A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development | Hacker News Reader

A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development

nytimes.com

7 pointsstillsut3 comments

I agree with the gist of the article, and the figures are mostly right; but the opening comparison is a bit disingenuous [1]. The figure of 13000 kWh per year is indeed ridiculous, but apparently the U.S. and Canada are quite the outliers in this regard: every other OECD country consumes on average at most half of that --in Germany, for instance, it's less than a third of that (around 3500 kWh per year).

It's still an orders-of-magnitude difference of course, but a less gargantuan gap nonetheless.

[1] http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household-electricity...

the proposed solution sounds like greenwashed cover-fire for the same fertilizer & pesticide folks that got us into this mess in the first place, what with "green revolution"s and such fueling population growth post ww2... I think it's total poppycock. We should reduce our population over the next century or 2, we should get off the fossil fuel imperative (it's a single-source failure point for our entire infrastructure) and we shouldn't listen to "big industry" and it's so-called solutions that really amount to digging our holes deeper. Despite the presence of statistics in defining the problem in this article, the proposed solution bears precious little examination. Locally grown produce simply IS better overall (transport energy, health (honey from same region containing pollen and dead microbes from region, vaccine like effects... freshness, wow i could go on and on. it's science not hype) etc. I will contend that the supermarket food system, including it's producers, distributors, etc are the problem, not the solution. I give you "general mills, nestle, coca-cola" as examples of what happens to food when you depend upon suits to feed the planet.

this article stinks, primarily because it doesn't address the proposed solution and analyze pros and cons, but rather it simply defines a problem, and then naively pitches a solution that clearly has certain economic interests at stake. what blatant biased advertising.

the times is getting sad lately... pity

> We should reduce our population over the next century or 2, we should get off the fossil fuel imperative (it's a single-source failure point for our entire infrastructure) and we shouldn't listen to "big industry" and it's so-called solutions that really amount to digging our holes deeper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism

The economic problem with your proposal is simple : it's not a Nash-equilibrium (one non-cooperative participant can kill the whole thing). You might as well try to paint the sky red.

> Locally grown produce simply IS better overall (transport energy, health (honey from same region containing pollen and dead microbes from region, vaccine like effects... freshness, wow i could go on and on. it's science not hype) etc. I will contend that the supermarket food system, including it's producers, distributors, etc are the problem, not the solution.

They are the solution to feeding the maximum number of people effectively, not the solution to feeding individuals in the best possible way. The thing is, requiring production methods that would leave 50%+ of the planet without food is going to be very bad for the health of 50%+ of the planet. Feeding them "suits dependant" foodstuffs is going to be very bad for the health of, oh, maybe a percent or two, of them and us (in the sense that they'll die somewhat sooner than in some parts of the west, which for the vast majority of those 50%+ would be an extension of their lifespan).

One might make the argument that you're proposing enabling the already very, very rich to live 1% healthier is more important than the survival of many of the poor. If you truly intend to do things this way, may I suggest building up the military too, because you'll need it.

> naively pitches a solution that clearly has certain economic interests at stake.

And why do you think 6 billion humans can survive in the 21st century when that couldn't happen in the, oh, say 16th ? Exactly because those economic interests are so much bigger now. Economy grows first, then population increases follow. The way to make life better for 80%+ of our planet is to make their economies grow.

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