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Overshoot: Why It’s Already Too Late To Save Civilization
- Thread starter SamanthaAnastasia
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keith99
sola dosis facit venenum
It reminds me of Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome. Same sort of projections and predictions 50 years ago.
And my prediction is that they are also wrong, and this wrong prediction will actually contribute to the eventual disaster. After all if it is already too late why bother trying. It will place the attention on the very near future instead of farther out, far enough out that small changes today can make big differences.
And my prediction is that they are also wrong, and this wrong prediction will actually contribute to the eventual disaster. After all if it is already too late why bother trying. It will place the attention on the very near future instead of farther out, far enough out that small changes today can make big differences.
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Pommer
CoPacEtiC SkEpTic
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A cool trick to get myself out of a panic-mode is to “allow” my fears to run away up to the point that the entire world blows up and I can regain a bit o’ perspective.
This is a slow-motion version of my game.
This is a slow-motion version of my game.
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The economics expressed here are based upon Malthusian economic models.
en.wikipedia.org
They ignore the idea that humanity can and does increase the productivity of the environment around them.
Such models have been wrong for a while now in terms of how many people the earth can support. It remains to be seen how many can be sustainably supported.
Also the idea expressed here is that we are bound to follow exponential growth if and when we do meet the environments carrying capacity or society will collapse. All that will definitely collapse is a society that is based upon unending exponential growth.
Malthusianism - Wikipedia
They ignore the idea that humanity can and does increase the productivity of the environment around them.
Such models have been wrong for a while now in terms of how many people the earth can support. It remains to be seen how many can be sustainably supported.
Also the idea expressed here is that we are bound to follow exponential growth if and when we do meet the environments carrying capacity or society will collapse. All that will definitely collapse is a society that is based upon unending exponential growth.
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Thank you for this.The economics expressed here are based upon Malthusian economic models.
Malthusianism - Wikipedia
They ignore the idea that humanity can and does increase the productivity of the environment around them.
Such models have been wrong for a while now in terms of how many people the earth can support. It remains to be seen how many can be sustainably supported.
Also the idea expressed here is that we are bound to follow exponential growth if and when we do meet the environments carrying capacity or society will collapse. All that will definitely collapse is a society that is based upon unending exponential growth.
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I think its a little alarmist, but it's true we are facing huge challenges with energy resources. Realistically, most people are going to have to get used to using less energy or things could get ugly. Probably the solution is VAT taxes and consumption taxes in developed nations, to discourage excess consumption. Companies that make and market disposable electronics and the like need to pay the price in taxes or recycling mandates (for instance, I like the European approach of requiring all smartphones to have user servicable batteries, but I think that should apply to tablets as well, basically anything and everything small and electronic needs to be this way- the culture of e-waste is ugly and unnecessary).
The "15 minute city" is also a good idea, but conspiracy kooks are already trying to connect the idea with draconian lockdowns and the like (which is frankly bizarre, because the 15-minute city is ultimately about having more freedom, not less. You're not free if everything you need in your life is 45 minutes away and you have to own a car to get there, you are a slave to the auto and oil industries).
Another big source of energy inefficiency is the so-called "western diet" (now spreading to countries like China). It takes alot more water and grain to feed a cow, vs. simply using that water and grain directly for human food. Chickens and pigs aren't quite as bad, but they are still very inefficient compared to a number of other options for getting protein in our diets.
The "15 minute city" is also a good idea, but conspiracy kooks are already trying to connect the idea with draconian lockdowns and the like (which is frankly bizarre, because the 15-minute city is ultimately about having more freedom, not less. You're not free if everything you need in your life is 45 minutes away and you have to own a car to get there, you are a slave to the auto and oil industries).
Another big source of energy inefficiency is the so-called "western diet" (now spreading to countries like China). It takes alot more water and grain to feed a cow, vs. simply using that water and grain directly for human food. Chickens and pigs aren't quite as bad, but they are still very inefficient compared to a number of other options for getting protein in our diets.
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durangodawood
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Ha. As if the automobile centric paradigm is the result of sovereign citizens making entirely free market decisions.
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That's the propaganda. "Car = freedom". In reality, the auto industry lobbied against and demonized mass transit. Growing up, my mom used to ride a trolley into downtown Tulsa, but eventually it was torn up right around the same time period that the rest of the trolley lines were torn up around the country (no deep secret why that happened all at the same time).
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Eventually, we will exhaust the earth's resources.
"We need to stop blaming each other and start working together. We need to create a culture based on sustainability instead of consumption, a culture where we care more about leaving things to our children than acquiring things for ourselves."
Good luck with that thought....our capitalist economies are built around more and more consumption.
"We need to stop blaming each other and start working together. We need to create a culture based on sustainability instead of consumption, a culture where we care more about leaving things to our children than acquiring things for ourselves."
