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Comment by openrisk | Hacker News Reader

Just one hundred years ago tourism was only available to a tiny elite. Like with all goods and services provisions that have been scaled exponentially in the mean time, the problem is that there is poor accounting and management of side-effects (externalities). Impacts on environment and local communities are ignored as it is simpler and more profitable to do so.

Sustainability is a complex problem facing every aspect of modern life that we have barely begun to acklowledge, let alone start really solving. E.g., the article does not discuss the interplay with the other intensive industry of the Canary islands (banana plantations) that also competes for resources and creates its own problems.

It will take major economic, political and behavioral development to transition to long term sustainable economies and its anybody's guess what the final outcome will be.

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An unpopular opinion really. I remember at the turn of the century people were concerned that China would ignore all environmental concerns and that they had the attitude, "The west got to be dirty to scale, so we should be allowed to as well"... Its really a human belief IMO, "the rich get to rape the environment for so long, its unfair to clamp down on me now".

In my opinion- that is true. The wealthy should deplete their resources solving this, on earth, not mars. They do owe "us", for collectively hoarding wealth at the expense of everyday people... and have the time and resources to do so. Any other response is just an excuse and lies.

I actually don't think the environmental problems we face will be solved until collectively we remove the burden of the everyday person to actually contribute. UBI.

Until then it's a cycle of, extract resources, hoard capital, and minimize everyday people- so that the first two steps can continue without anyone at the top feeling uncomfortable. Well, I believe it will become VERY uncomfortable if this continues.

For me personally I've only recently connected the dots. Collectively as a society we are currently talking about carbon-neutral vs carbon-negative, global warming and clean energy. As someone who fell for that narrative for quite some time, I can see why. The more uncomfortable but in my opinion significantly more compelling answer to what stands in the way of a sustainable human co-habitation of planet earth, is: not CO2 emissions, it's modernity. The writing by Tom Murphy drove that point home for me.

One example: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/03/lets-make-a-deal/

> Energy transition aspirations are similar. The goal is powering modernity, not addressing the sixth mass extinction. Sure, it could mitigate the CO2 threat (to modernity), but why does the fox care when its decline ultimately traces primarily to things like deforestation, habitat fragmentation, agricultural runoff, pollution, pesticides, mining, manufacturing, or in short: modernity. Pursuit of a giant energy infrastructure replacement requires tremendous material extraction—directly driving many of these ills—only to then provide the energetic means to keep doing all these same things that abundant evidence warns is a prescription for termination of the community of life.

Big picture: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/08/our-time-on-the-river/

This is very dangerous point of view, which will lead to a lot of suffering.

Humanity managed to lift vast majority of itself from abject poverty, grow enough food for everyone, prevent children mortality - unimaginable 100 years ago.

And this is called modernity, which if reversed will bring back hunger and misery.

Yeah it's like we're currently stuck in a local minima in regards of environmentalism, and we can choose to go forward and try to improve using technology, or go backward and improve it by impoverishing ourselves.

I'd argue that our actual minima is around 1950s, which means we are halfway forward to be able to geoengineer ourselves to a better earth than if we're not here at all. But it may be a futile hope.

For many years I believed in our ability to engineer our way out of this one. I'm an engineer by profession, and so are you I assume. It certainly shapes the way we view the world.

If we continue our current growth of energy use, we'll be using the entire luminosity output of the Milky Way galaxy in 1000 years. Color me skeptical, but I say that won't happen. So something will have to give, and that's never ending growth. There are a lot of humans https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/08/ecological-cliff-edge/ and increasingly fewer other animals. Extinction rates are up a thousand fold to the background and accelerating. Geoengineering like so many other ideas in this space are the lie we want to believe that there is a way forward that won't involve fundamentally changing our way of life. Let's just keep doing the same thing we have been doing, a way that is demonstrably causing the sixth mass extinction, but this time with ~sustainable growth~ ~green energy~ ~carbon offsets~ ...

The number of humans is going to plateau and start gradually declining by the turn of the century; that should put an end to the endless growth assumed in whatever model assumes that ludicrous use-of-entire-Milky-Way-luminosity prediction.

