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Yes if we innovate our way there. We cannot ever stop the human desire for a better life not should we, the power of mankind lies in our ability to innovate around d challenges. We fixed the ban population crisis with the green revolution. New energy sources like nuclear can give everyone the quality of life they desire and deserve. Asteroid mining can be a revolutionary source of resources. And we don't know what humans could invent next. But we need to support science and education to make this future happen

ah the extreme techno-optimist position.

> We cannot ever stop the human desire for a better life not should we

i think the goal is to redefine what a better life looks like. like, maybe it's not one of increasing consumption, but one of community and connection and ecological harmony.

It doesn't take all that much innovation. We have pretty much all the necessary technology to reduce our carbon emissions almost to zero without greatly impacting quality of live. We just need to build a very expensive amount of renewables, improve the electric grid, and improve energy efficiency using proven technology like insulating homes, switching from furnaces to heat pumps and using electric cars and public transport.

Bingo.

It's not unrealistically "techo optimistic" to point out that technical solutions are often much more effective and realistic to implement than trying to change deep-seated culture.

Imagine if we responded to ozone depletion by insisting people give up air conditioning and refrigerators instead of just developing non-depleting refrigerants like we did. That would've been a fast-track to public apathy or downright hostility toward fighting ozone depletion.

Ah, the omniscient position. If only everyone behaved like me, the world would be a better place.

I'll continue to define what a better life looks like for myself, and I'll continue to respect the right of others to do the same, thank you very much.

> I'll continue to define what a better life looks like for myself, and I'll continue to respect the right of others to do the same, thank you very much.

do you think that if everyone behaved like this, the world would be a better place?

Of course. How could we presume to know what's best for people we don't even know?

Ah, the tragedy of the commons.

There are aspects of life where this philosophy is great. There are also aspects of life - in particular, items touching on exhaustible resources - where a community-level decision making process really is needed. Water rights in the West are a great example.

If your "right" to a "better" life involves destroying the environment and the air that we all have to breathe, then why exactly should I respect your "right"?

Yeah, this is a tricky scenario. It would not be cool if we were neighbors and I dumped nasty shit in the water nearby.

On the other hand, developing nations have been dumping nasty shit in the air for years as a tradeoff for an improved standard of living. If I was someone living in poverty in a developing nation, I'd hope you would respect my right to burn some coal to improve my standard of living.

Exactly. The "better life" in America generally means living in suburbs in a McMansion and driving 2-3 hours per day in traffic because your house is so far from your job. Why anyone thinks this is better than living in a walkable city is beyond me; Japan and western European nations have shown by example that you can certainly put lots of people into a fairly dense city where the main transport methods are walking and subways while still having extremely low crime rates, and a lifestyle like this requires far fewer resources than a typical suburban American one.

> Asteroid mining can be a revolutionary source of resources.

FWIW

"...analysed how soon humans might use up the solar system’s most accessible resources should space mining take off. They found that an annual growth rate of 3.5% would use up an eighth of the solar system’s realistic resources in 400 years. At that point, humanity would have only 60 years to apply the brakes and avoid exhausting the supply completely."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/12/protect-sola...

You're assuming we can only mine resources from the solar system. With a profit motive that big, I figure some one will figure out how to get further out. Think about how much we know about quantum mechanics we didn't know we didn't know fifty-odd years ago, then think what else we could discover in the next fifty.

If we ever figure out how to transport ordinary matter across interstellar distances and make a profit, we'll most likely have magic that makes transporting matter obsolete.

As your link says "...Elvis points out that one eighth of the iron in the asteroid belt is more than a million times greater that the estimated iron ore reserves on Earth, which may suffice for centuries."

By the time we start running out of materials from the asteroids, I think we will have recycled some of the material that was previously mined.

As people imitate the rich it's critical for the rich to adopt a lifestyle that isn't resource-intensive (like buying status symbols mindlessly). Frugality can become "cool" if the right people do it, if you are affluent/influencer it's your job to stop that race.

