Climate cowardice

[orathaic]

A single billionaire could act without anyone stopping them, and it wouldn't even be illegal under current international rules (afaik).

But i would rather a specific system of international rules to be created which would only allow countries or individuals to perform climate altering scheme within some clear rules.

Coming up with appropriate rules would be the hard part (but i tink it would be easier than A) ending fossil fuel use, B) opening borders for over a Billion climate migrants AND more morally acceptable than C) doing nothing as millions die).

I might support a reduction in fossil fuel use, but i remain convinced it will be too slow, too little too late. And we need more drastic action.

Again, we have good evidence here (of a natural experiment where environmental regulation actualky made temperatures go up) https://youtu.be/dk8pwE3IByg?si=v2EhrU20pnYSj9w1

Imagine this but doing it intentionally, and with control (so we don't throw something into the atmosphere which will take 50 years to disperse and settle, and if we go too far it will be next to impossible to take it back..) so it can be turned on and off with a single year's lag time.

[Octavious]

Oh, I agree completely that an agreed set of effective international rules would be preferable, but I don't see it happening. Even in the EU, which in international terms is a group of relatively like minded nations, getting an agreed framework typically results in countless loopholes and quirks to satisfy the national interests of particular nations that often leaves the end result lacking teeth. When you try the same thing globally I don't see much potential for success.

I agree that ending fossil fuels is remarkably difficult, and opening up borders to that level of migration is impossible in a democracy. I think history tells us that watching people in far off places die is far easier to stomach than you seem to think. Indeed, you yourself are more comfortable watching the deaths of 100,000s in Ukraine than you are watching a regime change from a corrupt Eastern European democracy to a very corrupt Eastern European democracy. It is ultimately all about priorities.

Trying to minimise the potential harm of any action we take is, of course, desirable... although I suspect the law of unintended consequences will not be easily dismissed. Interesting times ahead regardless

[flash2015]

Climate scientists have an anti-growth problem:

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/do ... ve-an-anti

Climate scientists believe far less in "green growth" than the general population, especially the social science ones. More climate scientists believe in "degrowth" than in "green growth". This is of course ideological delusion. You won't get people to vote for no growth, let alone "degrowth" anywhere on the planet.

[Jamiet99uk]

At this point it's hugely immoral to have children, knowing the suffering they will endure as ecosystems collapse and vast swathes of earth become uninhabitable.

[Octavious]

It's quite a popular position in academic circles and has been for some time. My business studies teacher back in my school days (good God... how the hell is that over two decades ago?!?) was a firm believer that continued economic growth would inevitably lead to disaster, and he was by no means unusual. Surprisingly enough he was also rather a good teacher.

I suspect that you could, in fact, get people to vote for it. But probably only in Brighton. And probably only once.

[Octavious]

At this point it's hugely immoral to have children, knowing the suffering they will endure as ecosystems collapse and vast swathes of earth become uninhabitable.

By far and away your most idiotic comment of the year. You should have children, Jamie. They would benefit a fair amount from your fundamental decency, and a massive amount when they inevitably rebel against you and productive centre right members of society

Out of curiosity, what is the problem of the earth being uninhabitable if there's no one around to inhabit it? Mars has been uninhabitable since records began and it hasn't inconvenienced anyone

[Octavious]

That should read "inevitably rebel against you and become productive centre right members of society "

Poor phone is on its last legs

[orathaic]

'become productive members of society' assumes so much, like how is our society going to manage the current ai revolution (it has been a hell of a 11 months, never mind what your kids will face in the nect 2 decades).

How will our society define productivity when the climate regularly floods or droughts every year? When thousands of migrants are willing to work for peanuts? And when food production becomes even more capital intensive (vertical farms, led grown food, water recycling etc.)

Things not being the way they used to be, will that make ppl more conservative or will they actually listen the likes of Jamie?

[Octavious]

Has it been a hell of an 11 months? Aside from a few unusual news stories it has been an pretty normal year. Indeed, news articles aside the strangest thing I've actually witnessed has been Australia's performance at the rugby.

I dare say definitions of productivity will not massively alter. In terms of environmental change, we will see if and when it happens. This summer's heatwave in the USA was estimated to have been 2 degrees hotter than it would have been without climate change. I think it's fair to say that in a world where climate change didn't exist and the heatwave was indeed 2 degrees cooler, none of the reporting of it would have been substantially different, and neither would most people's experience

[Jamiet99uk]

Out of curiosity, what is the problem of the earth being uninhabitable if there's no one around to inhabit it? Mars has been uninhabitable since records began and it hasn't inconvenienced anyone.

