We are overloading the planet: Now What?

[Elixir]

the other .75 of an earth is nowhere to be found, which strongly suggests it is not actually needed.

Makes me wonder… needed for what or by whom? If the entire human race went full Jim Jones, drank the Kool Ade and went extinct, I don’t think anyone or anything would give a damn.
This earth could probably support 20 billion humans, at least for a while. How long does the species “need” to survive, and what numbers are “needed” for anything?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except the pre-industrial farming system was not remotely sustainable. Wood was not being harvested at a renewable rate.

I agree.

What do you think of this person's view of the future:

Once large scale coal and oil extraction will be gone though, our descendants will be increasingly forced to return to burning charcoal to process the scrap metals left behind by us. This would not only mean rapid deforestation but also a drastic drop in metal production and recycling. I wager that more than 90% of the materials in circulation today will be lost during the long descent of modernity, as we will have no capacity to process them. Most of our metals will simply be left to rot and rust where they are. And as we have already depleted all easy to access high grade ores (amenable to artisan mining and smelting techniques) our descendants far into the future will eventually have nothing to extract from the Earth. Surely not with a pickax and ox-drawn carts. We will thus first see the emergence of a vibrant scavenger economy, salvaging and repurposing whatever they can as modernity starts to break down, then as we lose metallurgy due to the lack of energy to power it, our children and grandchildren will witness the complete loss of all our modern technologies. Sure, they will have an odd blacksmith here and there, but that’s about it. -- https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/we-are-not-mining-with-renewable?

One of the reasons that I think if we go down we go all the way down. The easy to get stuff is gone, we need our tech level to get to what we need.

But this is also why I find the green approach a total failure--resources will get harder to get over time while under the green approach there is a steady use of them. Eventually that leads to a crash.

The only approach that is truly sustainable is to reach a point where we can obtain resources from areas where nature hasn't already enhanced the supply. While technically we can do that now (a calutron will separate out anything but it's so slow and power hungry that even the Manhattan project abandoned that approach) we can't do so at a viable scale.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think Bilby means that population increase BY ITSELF is not a problem, since our best current projections predict population growth is scheduled to level off later this century and then decline (and decline has its own problems, as Japan is finding out). The problems lie elsewhere.

We have been over this many times in this thread. Yes, the UN says population will level off at about 130% of the current population, and perhaps even start to decline.

The problem is that we are already in overshoot. The Global Footprint Network calculates that it would take 1.75 planets to sustainably support us. We continue on, but the overshoot is rapidly deteriorating our planet.

If future population rises 30%, and our average footprint per person remains the same, we end up needing 2.25 planets to support us all. If affluence also increases in that timeframe we could easily get to the point of needing 3 planets.

This still pretends that there is a sustainable rate of resource production. For many there is not. No matter how many times you try to derive from a false premise you can never reach the truth.

 

[bilby]

The easy to get stuff is gone

No, it's not.

The easy to get stuff is purified, concentrated, and easier to get than it ever was.

But we are using it.

With a sharply reduced population, the cities left empty by the fall in human numbers become a mining resource more valuable and richer than any prospector in history would dare to dream.

Manhattan Island contains a vast wealth of valuable metals and materials; We don't exploit this resource very much, because the people living there might get upset if we demolished their skyscrapers for the steel, copper, other materials they contain.

The only stuff that's "gone" is fossil fuel, and a low population world doesn't need it, because fuel literally grows on trees.

 

[Elixir]

With a sharply reduced population, the cities left empty by the fall in human numbers become a mining resource more valuable and richer than any prospector in history would dare to dream.

I was thinking about all the excess office space following COVID and the work from home revolution… just a small downward usage blip would cough up untold raw materials for re-manufacture.

 

[bilby]

This still pretends that there is a sustainable rate of resource production. For many there is not.

That depends on what you mean by "sustainable".

Nothing is "sustainable" if our planning horizon is infinity; But then, lots of daft conclusions arise through the abuse of infinities.

What is our sustainability planning horizon?

Do we need to ensure that resources are still available in five billion years, when the Sun becomes a Red Giant?

Do we need to keep stuff around for our descendants half a billion years hence, who will likely not be recognisably Homo Sapiens, and may well not all be the same species as each other?

Are we worried about the folks living 50,000 years from now, to whom our entire existence will be at best a niche subject of interest only to a handful of historians and archaeologists?

How long do we need to make things last for? And how much will our distant descendants miss the stuff that doesn't make it to their time, anyway? Do we really suffer from our never having seen a T. Rex? Or a Dodo? Do we really care that whale oil isn't available in the stores?

We need to ensure that the next few generations have the best possible start in life; But we don't need to worry much about our great great great great great great great great great great grandchildren, and we can be confident that very few of them will worry one iota about us, or the things we did, as long as they are able to survive.

