Hacker News Reader

Comment by MontyCarloHall | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, a lot of climate activists’ primary goal is not stopping climate change but rather advocating for degrowth. They are thus vehemently opposed to any solutions that don’t involve massive reductions in consumption. This is not only politically untenable (it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions) but also alienates the majority of people from the cause, who might otherwise support it. Hopefully degrowth advocates’ voices will be drowned out by abundant supplies of cheap GHG emission-free energy.

View on HN

Reading the article leaves me with a taste of self-delusion as a society.

I mean, we take 3 pollution parameters very limited in time and space, we see how they decrease, and we open the bottle of champagne to celebrate...

If we don't look at the big picture, we are fooling ourselves, and in my opinion only degrowth will save us, just keep in mind that previous societies that consumed fewer resources collapsed for exhaustion of resources in relatively short periods of time (but long in human terms).

Is it difficult to convince people of degrowth? Absolutely. But we either degrow or we will be degrowth.

So instead we take no parameters, no data whatsoever, and predict absolutely certain doom.

Hmm.

Or... we can use the information that experts collect and share: https://www.ipcc.ch/

* I edit to copy paste an extract of the report: Emissions reductions in CO2 from fossil fuels and industrial processes (CO2-FFI), due to improvements in energy intensity of GDP and carbon intensity of energy, have been less than emissions increases from rising global activity levels in industry, energy supply, transport, agriculture and buildings

> degrowth

> it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions

What about sustainable growth focused on actual quality of life and not on perpetuating a system that produce/consume useless cheap low quality gadgets and services for the sole purpose of keeping the population at work 8 hours a day until they hit 65/67 years old (age by the time 25% of the poorest are already dead)

The fact that we (may have) decoupled growth and co2 doesn't mean all growth is progress or that all growth is desirable.

How would you measure "sustainable growth focused on actual quality of life"? Generally economic growth goes hand in hand with an objective increase in quality of life, though as i just mentioned, the ways of measuring that are via poor proxies at best.

> though as i just mentioned, the ways of measuring that are via poor proxies at best.

Goodhart's law comes to mind:

> Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.

I don't think we should measure it – at least, not obsessively. We should research and study it, and put in place measures that should theoretically work, and pay attention to whether what we're doing is working, but we shouldn't look at the measurements and go "this is making the numbers go down; we must be doing something wrong!" without at least double-checking that the numbers make sense.

As I pointed out the most obvious way to to that at present is by increasing peoples wealth.

> for the sole purpose of keeping the population at work 8 hours a day until they hit 65/67 years old

it isn't the purpose, but a side effect.

This is extremely arguable. And one might say the main effect, not the side effect.

What definition of "quality of life"? Last I checked, there isn't widespread agreement on what that means.

People individually choose to buy these 'useless cheap low quality gadgets and services' and work full-time until retirement instead of living frugally and limiting work time (like advocates of FIRE movement). Who are we do prescribe what is best for others?

> People individually choose to buy these 'useless cheap low quality gadgets and services'

After decades of Hollywood propaganda, non stop advertisement from birth, &c. yes sure the "choose" it.

We're still Neanderthals looking for shiny sea shells on a beach, the problem is that it's been weaponised against us.

Do people want to doom scroll social medias ? Do people want this sickening political polarisation ? Do people want to retire at 67 ? Did people agree to bail failed banks in 2008 ? Did people agree to go from 1:6 to 1:1000+ employee:employer compensation over the last 100 years ?

> and work full-time until retirement instead of living frugally and limiting work time

I could keep my lifestyle with 1 day of work a week but no company would hire me for that schedule, but at the same time I'd need to save for 30 years to afford my own place.

Most jobs barely pay living wages, talking about frugality and FIRE seems easy in the techbro bubble but it isn't a reality for the vast majority of people. Unless frugality means living in a 30sqm flat and renouncing on basic things like healthcare, vacations, kids, owning your house, &c. that your grandparents could afford while being 10x less productive than we are today

> Who are we do prescribe what is best for others?

Who are they to prescribe what's best for others ? The propaganda is so deeply rooted that questioning our insane consumerist system triggers allergic reaction such as yours

Society at large already prescribes what is best for others. When the government or major business owners choose to do A versus B. In many cases, people do not to choose on their own for the opposite.

