obvious you don't know how modern food production works. We are feeding cities by burning various ecosystems. You being ignorant about it doesn't change it.

Draw out the connection a little more. You'll need to write a full paragraph to explain yourself.

Everything I'm exposed to in my daily life is an artificial environment mediated by fossil fuels. All my food comes from an artificial environment mediated by fossil fuels. Running out of fossil fuels would be (will be, really) a catastrophe.

How do you think the environment figures in to this? Or are you using a definition of 'environment' that includes the artificial bits that humans constructed? In which case, sure. Everything is the environment so all problems affect it. But the so-called climate crisis is still not a top priority.

Fishing and farming is the basis of the food web for cities. Cities aren't closed systems plus fossil fuels/electricity. They are super open systems with an enormity of inputs in the form of everything from wheat, to fish, to chickens that have been fed rando fish that humans won't eat, etc. It's all a big extraction machine that is super unsustainable.

> If we could torch the environment and solve those 3 then the sane thing to do is torch the environment.

You do say "if" though. We can't do it that way. The climate crisis will cause forced migration of many people once they can't be fed. That will stimulate both armed conflicts and issues related to overpopulation. It's not helping with energy security either if we need more development or living spaces than we planned for. It's all connected.

The people who approach this from a perspective of "there is a climate crisis" tend to be centralisers at heart though. I think most people agree that to make a market preserve the environment there needs to be a strong central body that forces them to consider it. This is exactly the strategy that promotes energy shortages, because strong central bodies promote wild over- or under-supply.

The right solution is to push for cheap power. The people trying to solve 'the climate crisis' have been fighting against the political lobbies in favour of cheap energy basically forever. That is the entire fight. People who want cheap power vs. people who want to achieve alternative, less useful, objectives.

We have cheap power. The problem is that this power destroys the basis of our food chain. Slowly, but surely.

Burning your local forest is cheap power. Fracking is cheap power. Coal plants near existing mines is cheap power.

We can easily destroy everything if we go for cheap power.

I invite you to come to Vietnam. I am spanish (not from VN but lived here long time) Today I had dinner at a small seafood place. Go tell that woman: please do not use coal, pay much more for your energy no problem. See if it works.

I would also get some insights about why we should be entitled to force others to these sort of things like telling them what to do. For them it is survival.

Alternatively if you are deeply worried about negative externalities like pollution or climate change, I encourage you to subsidize their energy. Not others, or governments or always others.

> We've already established that countries with large amounts of cheap energy are going to be fine with climate change.

Are they? I don't think a climate feedback loop cares about human borders and their ability to source cheap energy.

If you got cheap energy, you can defend from many many climate issues

Many. Not all. Not even enough.

I mean, it certainly helps rebuild, but it's hardly "not an issue" that there are regular severe storms.

Including potentially hundreds of millions of climate refugees? I mean, technically yes I guess.

Unfortunately, cheap energy would also allow for a country to turn itself into a fortress

For its citizens, that’s pragmatically a “fortunately” condition in the event of a climate apocalypse.

Well, at least a fortress country would also have to become self-sufficient because they’d basically be living in an eternal siege.

> If we could torch the environment and solve those 3

You say that like we're separate from the environment. If you torch the environment, then yes, you do solve those 3 because we won't be here anymore.

> we won't be here anymore

Fortunately, humans are a lot more resilient and better at adapting than you think.

We're biological and we depend on having a functional biological ecosystem to breathe, drink, eat. If we "torch the environment", we saw off the branch we stand on. Food doesnt come from heaven.

Besides the should-be-obvious -by-now thing that you ABSOLUTELY cannot disengage human wellbeing from what happens to the ecosystem no matter how much people want to believe so –

"Energy security" is just an euphemism for "I wanna continue my wasteful unsustainable lifestyle". Sure, things like heating can be real problems, but as long as there are thing like hundreds of millions of personal cars driving around every day, talking about energy security is bullshit.

And talking about overpopulation is such a transparent red herring trying to deflect blame and responsibility from the Westerners to brown people in poor countries.

Yes. I want every human on the planet to be living like a wealthy westerner.

No euphemisms needed. My machiavellian evil knows few bounds.

Sure, me too. But that’s impossible right now, and it becomes less possible every second as we continue to lay waste on critical ecosystem services.

3 solves 2. The more energy available to humans, the fewer offspring they have.