Good luck with that thought....our capitalist economies are built around more and more consumption.
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Ana the Ist
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The economics expressed here are based upon Malthusian economic models.
Malthusianism - Wikipedia
True.
If you're referring to things like modern farming techniques...they aren't sustainable and also rely upon finite resources.
What's sustainable? The Amish?
When you say "sustainable" do you mean a lifestyle closer to the Amish that we could possibly maintain for centuries? Or a more 1st world lifestyle like you have now that will require either....
1. A completely new and potentially near limitless energy source like nuclear fusion becoming far more advanced and accessible than it is likely to be in 100 years.
2. A lot less people on the planet.
I don't know if the Amish will survive what's coming.
VAT taxes? Haven't heard that term before. Can you give a brief explanation?
Pay what price?
I think social media should be reduced to a severely limited number of people. You have hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, all with the misguided impression that their thoughts or opinions are in any way "adding" to any "discussion" when in reality....they're simply repeating what they hear others saying....
For example, do we really need anyone who thought Donald Trump won the election and some secret ballot bait-and-switch happened behind the scenes to hand Joe the W....there's like 10 million of you online already, we can just pick 1 and he can speak for the rest. Likewise, if you thought it was suddenly racist to call covid the Wuhan virus or there's no way the Wuhan coronavirus came from the Wuhan coronavirus lab because the nice man on TV who just happens to approve and help fund research at the Wuhan coronavirus lab told you so....there's at least 20-30 million of you online too so you can probably just find a new hobby.
I don't know why so many people who clearly see everyone already saying what they think feel the need to also chime in, and add their agreement on those things they don't understand and know nothing about.
What is a 15 minute city?
By context, it sounds like a 15-minute city is one where everything you need (except living space of course) can be found within 15 minutes of the tent you live in.
Ok.
Cows taste good though.
This reminds me of something funny I saw NPR....
Basically, this is how left wing propaganda gaslights it's own audience into following very unpopular and undesirable ideas. Call those ideas racist far right conspiracy theories....
Because despite promoting the idea for years....
It turns out eating bugs isn't very popular on the left either....
But in the sustainable society of the future, you need to be sold on eating bugs....
So when promoting it to children fails, and wrapping it in a moral climate friendly dogma fails...
Just tell everyone in your audience that only crazy right wing conspiracy theorists believe in some dystopian future where bug eating is your only option for protein....and it will really get their goat if you were to show them how much better and morally upright you are if you choose to eat bugs....right in their fascist faces lol.
But go on @FireDragon76, you were about to say something about more efficient protein options?
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The whole eating bugs thing is ridiculous. There are people in this world that eat bugs. Just don’t eat bugs if you don’t want to?!
Also, the biggest thing ppl forget is that throughout history meat eating was a luxury. It wasn’t until the 20th century that it became an Everyman thing.
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Here is an explanation of 15 min city:
15-Minute City
The 15-Minute City Project is an information resource designed to help access-focused urban transformations be ambitious, inclusive, measurable and effective.
www.15minutecity.com
15-minute city - Wikipedia
It’s a great idea. And totally do-able for those who don’t live in extremely rural areas. It can even be implemented in suburbs.
It’s not some crazy plan that conspiracy theorist say…cities are like that all over the world especially in Western Europe or East Asia.
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Why can't we just use nuclear power, solar, and wind power forever? We can have desalination plants, so we'll not run out of water for crop irrigation? We can still have electric cars...
...Why stop what we're doing when we can just massively reduce the use of fossil fuels and carry on without them? These drastic changes are not only unnecessary, but they pit climate change activists against the deniers, disrupting the process of advancement.
...Why stop what we're doing when we can just massively reduce the use of fossil fuels and carry on without them? These drastic changes are not only unnecessary, but they pit climate change activists against the deniers, disrupting the process of advancement.
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And yet some of these types probably think nothing of eating shrimp, which is basically the same thing, a big sea-bug.
At any rate, I eat a vegan diet, but that's even more hated by the far right, than the suggestion that eating bugs might be better for the environment.
I don't get it. They are overly emotionally attached to food. As Jesus said, the body is more than food. The emotional attachment to food is how people with power manipulate you and get you to do stupid things, self-sabotaging, anyways.
As one of my favorite chefs says "love the food that loves you back". The same is true with every other thing in our lives. Some habits are genuinely bad for us and the planet. A little bit of introspection and maybe people would see that they are like "friends" that come and sleep on the sofa and eat everything in the refrigerator when you are at work, and never clean up after themselves. With friends like that, the human race doesn't need enemies.
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JSRG
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Well, it does seem to have some valid arguments in regards to us using up resources faster than they replenish. What I find far more questionable is its claims of an actual collapse of civilization and mass death as a result.