As a clear example, if you want a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the newest iphone, that is just not possible. Apple chose for you.|

In many cases, these choices are more obscured, but it is not at all inappropriate (relative to what currently is acceptable) to force degrowth.

I am not opposed to any solution that doesn't involve a reduction in consumption. However, I do advocate for degrowth and reduction. Consuming less actually has a lot of net benefits for life. In this regard I think it's good to present some optional ideas and their possible benefits for the average person:

* Buying a more modest apartment or house can mean working less or retiring sooner

* Close social media account, etc -- this means more quality time with friends and family.

* Travelling less and appreciating the nice things near where you live (assuming you have them, not everyone does)

* Use as little technology as possible. If there's some new fancy app, phone, or gadget, don't buy it or use it. This will reduce information overload and stress. And if done en masse, it would also start to dry up the revenue streams of large tech companies

>...can mean working less or retiring sooner

I think this is very central to the discussion, and one where many of us are utterly unable to comprehend the other side. Many people see (what I consider) excessive work as virtuous, and think you're committing a terrible sin if you don't work as much as possible. And if you're working all the time anyway, you may as well enjoy the spoils.

When I look at that attitude it seems like some twisted version of the protestant work ethic mixed up with hyper-capitalism, and it seems to contribute to the person's own misery and cause misery for surrounding people.

To them, I'm sure I appear to be a lazy bum. Loafing around and wasting my life, not contributing as much as I could to "the economy".

Is one way objectively better than the other? I don't know, but I'm sure I prefer my way.

> Buying a more modest apartment or house can mean working less or retiring sooner

Additionally there should be some self-sustainability in community. I wouldn't mind, if apartament was connected to power grid that includes solar panels and batteries owned by this community, which effectively would lower my energy costs.

I also think that many people wouldn't mind owning some affordable space nearby for your activities. Maybe some greenhouse, park or garden, maybe just some basement for small storage space for your online shop, maybe just regular shop or some cafeteria, maybe some workshop or server room, maybe just office, maybe some pool.

Why is a reduction in consumption a "massive quality of life reduction"? For example reducing your working hours / increasing vacation time is a quality of life improvement, and a reduction in economic activity.

Those are different things: working does not necessarily increase consumption. (Having more money generally does, though.)

I’ve got a horrid feeling you’re waiting for this precise question, but any source on degrowth being the aim of a “lot” of climate activists to the extent that it’s vaguely mainstream (as opposed to just being a minor current, which I’m aware exists)

It doesn’t help that most visible activists don’t have clear and measurable goals

I don’t know about that: the major activist groups in the uk which get news attention are just stop oil, who want the government to stop issuing new oil and gas licenses, and insulate Britain, who want the government to install insulation in all state-owned housing.

Those are both concrete, measurable goals

How dare you! Listen to the scientists! No not those scientists!

All those earth lovers are so lame. I’ll burn as much oil as I want

I mean I feel like the most visible “activists” are in egypt right now clearly calling for the measurable goal of keeping warming under 1.5 degrees?

At least degrowth is mentioned (a lot) in the latest IPCC report: https://timotheeparrique.com/degrowth-in-the-ipcc-ar6-wgiii/

Environmentalist groups often oppose construction of solar and wind farms [0]. The Sunrise Movement has explicitly advocated for degrowth policies (e.g. [1], with some in the movement claiming it does not go far enough [2]).

[0] https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/americas-top-environmental...

[1] https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1328770319843287041?l...

[2] https://medium.com/@xxcapsxx1964/to-the-sunrise-movement-fc6...

[0] is classic NIMBYism not degrowth as an aim (I hope you can acknowledge those are different things). [1] is a tweet just saying that capitalism won’t solve the climate crisis, which I hope you can also distinguish from advocating degrowth as an objective (capitalism and economic growth are not synonymous). And [2] is an individual volunteer posting something to the public internet under their own initiative, which (absolutely no disrespect to them) does not make the mainstream of the climate movement.

Degrowth isn't just about climate change. The problem with the overconsumption of earth's resources still persist. Unless we have a fully cyclical economy, I don't see how we can really decouple growth and the depletion of earth's resources.

