HN user
One problem is that economic growth has a big correlation with carbon emissions. https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/
Environmental decoupling is the notion that we can have growth and preserve nature. For now is just a myth
edit:typos
"Unless the people benefit, economic growth is a subsidy for the rich."
—Richard Falk, “Post-Mubarak Revolutionary Chances,” Al Jazeera, 22 Feb. 2011
Didn't said that we can substitute industrial ammonia but it could definitely reduce it's use. Changing the way we eat it's definitely an opportunity to reduce major sources of c02 emissions.
We could avoid this number by investing in soil preservation, nitrogen fixing plants, reduce meat consumption, even in concepts like humanure.
There are ethical ways to implement it for instance give more education to women [1]. Consuming less meat should be a priority for us wealthy countries. Overpopulation is a problem but carbon inequality is much worse [2]:
" . The richest 10% of the world’s population (c.630 million people) were responsible for 52% of the cumulative carbon emissions – depleting the global carbon budget by nearly a third (31%) in those 25 years alone (see Figure 1); • The poorest 50% (c.3.1 billion people) were responsible for just 7% of cumulative emissions, and used just 4% of the available carbon budget (see Figure 1); • The richest 1% (c.63 million people) alone were responsible for 15% of cumulative emissions, and 9% of the carbon budget – twice as much as the poorest half of the world’s population (see Figure 1); • The richest 5% (c.315 million people) were responsible for over a third (37%) of the total growth in emissions (see Figure 2), while the total growth in emissions of the richest 1% was three times that of the poorest 50% "
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3073853/ [2] https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...
The story of Fritz Haber first wife is very sad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Immerwahr
It’s a common fallacy of tech people to think that all problems are of a technical nature, and that if we could just have the right technology they would go away and we would be living in a utopia. The fact is, the problems are with human behavior and any technology created will serve to further that behavior.
I agree with you. This can be applied to the solutions we are looking to solve climate change.
Urea comes from the Harber process [1] Basically most of food fertilizer depends on fossil fuels.
In Portugal is "Sociedade do Cansaço" which translates to "fatigue society"
I agree although I would add that many of the creative jobs although technically challenging have useless or even destructive goals. Just look at the attention economy and the surveillance industry. We try not to contemplate this fact by occupying our lives to the limit and by focusing on the "how" instead of the "why". We engineers are probably the ones who do this the most.
Funny by coincidence I bought this book just a few hours ago :)
Also we could redistribute the tax as a sort of UBI. This way not only product that pollute would be more expensive, people would have the ability to say no to crappy jobs.
Yes, the author focuses on a possible shortage of resources as the cause of the problem, but the Forester effect certainly played a decisive role in the case of the chip shortage. Anyway, we live in a very fragile civilization, and we have to shorten the supply chains or we will have big problems in the future.
Is on this kind of measures where jevons paradox or the rebound effect kicks in. We will inclined to eat more meat because is more sustainable, and with that we neutralize the gains. Also meat from Brazil is many times dependent on Amazon deforestation, so although I love picanha, I will not eat it anymore. For those in Europe please press your government not to ratify the EU-Mercosul agreement that will increase the trade of soy meat and ethanol in exchange for Europe export more cars to America Latina. We should avoid meat and individual transports and try to invest in the local economy so this agreement doesn't make any sense
I loved the "good parts” of JS back in 2010. I think I don't need most of this new syntax and yet sometimes have the feeling I'm losing the train when I see this “C#” code base. Curiously, that was the technology I used to work before.
If you want to explore this you can watch "the century of self" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
As Ursula Le Guin, I'm not an economist, but I live in one. Didn't mean to be literal, but I find ironic the use of the term, because it reminds me of rough which in portuguese, my native language is "Grosseiro"
I don't think everyone agrees that growth is a problem. Is the way our societies are organized and it is very difficult to reason against it.
Another aspect that western societies have difficulty to reason about is to think in negative terms. Nassim Taleb calls this “Via Negativa”. We normally think about solving problems by doing things (adding), but we can also solve the same problems by avoiding doing harm (subtracting). But avoiding doing harm normally doesn't make a profit, it doesn't contribute to growth.