Either things will be vastly better for them, and we will be a footnote in their history books; Or things will be far worse for them, and they won't even have history books. As long as we make a decent effort to get the former outcome rather than the latter, the rest is out of our hands.

 

[Merle]

Is that wallpaper?

Yes.

Source" ChatGPT DALL-E

 

[DBT]

You don't have to dig deep to see that, given ecosystem destruction, climate change, etc, we are heading for a major reset. It's just a matter of when.

 

[bilby]

You don't have to dig deep to see that, given ecosystem destruction, climate change, etc, we are heading for a major reset. It's just a matter of when.

So it is rumoured.

But hard evidence is hard to come by, everyone has a different idea about the exact form this apocalypse might take, and apocalyptic predictions have been part of human discourse since the beginning of recorded history. So there's lots of room for skepticism.

The front runner right now is climate change, but exactly how that will result in "a major reset" rather than mere "severe hardship" is unclear.

While it would be great if we had the political ability to use the technology already at our disposal to avoid that severe hardship, history suggests that as the hardship will mostly befall poor people, little will actually be done. And we observe precisely that happening in the last few decades - lots of talk about climate, but politicians are happy to fob us off with windmills and solar panels, rather than doing anything effective.

 

[DBT]

I wasn't really talking about an Apocalypse. Just a major reset in line with the carrying capacity of our ecosystems, and not the Ponzi Scheme economics that our so called leaders and neoclassical economists have been spruiking.

 

[bilby]

I wasn't really talking about an Apocalypse. Just a major reset in line with the carrying capacity of our ecosystems, and not the Ponzi Scheme economics that our so called leaders and neoclassical economists have been spruiking.

What does a "major reset" entail? If it's not apocalyptic, how "major" can it be?

 

[DBT]

I wasn't really talking about an Apocalypse. Just a major reset in line with the carrying capacity of our ecosystems, and not the Ponzi Scheme economics that our so called leaders and neoclassical economists have been spruiking.

What does a "major reset" entail? If it's not apocalyptic, how "major" can it be?

A different business model, a steady state economy, achieving maintaining a long term sustainable population level, etc.

Basically:
''When it comes to climate change, the problem is not just the type of energy we are using, it’s what we’re doing with it. What would we do with 100% clean energy? Exactly what we are doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement, and fill more landfill sites, all of which will pump deadly amounts of greenhouse gas into the air. We will do these things because our economic system demands endless compound growth, and for some reason we have not thought to question this.''

 

[Swammerdami]

This still pretends that there is a sustainable rate of resource production. For many there is not.

That depends on what you mean by "sustainable".

Nothing is "sustainable" if our planning horizon is infinity; But then, lots of daft conclusions arise through the abuse of infinities.

What is our sustainability planning horizon?

Do we need to ensure that resources are still available in five billion years, when the Sun becomes a Red Giant?

Don't be silly. Nobody's trying to look more than a few centuries into the future (though it might be fun to try).

I wasn't really talking about an Apocalypse. Just a major reset in line with the carrying capacity of our ecosystems, and not the Ponzi Scheme economics that our so called leaders and neoclassical economists have been spruiking.

What does a "major reset" entail? If it's not apocalyptic, how "major" can it be?

Habitat destruction and pollution are big problems; they lead to EXTINCTIONS. Habitat destruction (and mining) also reduce the options of our grandchildren. If it is easy to derive metals from scrap why do we still have huge mining operations with their giant environmental costs?

We are already seeing decimations of insect populations. A variety of plants and animals are dependent on insects, so they are also threatened.

Coral reefs are damaged; some shelled sea life cannot cope with rising acidity; in some parts of the ocean, jellies are taking over from fish as the dominant life form. Whales and elephants are endangered. Et cetera.

One species likely to survive is Homo sapiens. But will H. sapiens like the world he's creating?

Some will say "Easy come easy go. Elephants are nifty, but nobody cries about the lost woolly mammoths." But some call elephants 'the Gardeners of Africa's rain-forest'!

If the already critically endangered elephants become extinct, rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest rainforest on earth, would gradually lose between six and nine percent of their ability to capture atmospheric carbon, amplifying planetary warming.
...
“Elephants eat lots of leaves from lots of trees, and they do a lot of damage when they eat,” Blake said. “They’ll strip leaves from trees, rip off a whole branch or uproot a sapling when eating, and our data shows most of this damage occurs to low carbon density trees. If there are a lot of high carbon density trees around, that’s one less competitor, eliminated by the elephants.”

Elephants are also excellent dispersers of the seeds of high carbon density trees. These trees often produce large nutritious fruits which elephants eat. Those seeds pass through the elephants’ gut undamaged and when released through dung, they are primed to germinate and grow into some of the largest trees in the forest.

“Elephants are the gardeners of the forest,” Blake said. “They plant the forest with high carbon density trees and they get rid of the ‘weeds,’ which are the low carbon density trees. They do a tremendous amount of work maintaining the diversity of the forest.”