The problem is the needless suffering and death that will happen on the way.

Nobody was living on Mars to be inconvenienced. Some people live on Earth. Apparently "the voters" don't care if a vast number of them suffer and die.

[Jamiet99uk]

I dare say definitions of productivity will not massively alter. In terms of environmental change, we will see if and when it happens. This summer's heatwave in the USA was estimated to have been 2 degrees hotter than it would have been without climate change. I think it's fair to say that in a world where climate change didn't exist and the heatwave was indeed 2 degrees cooler, none of the reporting of it would have been substantially different, and neither would most people's experience

Continuing to deny that the crisis is already occurring.

Remarkable.

[flash2015]

'become productive members of society' assumes so much, like how is our society going to manage the current ai revolution (it has been a hell of a 11 months, never mind what your kids will face in the nect 2 decades).

You are thinking with a scarcity mindset. As we become more productive, new jobs emerge. This has always been the way. For example I have worked in tech for the past three decades. What you could do with 60 engineers in the 90s you can now do with 6...yet there are more jobs in tech than ever before. The "AI revolution" will be no different.

How will our society define productivity when the climate regularly floods or droughts every year? When thousands of migrants are willing to work for peanuts? And when food production becomes even more capital intensive (vertical farms, led grown food, water recycling etc.)

This is one of the biggest things I hate about the news currently. They are making people think that at one point we never had natural disasters. This is just propaganda. We have ALWAYS had droughts, floods, forest fires (some plants even need fire to germinate), hurricanes etc.

Perhaps climate change may cause some of these things to increase...but the way the media claim now that every natural disaster is due to climate change is f*** nuts. We can see these disasters more on the news largely because everyone has a camera phone/drone now...and the 24 hour news cycle is insatiable for "disaster porn" content.

I wouldn't be that worried about the migrant situation becoming worse. With the birth rate dropping so rapidly, many countries in the next decade or two are going to experience big shortages of labour. We can't afford social safety nets if we don't have the workers to support them.

[Octavious]

Out of curiosity, what is the problem of the earth being uninhabitable if there's no one around to inhabit it? Mars has been uninhabitable since records began and it hasn't inconvenienced anyone.

The problem is the needless suffering and death that will happen on the way.

Nobody was living on Mars to be inconvenienced. Some people live on Earth. Apparently "the voters" don't care if a vast number of them suffer and die.

Suffering or not only has any relevance if there are people to come after us. If not, it really doesn't make a damned bit of difference either way. It would be infinitely preferable for everyone alive now to die in agony if a million or so could carry on the line, than for everyone to live in peace and prosperity and contentment and there to be no future generations

[Octavious]

I dare say definitions of productivity will not massively alter. In terms of environmental change, we will see if and when it happens. This summer's heatwave in the USA was estimated to have been 2 degrees hotter than it would have been without climate change. I think it's fair to say that in a world where climate change didn't exist and the heatwave was indeed 2 degrees cooler, none of the reporting of it would have been substantially different, and neither would most people's experience

Continuing to deny that the crisis is already occurring.

Remarkable.

Not at all, but it is important to describe it accurately rather than with nonsensical drivel

[Jamiet99uk]

Out of curiosity, what is the problem of the earth being uninhabitable if there's no one around to inhabit it? Mars has been uninhabitable since records began and it hasn't inconvenienced anyone.

The problem is the needless suffering and death that will happen on the way.

Nobody was living on Mars to be inconvenienced. Some people live on Earth. Apparently "the voters" don't care if a vast number of them suffer and die.

Suffering or not only has any relevance if there are people to come after us. If not, it really doesn't make a damned bit of difference either way. It would be infinitely preferable for everyone alive now to die in agony if a million or so could carry on the line, than for everyone to live in peace and prosperity and contentment and there to be no future generations

Why?

[Octavious]

It is a fundamental truth driven by the most basic human instinct (the most basic instinct of all life, in fact). Without continuation there is nothing.

A more interesting question would be how you've apparently managed to lose this instinct

[orathaic]

'become productive members of society' assumes so much, like how is our society going to manage the current ai revolution (it has been a hell of a 11 months, never mind what your kids will face in the nect 2 decades).

