7 ms·

Get in a time machine. Go back to 1970. Make sure world starts phasing out all coal power by 2000, replacing with nuclear and what renewables are available then

by api 17d ago

Get in a time machine. Go back to 1970. Make sure world starts phasing out all coal power by 2000, replacing with nuclear and what renewables are available then, and make sure modular scalable reactors are available for China so they use that instead of coal to power their rise. Convince everyone that late 20th century unscientific greens are full of shit and nuclear power is better than coal. (Renewables were not fully competitive with fission until the 20teens, too late.) It’s dialed in. That’s not to mean replacing stuff with non carbon emitting sources today is worthless. It’s very important. Right now we are dialing in the next escalation of the problem, and we can still blunt that if we give a damn. One thing you can do today is keep arguing against the romantic anti industrial unscientific greens. Degrowth and “abstinence based” policy will never work. People will never go for it, and we are never returning to pre industrial times. It’s a fantasy. If you try to force it people will elect anti environmental populists (as they have) and you will get the opposite of what we need. Fantasies displace realistic solutions in the discourse, and “everyone needs to become poorer” gives anti environmental and fossil fuel industry shills a way to frame their case as “we are on the side of human development.” Don’t give them that argument. Stop it. It also won’t work with developing nations. “Hey Africa, we know we colonized you and all but can you do us a favor and stay poor to help fix the problem we mostly caused?” There is not enough “fuck you” in the universe for that one. The solution is to replace fossil fuels with non carbon emitting sources, not to stop people from using energy.