Health is a perfect example of this, most of the modern diseases could be preventable by eating less, sleeping more, and having a less stressful life.
There is a difference between wants and needs.
You have a giant industry trying to change your wants, making sure you are not satisfied with what you have.
Gross Domestic Product, is a very gross way to measure progress as the name implies.
Robert Kennedy said in respect of GDP “It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life really worth living.” [1]
You have alternatives like the genuine progress indicator (GPI) that includes aspects such as pollution, criminality and health to the GDP. Most of all we can have many measures, we should not reduce progress to only a number.
This would be true if we didn't account for the extreme inequality of the system.
For instance the richest 1 percent more than double the emissions of the poorest half of humanity [1].
We can have prosperity without growth, and we cannot have infinite growth in a finite planet.
[1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-ric...
Yes, by any measure - infant mortality, safety from war, education, access to culture, etc - we have never been better but all evidence suggests that our lifestyles are not sustainable. IPCC says that there will be an environmental collapse in the next years if we do not change and green Growth is not enough [1]. It’s like if we are in a modern, comfortable and fast car. We can argue that we have never been better but it’s not the case if there is no road ahead of us. https://mk0eeborgicuypctuf7e.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/upload...
Again I don’t want to romanticize the pandemic but we should critically analyze what happened.
When I talk about the system changes, I’m referring to the paper that I wrote in the thread.
The places to intervene in the system are:
Places to Intervene in a System (in increasing order of effectiveness) 9. Constants, parameters, numbers (subsidies, taxes, standards) 8. Regulating negative feedback loops 7. Driving positive feedback loops 6. Material flows and nodes of material intersection 5. Information flows 4. The rules of the system (incentives, punishments, constraints) 3. The distribution of power over the rules of the system 2. The goals of the system 1. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, power structure, rules, its culture arises
We intervene in the second most powerful leverage point, but we need to change our growth mindset (most powerful leverage point). If we don’t we will recover to the old system that is depleting earth's nature. You are talking about the 3rd leverage point “The distribution of power over the rules of the system” which I agree it’s important. We can implement UBI for instance. The thing is, there is an alternative.
It’s really interesting to think about what caused last year's systemic change. I think that was the fact that the illness threatened our life directly, but most of all the consequences were short term. For me “recovery” is the new substitute word for growth, which is a term that politicians avoid lately. Academically there are more and more evidences that decoupling growth from ecologic damage is very unlikely [1] https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/
She may be calling for zero growth or even degrowth. In her first blog post, where she fill a questionnaire [1]
"Question 13: “What will improve the quality of life for the future generations of your family?”—with boxes to rank importance from 1 to 10. The first choice is “Improved educational opportunities”—fair enough, Harvard being in the education business. I gave it a 10. The second is “Economic stability and growth for the U.S.” That stymied me totally. What a marvelous example of capitalist thinking, or nonthinking: to consider growth and stability as the same thing! I finally wrote in the margin, “You can’t have both,” and didn’t check a box."
And yet there was a systemic change last year. The system objective changed from brainless growth to saving human lives, and the Jenga game holded. I don't want to romanticize the pandemic but it disproved the TINA hipotesis (there is no alternative) As Donella Meadows pointed out [1], the most powerful leverage point is to change the objective of the system. We can make it if we start to be citizens and be involved politically. Let’s be involved in movements like extinction rebellion and Fridays for the future. And most of all let's question growth and employment as the goal of society.
[1] http://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Leverage_...
Sadly I think that the battle for resources will be more detrimental to peace than the reduction of collaboration. Collaboration will be more localized, but I hope our ability to communicate globally will maintain peace. Yet I may be too optimistic here.
We are loosing words to describe nature. I recommend reading "Landmarks" from Robert Macfarlane. The audiobook is excellent.
The dividend from the taxes should be evenly distributed to everyone. This would compensate people who have good environmental lifestyle and allow local business that produce low carbon (due low distribution) to be more competitive
Now you are reminding me the Procrustean bed story :)
Avoiding stress (frequent wildfires) makes you fragile (megafires).