You are thinking with a scarcity mindset. As we become more productive, new jobs emerge. This has always been the way. For example I have worked in tech for the past three decades. What you could do with 60 engineers in the 90s you can now do with 6...yet there are more jobs in tech than ever before. The "AI revolution" will be no different.

How will our society define productivity when the climate regularly floods or droughts every year? When thousands of migrants are willing to work for peanuts? And when food production becomes even more capital intensive (vertical farms, led grown food, water recycling etc.)

This is one of the biggest things I hate about the news currently. They are making people think that at one point we never had natural disasters. This is just propaganda. We have ALWAYS had droughts, floods, forest fires (some plants even need fire to germinate), hurricanes etc.

Perhaps climate change may cause some of these things to increase...but the way the media claim now that every natural disaster is due to climate change is f*** nuts. We can see these disasters more on the news largely because everyone has a camera phone/drone now...and the 24 hour news cycle is insatiable for "disaster porn" content.

I wouldn't be that worried about the migrant situation becoming worse. With the birth rate dropping so rapidly, many countries in the next decade or two are going to experience big shortages of labour. We can't afford social safety nets if we don't have the workers to support them.

I don't agree, moving away from a scarcity mindset would he great, if our economy moves away from using artificial scarcity. But my suspicion is not that we will redefine what it means to he productive, rather that as a combination of low birth rates and high levels of automation combined we will see the driver of economic growth change dramatically.

You can see the tip of the iceberg most clearly in the writers strike (because Large Language Models are - fairly obviously - good at language based tasks) but the past has shown us the we can replace human physical labour with machines, those machines still needed operators, maintenance, and skilled human who knew what the point of the activity was... there were more jobs with cognitive roles, as computer controlled systems take over cognitive roles the same does not apply.

Sure the data centre will need maintenance. The programmers will need to be employed. And you might be able to do the job of 10 software engineers with 1 plus AI code writing tools in 5 more years... but we can also look at the histroy and see not all work which was replaced resulted in more jobs. Horses used to do a lot of sork in cities (transporting people and goods) but the automobile lead to a lot fewer jobs for horses, and as a result their population dropped significantly. There was no boom of new jobs for horses.

Likewise, there is not definite solution where new jobs for humans is guarenteed (i would suggest communication related jobs (like teachers), trust-dependent jobs (like politicians), and caring related roles (emotional and physical labour) might be safe for the moment - but they are a fairly small percentage of the total workforce).

Climate change, as we are currently experiencing, increases the average amount of energy in the weather system, which allows that system to explore more extreme edges of the phase space. That means the scale and frequency of events get magnified with each degree of warming.

I don't think anyone is saying there were zero disasters in the past. What we are saying is that a hundred year storm is now happening every ten years and a thousand year storm every hundred*, which is very bad (for insurance companies first, and then for people who can't get insurance and lose a life's worth of investment). And if everyone is spendig all their time struggling to rebuild what they have just lost, they will have far less time to spend on anything else.

*Making up these number to illustrate the point, i don't know the actual frequencies at the moment.

[Jamiet99uk]

It is a fundamental truth driven by the most basic human instinct (the most basic instinct of all life, in fact). Without continuation there is nothing.

A more interesting question would be how you've apparently managed to lose this instinct.

I am questioning your assumption, that is all.

[Jamiet99uk]

A more interesting question would be how you've apparently managed to lose this instinct.

Actually, and I know this is sending the thread off on a tangent, but I will actually engage with this as it is interesting.

I don't have the instinct to reproduce. I have never had it.

I like having sex, but that's because it feels nice and I enjoy the intimacy.

I don't want to make a baby, produce offspring, father young - nor have I ever wanted to do that. The idea of a human being running around because I created it and helped to bring it into existence is not something I have any appetite for whatsoever.

[Octavious]

It is a tangent of your own creation, so it would have been a tad unusual for you to refuse to engage... But anyway...

I can understand why an individual might decide having children is not for them, from both an individualistic point of view and evolutionary point of view. Society doesn't need everyone to be parents to thrive, and a subset of society who can operate without their own family competing with society at large as chief priority has obvious benefits. I have often wondered why we tend to choose leaders with families, as they will always be more vulnerable to conflict of interests... As Biden is demonstrating rather brilliantly in the USA.

But to not have children and to wish for the rest of society to do the same is fundamentally different. It is as far away from natural evolution as you can get. Comparable to suicidal thoughts and similar mental illness.