Teslas instead of Ferraris. Electric aircraft or electric trains instead of jets.

Electric aircraft are impossible until someone develops much better battery technology than even our most-advanced LiIon tech.

Not only are they possible, but you can buy one right now. This one has ~200km range (it's a two seater for training purposes, not optimized for range or seating) and you can buy it right now: https://www.pipistrel.ad/training/alpha-electro

Of course, there's this 200 mile, 4 seater that won NASA's Green Flight Challenge several years ago: https://www.pipistrel-usa.com/extreme-10/

And several other companies are feverishly building electric airplanes. The retrofits have 150-200 mile range while the clean sheet designs being built right now are up to about 1000km range and cruise speed of ~240 knots. (Faster and longer range than the first passenger airplanes.) That's faster than California's high speed rail and with a comparable or longer per-leg travel distance. With existing battery tech.

Why does this falsehood persist on the Internet that electric aircraft are impossible? You're not the first to make such a claim.

I stand corrected, however these are clearly still at the experimental stage, and I don't see how the tech is anywhere near ready for commercial use.

>Why does this falsehood persist on the Internet that electric aircraft are impossible? You're not the first to make such a claim.

This is absolutely the first I've heard of these planes or this company, and I keep up fairly well with tech news.

>That's faster than California's high speed rail and with a comparable or longer per-leg travel distance.

A turtle is faster than California's high speed rail, since there's no such thing as high speed rail in California. They canceled it, largely because it was going to be horribly expensive (even for HSR) and really slow since it was going to take an inefficient route that was driven by politics instead of geography. You're right: electric aircraft aren't impossible, however high speed rail in California (or probably anywhere in the US) is.

No, but not everyone is, or will be an American Millionaire, and if they were the American Millionaire will do something different to signal their wealth.

In Victorian times richer house holds had lots of knick knacks, they wore voluminous clothes. Clothes and knick knacks were expensive so they signified wealth. Through the 20th century these things got cheaper, so the rich went for other things to signify wealth, cars, travel, minimalism. Now we're at the point where the masses can afford those, so its 'experiences', au pairs and other things that require human labour, which is now relatively expensive.

All of this is a long winded way of saying that a millionaire lifestyle doesnt necessarily have to be high carbon. Just whatever is expensive/unattainable to the masses.

Travel is very much high carbon, at least in the way Instagram influencers and their copycats do it (by airplane).

Flying in economy on a superjumbo isn't that bad. I haven't seen any really good articles about the carbon footprint of foreign travel, but remember, most Americans drive 3-5000lb cars around every day just for 1 person to go to McDonald's or work, sometimes with very long commutes. For vacations, most Americans probably drive, frequently very long distances. With airplanes, a lot of the fuel is actually burned in takeoff, so intercontinental flights with large planes are significantly more efficient (in passenger-miles-per-gallon) than shorter (regional) trips. And finally, most people don't get that much time for vacations, so they only take such trips once or maybe twice per year.

So yes, travel is high-carbon, but compare that to the everyday lifestyle most middle-class and up Americans live every day at home.

The celebrity lifestyle promoted by social media is certainly a problem in that it encourages an excessive lifestyle as the norm, but such lifestyles wouldn't be as possible for most people without debt.

Debt has significantly reshaped society. It's usually hard to tell if a person is actually wealthy because people can run up credit cards and take out loans in order to portray the image that they think they need to have. Most people don't have enough money in their checking accounts to pay for a $2000 emergency, but credit card debt among Americans continues to increase. Need fancy clothes and meals? Your credit card can give you those. Need a luxury car, suburban pickup truck, or a Tesla? Get an auto loan. How about a modern house? All you need is a 50 year mortgage and parents who are willing to cover the payments when you aren't working. Even then, you can choose to live in a Sprinter van and look like you're "living the dream" by driving to different hotels and monuments.