Source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon–Ehrlich_wager

Common sense. Just a single earth and all. Your example is concerned with a single forecast. If we started asteroid mining, we would obviously increase earth's resources. Otherwise, resources on earth are limited.

"Common sense is neither common nor sense"

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/2011...

> single forecast.

Nope, it was a bundle of forecasts that the participants, including the one who had your position, considered representative.

Of course your position happens to be based on...nothing. Except the idea that the earth is not infinite. Well guess what, the lifespan of the solar system is also not infinite. So that's a wash.

If we were serfs owned by a Baron, we would imagine it was politically untenable that the Baron would ever give us freedom, and yet the liberation of the serfs happened.

Never let a narrow view of "human nature" cause you to forget the number of times people have transcended negative situations and created better ones

>(it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions)

Why do you say degrowth = lower quality of life?

Let me give you a simple and practical example: an American living in a suburb takes her gas-guzzler 3-ton SUV to go shopping or to the park, stands in traffic in a 4-lane freeway for one hour. A Dutch living in a suburb takes her bike to go shopping or to the park, rides it through a nice street for 10 minutes. The former consumed much more resources than the latter. Who has the better quality of life?

It doesn’t matter what you or I think; what matters is that the American living in a single family house driving a big car will perceive anything else as a reduction in quality-of-life and vehemently oppose it.

Also, not even the worst suburbs require you to regularly wait in traffic for an hour to go to the supermarket or a park. These are usually 10 minute drives away. And if it’s raining, or too cold, or too hot out, I would gladly take the (electric) SUV over the bike.

Who has the better quality of life?

I don't know, isn't "quality of life" a personal, subjective measure?

The best example I can give is Singapore. Fantastic public transit, high vehicle import taxes (like 100%) and a system where you need a separate permit to own a care that costs >$100,000 for 10 years.

And yet no lack of people who buy cars. The people I worked with there all owned cars. They could certainly get around without one, but they wanted one, despite the alternatives.

The US has about 6× more cars per capita than Singapore.

Sure, but clearly the demand is still there despite the alternatives!

A typical American in the suburbs certainly does not go on a highway to go to the supermarket or park. Those are all local amenities. I know some regions have problems with sidewalk coverage like Florida and way out west, but the suburbs are perfectly walkable anywhere in the northeast. Cities less so due to crime. And you definitely wouldn't have highway traffic in the suburbs, that's more of a downtown thing.

> suburbs are perfectly walkable anywhere in the northeast. Cities less so due to crime

This isn't true. I've lived in and visited plenty of northeastern suburbs and cities. The suburbs are largely not walkable: no sidewalk, long distances, and as a result basically nobody walks to any shop. The cities are walkable and with a large amount of residents actually walking.

I don't know where you lived, but everywhere around Philadelphia/NYC/Boston had sidewalks unless you were way out in the sticks. I lived within a 10 minute walk to the closest supermarket, and 5 minutes to the closest Wawa. You'd see people jogging and walking their dogs at all hours of the day. Conversely, in North Philadelphia the general advice was to stay off the streets after dark unless you were in a car.

What exactly do you think is degrowth? Allowing construction of dense, walkable cities would likely dramatically _increase_ economic growth in the US.

> abundant supplies of cheap GHG emission-free energy

Feel free to research that in your free time. In the current state of the world we can't really wait for you to find it before we make a change.

It's not hard to find. I had to close my curtains to prevent it from glaring off my monitor.

So, you're saying, hopefully we will soon have "abundant supplies of cheap GHG emission-free energy" and no other resource scarcity to support that infrastructure?

I count myself as sympathetic (but also skeptical) towards the degrowth movement. I don't interpret it as saying that we should (only) reduce consumption and ignore progress in the form of efficiency/decoupling. Rather, the message seems that doing both, simultaneously, is easier/faster/cheaper overall.

Degrowth necessarily implies population control - you can't reduce sum consumption if population keeps growing, as there is a lower bound on the amount of consumption a single person can live off. And population control necessarily implies government control of reproduction, which sets a precedent for controlling other aspects of people's lives.

I am not sympathetic towards the degrowth movement, since the "solutions" they provide create more problems than they solve. Killing all humans would also solve the climate problem, but it doesn't make it a good decision.

My god, two incredible leaps in such a short post!