bwindels 17d ago
In Europe, we're already degrowing since 2008, even more so if you only look at the real, physical economy because we have to import our fossil energy. We won't be able to power the same lifestyle with nuclear and renewables either, the math doesn't add up. Jean-Marc Jancovici is a french engineer explaining this in great detail, see for example https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/84-jean-marc-jancovici https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/84-jean-marc-... if you don't speak french.
- api 17d ago
  Yes, I've read tons of stuff like this. It won't work. You can absolutely trim a lot of fat from the modern lifestyle, but then you'll be left with a residual. Meanwhile the developing world will keep developing and we have no right to order them to stop. The idea that it's not possible is bullshit too, and it's still bullshit even if you ignore nuclear power. https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/0... Back in the 2000s there was a ton of discourse around peak oil. As part of that, I recall reading very detailed breakdowns written by actual engineers and scientists arguing why you would never have a mass-market EV with the range of a gasoline car and you would never be able to power more than 10-20% of a modern economy with solar power. I own two EVs, one with gas-comparable range, and California currently gets almost 40% of its total electricity (averaged across day and night) from solar, and climbing. There were whole books on this. I think one was called Power Down. It was all 100% wrong. I also recall reading detailed analyses by aerospace engineers about how you would never have a reusable rocket, that it was simply impossible or would cost so much it wouldn't be practical. First stage reusability is now routine, and second stage reusability is coming. Detailed breakdowns of why X is impossible have an incredibly poor track record unless they reduce directly to the laws of physics. Will faster than light travel ever be possible? No, and I believe that, because if it was it would mean a huge part of modern physics (not just relativity) is wrong in very bonkers ways. There is no first principles physics argument for the limits this guy is arguing. Of course if you imagine infinite growth on a finite planet, that fails. That's a trivial argument. But that's not happening, probably due to birth rates declining. The question I'm addressing is: can this civilization and its near-future extrapolation be powered without fossil fuels? The answer is yes, and again even without nukes. Throw nukes in there and it just gets easier. IMO this is 100% ideology and is an example of what I call "problemism." A "problemist" is someone who uses a problem as a stalking horse for one and only one solution that turns out to smuggle in some kind of ideological or social agenda. I see problemism as a dishonest propaganda technique. It's a way to sell the idea without directly selling the idea, instead using concern over some other thing to smuggle it in. So you know I'm not just picking on the left: right now there's a big freak-out on the right about birth rates. The problemists there argue that it's why we need to get back to ultra-traditional family structures and take rights away from women. They're not interested in any solution that doesn't do that, because they don't actually care about the problem. They only care about taking rights from women. This guy and those like him only care about degrowth as part of what is probably some kind of anti-industrial political ideology. If the problem could be solved without it, that would be bad as far as they're concerned, just like how the far right doesn't care about solutions to birth rate decline issues that don't involve reactionary social agendas. Most of these people are anti-capitalists. Thing is, I don't mind that. I don't think capitalism is the ordained perfect system. But if you want to sell me on an alternative to capitalism, argue for it directly on its merits. The test is: if climate change and fossil fuel depletion did not exist, could you still make your argument for abandoning capitalism in favor of your system? If not, then you're engaging in "problemism" to sell bullshit. Because there is no physical reason that you could not drastically cut CO2 emissions without abandoning capitalism. A simple progressive carbon tax combined with cheap renewables could do it. We just lack the political will.
uv-depression 17d ago
This is a gross misunderstanding of what degrowth means. The fantasy is that an economic system predicated on infinite growth can be made compatible with finite resources. Take, for example, the fact that renewable energy keeps growing as a percentage of total energy generation, yet total GHG emissions keep rising. That's a result of the system of incentives set up by capital. Yes, the economy can become less coupled to resources (as it has), but there is a limit, unless you seriously want to argue that iron (for example) can be an arbitrarily small portion of the economy. An economy is a method of allocating resources. This economic system is extremely terrible at meeting base human needs (consider that we produce many times the amount of food that's needed to feed everyone's needs, but massive amounts of it used for industrial meat production and biofuels). > we are never returning to pre industrial times This is an absurd strawman. > everyone needs to become poorer This is, in fact, the industry propaganda. What degrowth advocates for is taking as our first priority meeting human needs and living sustainably (which can be made compatible with most of the technology we have today in some form), rather than the ideology of growth for growth's sake, which mainly results in massive amounts of wasted resources and funnelling wealth into the hands of a few. > “Hey Africa, we know we colonized you and all but can you do us a favor and stay poor to help fix the problem we mostly caused?” There is not enough “fuck you” in the universe for that one. This is misdirection. Getting water, food, shelter, and medicine for everyone on the planet is well within our means as a species. It is the ideology of free movement for goods but not people and infinite growth that makes it impossible to meet those needs, because it requires and underclass who can be used for cheap labour and contained in states built for that purpose. It's not poor people who stand to lose from degrowth, it's the ultra rich.
- api 17d ago
  > It's not poor people who stand to lose from degrowth, it's the ultra rich. Trivially false, and I think this is the root of it. I'm lazy so I asked Claude Fable, but what it gave me is in the same ballpark as a blog post on this I saw a while back that I now can't find. Question: "Lets say a billionaire spends 100% of their time on boards a medium sized private jet. They also own three 10,000 square foot homes, all of which are heated and cooled 24/7. How much energy do they use? What is that energy use in terms of average European households?" I used European because Americans are notable energy pigs and can cut a lot without losing much. Europeans are closer to the reasonable baseline. The total it comes up with for our gas-guzzling fat cat is 96-97 GWh per year. That's including three homes and a continuously operating jet aircraft. This is a totally ridiculous footprint, of course. Claude Fable says the average European household uses about 15,000 kWh/year in electricity, heating, etc. That means our fat cat corresponds to about 6,400 average European households. The population of Europe is around 750 million people. There's about 3000 billionaires worldwide, and if they all lived as absurdly as my caricature they'd use 288 TWh per year. That corresponds to around 19.2 million European households, or about 2.5% of the energy use of a middle class Europe. The vast bulk of energy and resource use supports the middle class, and raising people out of poverty. Inequality probably reduces energy use. If we improved equality it would mean more people with a basic middle class standard of living. A society in which almost everyone has a European middle class standard of living would consume far more energy than one in which a few fat cats live it up and everyone else is poor. Personally I agree with the left at least a bit on this. I think we have too much inequality. If we reduce inequality, that will increase energy consumption, so we'd better build solar panels and batteries and reactors at the same time.
throwaway5752 17d ago
"we are never returning to pre industrial times" We are, one way or the other. It is just a question of the choices we make on the way and how pre-industrial we end up. There is no a position of leverage, the climate is behaving as modeled and expected. We know what will happen next.
- api 17d ago
  Last post in this thread for me... We won't go back. That's the thing, the false option. I think you underestimate how much being poor sucks. I personally call this the "it's better to reign in hell" principle. So if we are dumb and don't cut emissions, we will "reign in hell," and it'll look like a dark cyberpunk dystopia. There might also be some pretty nasty wars and genocides in there. I think that's the real choice we have. If we reduce carbon emissions enough, we can blunt the effects of climate change and adapt without too much pain. If we don't, we get to LARP Bladerunner with billions taking shelter in air conditioned mega-blocks when the deadly heat waves hit. Nature isn't happy life in harmony. Nature is suffering and death. It's an amoral Darwinian meat grinder. Let me make it concrete. I have kids. Let's say you give me a choice. Option 1: I go to the future where we live closer to nature, more primitively, but my daughter died of a childhood disease. Option 2: I go to the future that looks like Bladerunner or Kowloon Walled City with killer heat waves requiring air conditioning to survive, but my child is alive because of modern medicine. I'd pick two and so would most people, which is why we'll never go back. The infant and child mortality rates alone in "wild nature" are enough to turn people away. It's better to reign in hell. But I don't think we have to do that. We could do things like carbon taxes, provided we stop spending the social and political capital on guilt trip tactics and back to the land bullshit that will just be ignored, which is why I'm wasting my time ranting about this.
  - throwaway5752 17d ago
    It's popular right now because the impacts are visibly getting worse. This weather event in Europe is far from normal, and the trend is accelerating. If we fail to control it, what will happen is that we'll be reduced in population by an order of magnitude or two. We won't be able to sustain the technology we've created, we'll have mined easily accessible minerals and energy, and there is a real chance we will not return to being an advanced species in the same way we are today. A simple reduction to greens vs not-greens is not helping anything. We can use more solar and wind. We can be more efficient with energy. We can stop burning hydrocarbons immediately and reserve the for material science and we can replace most car energy sources with electric. None of this is even difficult, it just hurts some established interests who are fighting it with everything they have. They would rather that the planet get destroyed than to lose their wealth and power. I'd prefer my kids not live in Bladerunner, also, and right now that's the path we're on.

