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Comment by slibhb | Hacker News Reader

The idea that we're at some fundamental limit where we can't keep building technology without destroying the environment seems wrong. Besides solar power, there's plenty of room for alternate, environmentally friendly technologies to address the problems you mention.

I can't help but think the actual motivation behind your attitude is not environmentalism but a pessimism about technology that amounts to an extreme form of conservatism. At worst it's a kind of misanthropy.

Technology isn't always good but we should keep building it. I'm not sure how much pressure we should be applying to the brake. Definitely some, but not as much as you're advocating.

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Again I love technology. I probably have more of it in my house than most people. I'm literally surrounded by two laptops and a desktop right now (with two other laptops in the room). Hell, I just bought a force feedback steering wheel yesterday, and it's super fun (I shouldn't have bought it considering what I'm saying here, but I did).

I would love if there was a technological solution to these things, and the human will to do so. I don't even want people to stop searching for technological solutions, it just doesn't seem like it will ever be enough considering human nature.

I also suspect that throwing more technology at the problem might just add more problems, like taking a shot to lose weight that ends up giving you pancreatic cancer a few years later (based on an actual warning label on an Ozempic-like sample my doctor gave me once).

Edit: Part of the reason I have so many laptops is my job requires it, and one of those extra laptops is 8 years old and I haven't recycled it yet. Whenever I change jobs I'll have to return 2 of those laptops.

As you make more and more money it is easy to just keep purchasing, and then yelling from soap boxes how no one has the will to save the environment.

Yep, and I admit I'm part of the problem. I'm not really sure how to break the addiction myself, I haven't even worried about any of this until the past few years, and I've been a fan of technology my whole life, buying video games and consoles and computers and other tech since I was 8 years old.

you believe the solution is on the consumption side, not the production side? interesting

How is this an either/or question? Does consumption not influence production and vice versa?

they are related yes. but if it happens that the vast majority of influence over it is on the production side, the consumption side only matters insofar as it's able to change production which may be a distraction to focus on individual consumer green-purchasing if that's not actually a great way of influencing production behaviors. It ends up as a "personal garden" approach to ecology, keeping us occupied doing what we can in our personal lifestyles and evaluating/influencing our neighbors within our proximity. so then what force drives necessary change on the production side?

As people get richer, as we stop starving and freezing, we prioritize the environment more and more. People in rich countries like green spaces and wild animals, are concerned about climate change, and invest massive amounts of money in environmentally friendly tech.

There's every reason to believe that this pattern will continue. As the world gets richer, we'll continue to develop the will to deal with various environmental problems. In the meantime, a certain amount of damage will be done, but it won't be irrecoverable.

So far people in rich countries just export their dirty business to a poorer place. They don’t give up on those products or processes.

Why is there every reason to believe that we can do those things without environmental destruction? Seems like wishful thinking. If people in rich countries actually cared, they would demand things were made in their country with environmental regulations, not imported from somewhere that doesn't care.

> The idea that we're at some fundamental limit where we can't keep building technology without destroying the environment seems wrong.

It is wrong. Technology fundamentally requires the destruction of the environment, to make a spear you must nap flint and harvest a hard, straight stick. That’s resource destruction on a very small scale.

We have scaled up to Billions of people and near ubiquitous hi-tech. So the scale is what’s eating us, the earth is big, but 8 Billion people is a heck of a lot when every one of them requires highly refined goods.

Rich people consume more and pollute more than poorer people. So, yes, numbers do play a role, but so does how much each individual consume.

People in rich society could certainly improve their quality of life quite considerably by cutting back on certain consumption, such as building more walkable and sustainable environment.

We probably still have to make certain sacrifice, such as eating less meat.

It doesn't really require destruction of the environment. Change to the environment maybe but you can do things like greening deserts that probably improve it.

The environment changes naturally anyway, technology or not.

On what timeline though?

Why our bubble in time is specifically owed resources to make barely updated iPhones each year?

Why these crappy synthetic gadgets? Why not compute in chemistry or biology? Business machines of the 1900s are not the only viable substrate for computing.

If you want to get down to it, forget technology. Living requires "destruction of the environment". The question is whether it's sustainable in the short, medium, and long term.

I don't think that 8 billion people is too many. As we adopt more environmentally friendly technology, I think we'll realize that the earth can easily sustain 8 billion.

All energy production is bad for the environment; methods labeled green or environmentally friendly are just less bad than the alternatives. Our society has shown a consistent lack of ability or will to address those problems. I've been hearing that we'll technology our way out of problems my whole life but our current way of life is as unsustainable as ever. Some areas have gotten better, but more have gotten worse.

I don't know if it's our society that cares little about future generations or simply human nature, but we're almost certain to keep living unsustainably until a major disaster happens.

> I can't help but think the actual motivation behind your attitude is not environmentalism but a pessimism about technology that amounts to an extreme form of conservatism.

Your critique trades on intuitions about the moral conservativism that frustrates political debate, but is actually pointing to an existential conservativism that looks back at a successful half-million year effort at human continuity and wonders what all the rush is about.

> I can't help but think the actual motivation behind your attitude is not environmentalism but a pessimism about technology that amounts to an extreme form of conservatism.

Care to elaborate on this speculation? Sounds more like a harbinger of collectivist austerity to me.

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