You drive a 3-ton SUV, burn coal for electricity, and produce literal mountains of plastic crap in China which get shipped around the world. Don't worry pal, there's plenty to cut back before you need to roll out the forced sterelisation.

Second, the population of the developed world is already declining. The population of the world is on track to plateau in the coming decades. Your caricature is just silly.

I'm not your pal, buddy.

> Your caricature is just silly.

Funny, I feel the same way about yours.

Sure, everyone in the world is driving SUVs, flying private jets, and building nuclear reactors in their backyard. Let's stop people from consuming - force everyone to be vegan and eat the bugs! People consuming are the problem - not the military-industrial complex spending enormous amounts of energy on things that have nothing to do with consumption and spends an order of magnitude more energy than all human consumption combined!

Ahaha, good old "if you don't drive a gas guzzler you're a vegan poof". Auto marketing departments are really worth their salt.

>building nuclear reactors in their backyard

If only!

> Ahaha, good old "if you don't drive a gas guzzler you're a vegan poof". Auto marketing departments are really worth their salt.

Yeah, good old "ignore the argument and insult the argumenter" ad hominem style of arguing - very useful for fueling your self-righteousness and "I'm right, you're wrong" style of thinking.

Good pointless talk! Hope to have one again soon.

It's obvious that there is plenty of unsustainable activity going on today; I've given three concrete examples. This is reality: it is simply not long term sustainable to go on living with such waste as we do even today, let alone if everybody consumed like an American (many × over the world average, depending on if you look at energy, emissions, resources). So it's obvious that we both can and need to become more efficient: reduce waste, use more renewable energy, build lasting products instead of single-use, etc.

Your answer to this is "the only way to reduce resource use is population culling, the global elite wants to enact reproductive control" x))

But one thing we agree with, this conversation is utterly pointless!

> there is a lower bound on the amount of consumption a single person can live off.

That may be true, but that bound is clearly a lot lower than many people currently operate at. The has about twice the inflation adjusted per-capita GDP that it had 40 years ago, and about 5 times the current world average. https://www.statista.com/statistics/996758/rea-gdp-growth-un...

Degrowth doesn't imply that.

You imply that population will increase indefinitely (max peak expected at 12 billion actually) or that degrowth needs to happen forever.

Further you imply population development increases if degrowth is applies.

Also, slippery slope argument.

> You imply that population will increase indefinitely

You imply that it won't.

I don't see a fundamental reason why humans would stop at 8 billion - yeah, currently, (my hypothesis is that) the world is kind of shit, so people stopped procreating due to stress. However, there's no reason to think that people won't procreate once the world becomes a better place to live.

> or that degrowth needs to happen forever

Assuming population keeps growing (which I see no fundamental reason to doubt will happen eventually), degrowth needs to happen forever in order to keep the consumption from growing - basic math:

    total consumption = number of people * avg. consumption per person

To keep total consumption constant, avg. consumption per person needs to decrease proportionally to the increase of the number of people.

> Also, slippery slope argument.

Not a real counter-argument.

> You imply that it won't.

How? Though, I am certain that it won't grow indefinitely on earth.

> I don't see a fundamental reason why humans would stop at 8 billion

It can stop at 9 billion and still not grow indefinitely. Currently a peak of 11 billion and no more than 12 billion is estimated. As said. Because of increased living standards.

> To keep total consumption constant, avg. consumption per person needs to decrease proportionally to the increase of the number of people.

It better to decrease proportionally with a coefficient smaller than 1 and bigger than 0 than decrease consumption not at all.

> Not a real counter-argument.

Yes, it is, because it implies a logical fallacy.

>> You imply that population will increase indefinitely

> You imply that it won't.

> I don't see a fundamental reason why humans would stop at 8 billion

This is not a guess based on how we subjectively feel about the world, but the current UN estimate, based on a lot of data.

"By 2100, the global fertility rate is expected to dip to 1.9 births per woman", so below the replacement rate, which is slightly above 2.0.

https://www.livescience.com/65732-world-population-will-stop...

https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world...

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-popu...

Aren't all populations worldwide currently dropping in their reproduction rate already, without government intervention? Nearly all western countries are already way below the maintenance rate of 2.1 already.

https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#the-global-decline...

Is there a fundamental reason for it, or is it just the way it is right now?