by api 17d ago

bwindels 17d ago

In Europe, we're already degrowing since 2008, even more so if you only look at the real, physical economy because we have to import our fossil energy. We won't be able to power the same lifestyle with nuclear and renewables either, the math doesn't add up. Jean-Marc Jancovici is a french engineer explaining this in great detail, see for example https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/84-jean-marc-jancovici https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/84-jean-marc-... if you don't speak french.

api 17d ago
Yes, I've read tons of stuff like this. It won't work. You can absolutely trim a lot of fat from the modern lifestyle, but then you'll be left with a residual. Meanwhile the developing world will keep developing and we have no right to order them to stop. The idea that it's not possible is bullshit too, and it's still bullshit even if you ignore nuclear power. https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/0... Back in the 2000s there was a ton of discourse around peak oil. As part of that, I recall reading very detailed breakdowns written by actual engineers and scientists arguing why you would never have a mass-market EV with the range of a gasoline car and you would never be able to power more than 10-20% of a modern economy with solar power. I own two EVs, one with gas-comparable range, and California currently gets almost 40% of its total electricity (averaged across day and night) from solar, and climbing. There were whole books on this. I think one was called Power Down. It was all 100% wrong. I also recall reading detailed analyses by aerospace engineers about how you would never have a reusable rocket, that it was simply impossible or would cost so much it wouldn't be practical. First stage reusability is now routine, and second stage reusability is coming. Detailed breakdowns of why X is impossible have an incredibly poor track record unless they reduce directly to the laws of physics. Will faster than light travel ever be possible? No, and I believe that, because if it was it would mean a huge part of modern physics (not just relativity) is wrong in very bonkers ways. There is no first principles physics argument for the limits this guy is arguing. Of course if you imagine infinite growth on a finite planet, that fails. That's a trivial argument. But that's not happening, probably due to birth rates declining. The question I'm addressing is: can this civilization and its near-future extrapolation be powered without fossil fuels? The answer is yes, and again even without nukes. Throw nukes in there and it just gets easier. IMO this is 100% ideology and is an example of what I call "problemism." A "problemist" is someone who uses a problem as a stalking horse for one and only one solution that turns out to smuggle in some kind of ideological or social agenda. I see problemism as a dishonest propaganda technique. It's a way to sell the idea without directly selling the idea, instead using concern over some other thing to smuggle it in. So you know I'm not just picking on the left: right now there's a big freak-out on the right about birth rates. The problemists there argue that it's why we need to get back to ultra-traditional family structures and take rights away from women. They're not interested in any solution that doesn't do that, because they don't actually care about the problem. They only care about taking rights from women. This guy and those like him only care about degrowth as part of what is probably some kind of anti-industrial political ideology. If the problem could be solved without it, that would be bad as far as they're concerned, just like how the far right doesn't care about solutions to birth rate decline issues that don't involve reactionary social agendas. Most of these people are anti-capitalists. Thing is, I don't mind that. I don't think capitalism is the ordained perfect system. But if you want to sell me on an alternative to capitalism, argue for it directly on its merits. The test is: if climate change and fossil fuel depletion did not exist, could you still make your argument for abandoning capitalism in favor of your system? If not, then you're engaging in "problemism" to sell bullshit. Because there is no physical reason that you could not drastically cut CO2 emissions without abandoning capitalism. A simple progressive carbon tax combined with cheap renewables could do it. We just lack the political will.