Slime molds in pitri dishes are famous for using up their resources and then plateauing ..

Sustainable growth is like saying humane torture. An oxymoron and a lie. Sustainability is all about an equilibrium and long term circular processes, how can that be compatible with ever increasing resource usage, aka growth?

Our financial and societal systems are built on growth, we define prosperity in terms of growth. A traded corporation isn't considered successful when it earns as much as last quarter, it needs to earn more every quarter, ad nauseam.

We want to have and do a lot of stuff that we absolutely don't need. For example, going to the canaries on holiday. It doesn't even make us happy most of the time. We can get rid of that and still be a long way from misery.

Modernity has poisoned our waters, created and unleashed novel sicknesses upon the world, harnessed the atom in order to destroy life, and hides behind medicine as if that excuses all of it.

That's a very human centric point of view you show. Also if you look at anything but GDP it's a much more complicated picture, happiness certainly hasn't been on a never ending upward trajectory. We've also made life miserable for so many animals. We are currently in the sixth mass extinction. We are the sixth mass extinction.

Recognizing a problem does not imply a solution. Do I think it's reasonable or realistic to go back to pre agricultural revolution? No.

Is modernity a reckless party with finite resources? Yes.

https://www.jeremychin.com/repository/hard-truths/0002.jpg

Yes, the real sustainability problem is multifaceted and far more profound than the focus on fossil fuel induced climate change. But for me the currently near single-minded focus on the latter subset has some redeeming virtues:

i) it is an intrinsically global problem. Local emissions diffuse in the atmosphere and become everyone's problem - this pushes for a change in collective mindsets. This is not unlike the viral spread of the recent pandemic, you can't tackle global risks with defunct supra-national mechanisms.

ii) it is a reasonably quantifiable problem (it aligns easier with the prevalent financialization culture and toolkit - this opens up possibilities for immediate "solutions" like building sustainability reporting standards, carbon taxes etc.). Biodiversity and broader ecological health, let alone social/cultural issues are more subtle and subject to challenge.

In other words, as we reluctantly start tackling the unsustainable energy system, we might learn tricks and behaviors that will hopefully be useful more broadly. It is a sort of piecemeal, divide and conquer approach rather than pulling the plug and jumping into the unknown. In the fullness of time it may not work but it makes sense to give it a try.

There is much to like about "modernity" it would be a pity if something happened to it. Being able to travel around and enjoy the wonders of planet and cultures is immensely enriching. Let's hope that there is enough collective intelligence around to transition into a sustainable mode that preserves the good bits.

I think I'm generally on board with the notion that trying is better than giving up, and maybe thinking about green energy is a stepping stone towards discussing modernity and the role it plays in ecosphere destruction. At the same time, all of the current topics with widespread reach in that area frame it from a perspective of getting to do the same things we get to do today. Even your answer does so "Being able to travel around and enjoy the wonders of planet and cultures is immensely enriching." yes flying and traveling thousands of kilometers in a high-speed fashion are astonishing achievements. But they are also astonishingly destructive for all the other life on this planet.

Also did we experience the same COVID-19 crisis? The one where the UN held a vote to see if this constituted a global crisis, one which would allow waving international IP laws for vaccines. And voted NO this is not a crisis. In my experience when faced with harsh situations, people tend to look inward, towards a smaller circle. Are less compassionate and less willing to share. Maybe I'm a cynic, but I don't see the world destruction initiated and primarily caused by the global north going to bring the best out in us. I'm predicting wars, fascism and closed borders. I don't want that to happen, but for me there is overwhelming evidence that points in that direction.

Strongly disagree. It is perfectly possible to sustainably grow, without having to sacrifice growth. Look at France: https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1775434131066822775/pho...

It's like you didn't even read my original comment. So yes, if you look at only one metric, namely CO2 and then only at a single country, one known to have exported pollution heavy industries to poorer countries, yes the graph doesn't keep growing.

Pollution and climate change is a global problem. The global graph for CO2 isn't going down. And even if it will, that still leaves us with other green house gasses, deforestation, PFAS, plastic pollution, other pollution, mining, rising extinction rates and more.

I looked at your graph, do me the favor at look at mine https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/death-by-hockey-sticks/

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