People are easily fooled by appearance, and don't really care that much about merit or giving others a chance to understand their true character. I used to wear blazers and sportcoats over my tshirt and jeans, and I would get a lot more attention from people for that one change alone. As soon as I gave up that look, I became a ghost. Imagine if I had also worn a buttoned up shirt, better pants, a necktie, and a Rolex knockoff. I probably would have gotten jobs faster and gotten more women to say "yes", even though all of those things would have cost a fraction of the credit available on my platinum card.

I think most people know this, though perhaps not so consciously. If looks are so important to people, then why not go into debt early in life to achieve "the look", reap the rewards of having said look and spend the rest of life being a debt-slave?

That's not the path that I chose, as these days I usually have a $0 on my credit card or at most a few thousand that I pay off relatively quickly. But I can't honestly say that the average person is wrong to put themselves into debt in order to get others to view them as a source of abundance. I'd probably have more friends, more connections, more relationships, and more job advancements if I had taken on lots of debt when I was younger.

The normality of debt is the playing field we have subjected ourselves to, and if people primarily depend on their eyes to detect success in others, it makes sense to be a debt/wage slave. It's the game that a lot of people feel they have to play. Instagram and YouTube just heighten the visibility of this playing field to an obscene degree. Even with debt, people can't keep up because seemingly normal and average people are having better lives and more fun than we are. It's especially alarming to those who took the old-world advice of their elders and thought that hard work would equate to success.

If you look at Google's Corporate Social Responsibility marketing then you will see they have done great things to cut down on food waste in their canteens. They do things like composting their coffee beans and not using plastic straws. The data centers are running off clean energy rather than king coal.

But they do all of this so that the videos that you are concerned by can be watched by millions, if not billions, of people.

The videos I find particularly irksome are the ones where things get smashed up just for likes. How many brand new iPads does it take to stop a bullet? Obviously everyone wants to know the answer to that so a 10 minute monetising video will get 10 million views and ten Apple gadgets smashed to pieces.

But there are also videos of people restoring old computer gadgets that also get ten million views. So it is not necessary for computers, cars or anything else consumer to be smashed to pieces for likes. Ordering 1000 hamburgers for a video will cost $5K in burgers but will bring in ad revenue 10x that so it is cost effective to destroy the burgers.

In some ways it is good to have one person do a video of something expensive and planet trashing so everyone can have that question answered without having to trash their own stuff, so it is 'planet saving'. But when every youtuber is just smashing up or wasting more and more stuff it gets a bit silly.

So there is Google using wind farm powered electricity so that they can have content creators trashing the planet. The advertisers get their eyeballs so it works. But it is against the Google CSR statement.

In the demonetization debate where people critical of the allowed range of political thinking get their oxygen supply cut off we get into issues of censorship and whether Google et al. have too much clout.

I would like to see some action taken against Google so that the planet trasher types get their videos demonetised. So food waste should result in an instant demonetization. Chuck one egg at someone for likes and that should be it, no money. Deliberately destroy new consumer goods, instantly no money. Testing something to destruction, e.g. how high you can drop your phone need not be a problem, that need not be demonetised, but 'how many iPads does it tale to stop a bullet' is a different kettle of fish and easy to identify as 'trash stuff for likes'.

I think that if a little bit of pressure was to be put on Google to pull the monetization levers we could get the lifestyle excesses of the influencers under control.

the answer is yes.

Everyone (even millionaire) has a right and should aspire to a better life.

How can we afford this and not ruin the planet? The answer sounds simple - technology and human ingenuity. History tells us that it is our only real hope to improve human conditions.

To give you an admittedly sci-fi (for now) example: what if all energy is clean (nuclear + solar + wind) and planes are electric?

> To give you an admittedly sci-fi (for now) example: what if all energy is clean (nuclear + solar + wind) and planes are electric?

if this is an argument for business-as-usual in the hopes that we'll manage to solve our ecological woes with technology before it's too late -- that's a pretty irresponsible argument. what if we don't manage this?

the progress is NOT given, we must very proactively seek it. isn’t that obvious?!