Let's return to one of the most basic bits of economic knowledge: As supply shrinks, prices go up. As prices go up, people buy less of the product. So it seems to me that when we start hitting a point where we're actually really overdoing it with things (such as, say, fishing, which it argues is becoming unsustainable, as well as oil given that there's only a finite amount of the stuff), prices go up, people buy less, and that fixes the problem. It does mean people would have to accept a somewhat lower standard of living, but I'm not seeing societal collapse and mass death as a result. When we start running out of oil, oil prices go up, and people do things to use less oil.
The big analogy it brings up is a small island where, absent predators, the deer got overpopulated, overate the food, but rather than the population becoming stable or dropping, it caused them to die in droves. But deer don't have the market to constrain them; when there's food, they just eat it. There being an actual market and money constrains that in human society. So if something starts to become scarce, the price goes up, people buy less, and they try for other things that are cheaper and more plentiful. Food that is more sustainable will become more popular because its prices won't go up.
This is an important point, and the article never addresses it. It seems to assume we'll just wake up one day and find we're almost out of food and resources and then chaos reigns, when the market itself would prepare us for that simply via the laws of supply and demand.
Now, don't get me wrong, shortages would cause problems. People would have to cut back on various things they might like due to lower supply. But that's an inconvenience (even if a big one), not a collapse of civilization.
Let's return to one of the most basic bits of economic knowledge: As supply shrinks, prices go up. As prices go up, people buy less of the product. So it seems to me that when we start hitting a point where we're actually really overdoing it with things (such as, say, fishing, which it argues is becoming unsustainable, as well as oil given that there's only a finite amount of the stuff), prices go up, people buy less, and that fixes the problem. It does mean people would have to accept a somewhat lower standard of living, but I'm not seeing societal collapse and mass death as a result. When we start running out of oil, oil prices go up, and people do things to use less oil.
The big analogy it brings up is a small island where, absent predators, the deer got overpopulated, overate the food, but rather than the population becoming stable or dropping, it caused them to die in droves. But deer don't have the market to constrain them; when there's food, they just eat it. There being an actual market and money constrains that in human society. So if something starts to become scarce, the price goes up, people buy less, and they try for other things that are cheaper and more plentiful. Food that is more sustainable will become more popular because its prices won't go up.
This is an important point, and the article never addresses it. It seems to assume we'll just wake up one day and find we're almost out of food and resources and then chaos reigns, when the market itself would prepare us for that simply via the laws of supply and demand.
Now, don't get me wrong, shortages would cause problems. People would have to cut back on various things they might like due to lower supply. But that's an inconvenience (even if a big one), not a collapse of civilization.
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keith99
sola dosis facit venenum
That depends a lot on if the claim is covering 90% of things or everything. If one has interests that are at all different a 15 minute city would suck. And since I like both Rugby and Theater (the kind with real people on a stage) I doubt I'd find a 15 minute city I would like this side of the Tasman Sea. As things stand I have a Rugby pitch within a half hour drive, Theater a bit farther and I do not have to choose between real Mexican food and very good Indian food. And looking at the pictures of 15 minute cities it looks like it is all multi story apartments. I like having a garden and not having an upstairs or downstairs neighbor.Here is an explanation of 15 min city:
15-Minute City
The 15-Minute City Project is an information resource designed to help access-focused urban transformations be ambitious, inclusive, measurable and effective.
15-minute city - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
It’s a great idea. And totally do-able for those who don’t live in extremely rural areas. It can even be implemented in suburbs.
It’s not some crazy plan that conspiracy theorist say…cities are like that all over the world especially in Western Europe or East Asia.
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I think the idea of the 15 minute city is more like the vast majority of things you'ld reasonably need or want should be within 15 minutes walking.
Something similar has mostly already taken shape with some planned communities in the US, it's called "walkable development".
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keith99
sola dosis facit venenum
I've got that now. But it has major problems. What is an easy 15 minute bike ride becomes not so easy when you are carrying 25 pounds of groceries. Even worse if you are trying to get a quart of ice cream home when it is 90 by 8 in the morning.
Do those walkable cities have bike racks that are placed near high foot traffic areas to make theft difficult? Very serious question as I was recently without a car for a while and while some stores were fin with a bike inside others were not and getting a bike stolen when it is your means of transport is a huge deal.
Oh, and forget about getting a frozen pizza home.
EDIT:
And that 15 minute trip by bike gets me to Ralphs, Trader Joes, Sprouts and Aldi. I have a choice, where in a 15 minute city I probably would not. There is also a World Marketplace which has some spices and canned items. But if I want spices I have a 10-20 minute trip by car (not all that many miles, but signals suck).
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