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Comment by throwaway1777 | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have a realistic comment that isn’t some Malthusian doomerism? There must be a solution to this problem besides drastically curtailing people’s lifestyle, even if it involves technologies that aren’t quite here yet like genetic engineering, space travel and fusion power.

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No. There's not. Listen to the scientists, engineers, and experts if you can't be bothered to learn the basics of resource consumption on a finite planet with billions of people. Space travel to where? We're not moving to Mars in droves, ever. It's more inhospitable than the worst environments on Earth. Genetic engineering isn't going to stop pollution and change things measurably. It's not doomerism, it's basic science, math, economics, etc.

Not really - you come with the presupposition that our way of life is right and should supersede nature - that's nit how that works. We're supposed to adapt to earth, not the other way around (big surprise, humans are not able to control the environnement - you can look at how fisheries are organised for a look at where we are going - claiming sustainability while fish stocks are plumetting

Why "must" there be a solution like that?

It's wild how when it comes to the biggest problems, people will say "let's not be so emotional about this" and then produce suggestions borne exclusively of their emotional coping mechanism.

Because we'll see government propaganda encouraging us to carpool or meet remotely to reduce emissions. And then we'll see this shit[0], which dwarfs whatever contribution we could have made by carpooling and it becomes rapidly clear that our individual contributions do nothing.

Also, 2020 should have been a huge reversal of emissions fortune with the low amount of travel and recreation. If 2020 didn't make a dent in climate change, then you're never going to convince me that individual contributions can accomplish anything.

[0]https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/ghost-flights-pandemic-gr...

That doesn't really address the question, though. Even if this can't be solved with individual contributions, it's still likely that any societal changes we could make would have enormous impacts on our lifestyles. Think "cutting meat production/air travel/personal automobiles/etc by 95%". That's what OP is calling "Malthusian doomerism" — saying we need to instead look for solutions that don't involve drastic measures. Except there's not really evidence that such solutions actually exist.

These comments are realistic because that's how bad the situation has gotten. Decades ago there were solutions because we would have had more time. But the warnings by the experts were willfully ignored. Now we're here. Have fun while you can.

If you aren't serious at all about doing anything to avoid doom that makes you the doomer. Non-doomers take reasonable precautions to avoid such things.

Pragmatically, we need way more investment in environmental engineering and policies that put conservation first.

Since collectively we can't be bothered because we all need the newest electric vehicle, you can also accept that mass extinction is a byproduct of humanity.

Fewer, better lives.

Human population grew ten fold over 200 year and continue to grow.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Capitalism says that's good because market is growing.

what is the solution to the dying biosphere? Kill all humans would be one, I guess

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