Because the world is kind of shit right now, and that could be the reason people don't procreate - I, personally, don't want to bring children into the world the way it is right now and the way it is going. The way I see it, as soon as the quality of life grows, people will continue procreating the way they did so far for decades.

It's dropping since the 1950s, so not a fluke. Major reasons are probably improvements in living conditions (yes, in comparison to the 50s), the invention and widespread use of contraception and social security (which removes the need for kids to support you in old age).

> It's dropping since the 1950s

So has quality of life, so it might have something to do with it.

The quality of life has dropped since the 50s? Definitely not im Germany or Europe in general. On what metrics has it dropped?

> Because the world is kind of shit right now, and that could be the reason people don't procreate

It's actually the opposite. As people become better off, they have fewer children, because the near certainty that those children will survive.

In developed and egalitarian countries, women frequently delay having children until it is too late. Particularly the very educated.

> without government intervention

There’s a lot of tangential government intervention. E.g. no enough daycare funding while pushing moms-back-at-work campaigns. Birth-control hormones ending up in waste water which goes back full circle yet government doing nothing about such pollution.

> you can't reduce sum consumption if population keeps growing, as there is a lower bound on the amount of consumption a single person can live off

And yet people in rich countries consume many times more resources than people in the "global south". The USA's 200M citizens consume more overall than India's 1100M, for one of the extreme examples. So there is quite a bit of room for degrowth in the global north without requiring depopulation.

> Degrowth necessarily implies population control

As it happens, people in many countries are pretty fine with the idea of having less kids, without the need for population control.

> Killing all humans would also solve the climate problem, but it doesn't make it a good decision.

The problem is going to solve itself with or without us. When people talk about solving climate change, they actually mean making it so we can still be around after that.

>So, you're saying, hopefully we will soon have "abundant supplies of cheap GHG emission-free energy"

We've had it since the 60's. Various green parties fought against it tooth and nail.

As energy prices fall and solar becomes more efficient we're likely to use even more energy. The post-energy scarcity stage for society will lead to wild changes, but some could be great. Many things that we see as wasteful today due to efficiency, like splitting hydrogen from water, become acceptable when the energy cost is negligible.

What some activists miss is that to actually stop climate change, we need to accelerate the growth of developing countries. During development, emissions grow, and then decline; By accelerating the development process, we can reduce the duration developing countries spend in the window of high emissions.

This can be done without that much more effort from developing countries, except for absorbing the cost of renewables, the development of the tech, along with contributing technical know-how.

We are at the peak of civilization. A new perfect energy source that was abundant would probably eliminate the carbon boogyman. But the energy, being abundant would only accelerate the ease of our materialistic society we live in to plunder every last square inch of the Earth to put delicacies in our mouths and rape the earth of all precious things. I used to believe in fusion energy and I am closer to a solution. But no way am I going to reveal it to the people now.

There will be no double peak. This is it.

The best time for fusion energy is 30 years from now

In terms of direct thermal heating from waste heat, we are almost precisely where we were when global warming was first raised as a problem.

Climate change is just the first of many problems, and claiming that consuming more makes life better is the same logic as finding a starving man, seeing him improve with three square meals, and then concluding everyone should have a gallon a second of saturated sugar syrup pumped directly into their gut.

> degrowth / massive reductions in consumption

Although it can appear a bit disingenuous for activists to disguise their primary goal...their primary goal can be valid if taken from their perspective...

Population will be 10bn by 2100.

Then there's 2200, 2300, 2400, etc.

The need for degrowth does seem inevitable eventually does it not?

From a middle-class perspective: everything is about ambition, climbing the corporate ladder, wealth building, and then hoping for your children to exceed you in these aspects also. Addiction to growth. Many of these people are not okay with being a high achievers and not being rewarded for it - i.e. capitalism.

Activists are usually lower income with fixed horizons/needs of income/status/lifestyle.

So it's easier for them to identify with the average global citizen...who is already very poor.

- 3bn live on < 2USD per day

- median world income = 850USD

- avg world income = 7000USD

The activists are identifying as "world citizens", whereas Westerners identify with their income bracket in their wealthy country of choice.

> cheap GHG emission-free energy.

The reality is that even if climate change is resolved, there will still be a push for degrowth until the end of time...unless we find a new planet to inhabit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com