My point here is NOT to single out the Elephant as especially important. Rather elephants are just an example of how marvelously Nature has evolved intricate ecosystems. It is not a good idea for humans to squander ecology carelessly, just to help house another billion added to an already excessive population.

 

[Elixir]

But will H. sapiens like the world he's creating?

I’m pretty sure it will the best world they have ever known.
I’ve been pissed since around 1956 whe I found out that the assholes killed all the thylacines, but most people seem not to mind.
It’s hard to miss something you never had.

 

[Bomb#20]

What does a "major reset" entail? If it's not apocalyptic, how "major" can it be?

A different business model, a steady state economy, achieving maintaining a long term sustainable population level, etc.

Basically:
''When it comes to climate change, the problem is not just the type of energy we are using, it’s what we’re doing with it. What would we do with 100% clean energy? Exactly what we are doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement, and fill more landfill sites, all of which will pump deadly amounts of greenhouse gas into the air. We will do these things because our economic system demands endless compound growth, and for some reason we have not thought to question this.''

Huh. People keep thinking up ways to be more productive than they used to be. So to forestall that, base an economic system on planners telling people what to do instead of letting them decide for themselves what economic activities to engage in. Why oh why did no one think of that before?

 

[Elixir]

People keep thinking up ways to be more productive than they used to be.

Plus, the main thing they get better at is killing each other, which helps with population control.

 

[Bomb#20]

People keep thinking up ways to be more productive than they used to be.

Plus, the main thing they get better at is killing each other, which helps with population control.

Nonsense. We stopped getting better at killing each other in 1948, when the AK-47 was invented.

 

[DBT]

What does a "major reset" entail? If it's not apocalyptic, how "major" can it be?

A different business model, a steady state economy, achieving maintaining a long term sustainable population level, etc.

Basically:
''When it comes to climate change, the problem is not just the type of energy we are using, it’s what we’re doing with it. What would we do with 100% clean energy? Exactly what we are doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement, and fill more landfill sites, all of which will pump deadly amounts of greenhouse gas into the air. We will do these things because our economic system demands endless compound growth, and for some reason we have not thought to question this.''

Huh. People keep thinking up ways to be more productive than they used to be. So to forestall that, base an economic system on planners telling people what to do instead of letting them decide for themselves what economic activities to engage in. Why oh why did no one think of that before?

There is no mention of telling people what to do. Downsizing is already happening to some extent where couples decide not to have more than two children. Nobody is telling them what to do. Of course the neoclassical economists and politicians with their unsustainable notion of 'growth, growth, growth' imprinted in their heads try to buck the trend with immigration and incentives to have more children.....so who is telling us what to do?

 

[Bomb#20]

A different business model, a steady state economy, achieving maintaining a long term sustainable population level, etc.

Basically:
''When it comes to climate change, the problem is not just the type of energy we are using, it’s what we’re doing with it. What would we do with 100% clean energy? Exactly what we are doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement, and fill more landfill sites, all of which will pump deadly amounts of greenhouse gas into the air. We will do these things because our economic system demands endless compound growth, and for some reason we have not thought to question this.''

Huh. People keep thinking up ways to be more productive than they used to be. So to forestall that, base an economic system on planners telling people what to do instead of letting them decide for themselves what economic activities to engage in. Why oh why did no one think of that before?

There is no mention of telling people what to do. Downsizing is already happening to some extent where couples decide not to have more than two children. Nobody is telling them what to do. Of course the neoclassical economists and politicians with their unsustainable notion of 'growth, growth, growth' imprinted in their heads try to buck the trend with immigration and incentives to have more children.....so who is telling us what to do?

The author of your Guardian article, Jason Hickel, is telling us to stop razing forests, stop building meat farms, stop expanding industrial agriculture, stop producing more cement, and stop filling more landfill sites. Sure looks to me like telling us what to do. Are you seriously under the impression that people currently do all these things because neoclassical economists and politicians incentivize us to, or because we have more than two children, or because of immigrants? We do these things because we want to. They improve our standard of living. No deep-state manipulation, just millions of consumers making local individual self-interested decisions to consume. That's what causes growth, not any notion of "growth, growth, growth", just like we've spent five hundred million years circulating our blood without any notion of "circulate, circulate, circulate" in our heads. So if Hickel wants to turn his desire into a reality he'll need to get us to put central planners in charge of making us do it.

Anyway, my point was merely to ridicule the guy's rhetorical flourish about no one thinking to question our economic system, when nothing in his proposal was at all original.

 

[steve_bank]

It is like a semi truck is slowly rolling downhill and you are trying to no just stop it but push it back up the hill with your bare hands.

Nobody really cares and people fill up the truck as you push.

In the end you get run over. The inertia is too great to stop.