uv-depression 17d ago

This is a gross misunderstanding of what degrowth means. The fantasy is that an economic system predicated on infinite growth can be made compatible with finite resources. Take, for example, the fact that renewable energy keeps growing as a percentage of total energy generation, yet total GHG emissions keep rising. That's a result of the system of incentives set up by capital. Yes, the economy can become less coupled to resources (as it has), but there is a limit, unless you seriously want to argue that iron (for example) can be an arbitrarily small portion of the economy. An economy is a method of allocating resources. This economic system is extremely terrible at meeting base human needs (consider that we produce many times the amount of food that's needed to feed everyone's needs, but massive amounts of it used for industrial meat production and biofuels). > we are never returning to pre industrial times This is an absurd strawman. > everyone needs to become poorer This is, in fact, the industry propaganda. What degrowth advocates for is taking as our first priority meeting human needs and living sustainably (which can be made compatible with most of the technology we have today in some form), rather than the ideology of growth for growth's sake, which mainly results in massive amounts of wasted resources and funnelling wealth into the hands of a few. > “Hey Africa, we know we colonized you and all but can you do us a favor and stay poor to help fix the problem we mostly caused?” There is not enough “fuck you” in the universe for that one. This is misdirection. Getting water, food, shelter, and medicine for everyone on the planet is well within our means as a species. It is the ideology of free movement for goods but not people and infinite growth that makes it impossible to meet those needs, because it requires and underclass who can be used for cheap labour and contained in states built for that purpose. It's not poor people who stand to lose from degrowth, it's the ultra rich.

api 17d ago
> It's not poor people who stand to lose from degrowth, it's the ultra rich. Trivially false, and I think this is the root of it. I'm lazy so I asked Claude Fable, but what it gave me is in the same ballpark as a blog post on this I saw a while back that I now can't find. Question: "Lets say a billionaire spends 100% of their time on boards a medium sized private jet. They also own three 10,000 square foot homes, all of which are heated and cooled 24/7. How much energy do they use? What is that energy use in terms of average European households?" I used European because Americans are notable energy pigs and can cut a lot without losing much. Europeans are closer to the reasonable baseline. The total it comes up with for our gas-guzzling fat cat is 96-97 GWh per year. That's including three homes and a continuously operating jet aircraft. This is a totally ridiculous footprint, of course. Claude Fable says the average European household uses about 15,000 kWh/year in electricity, heating, etc. That means our fat cat corresponds to about 6,400 average European households. The population of Europe is around 750 million people. There's about 3000 billionaires worldwide, and if they all lived as absurdly as my caricature they'd use 288 TWh per year. That corresponds to around 19.2 million European households, or about 2.5% of the energy use of a middle class Europe. The vast bulk of energy and resource use supports the middle class, and raising people out of poverty. Inequality probably reduces energy use. If we improved equality it would mean more people with a basic middle class standard of living. A society in which almost everyone has a European middle class standard of living would consume far more energy than one in which a few fat cats live it up and everyone else is poor. Personally I agree with the left at least a bit on this. I think we have too much inequality. If we reduce inequality, that will increase energy consumption, so we'd better build solar panels and batteries and reactors at the same time.

throwaway5752 17d ago

"we are never returning to pre industrial times" We are, one way or the other. It is just a question of the choices we make on the way and how pre-industrial we end up. There is no a position of leverage, the climate is behaving as modeled and expected. We know what will happen next.

api 17d ago
Last post in this thread for me... We won't go back. That's the thing, the false option. I think you underestimate how much being poor sucks. I personally call this the "it's better to reign in hell" principle. So if we are dumb and don't cut emissions, we will "reign in hell," and it'll look like a dark cyberpunk dystopia. There might also be some pretty nasty wars and genocides in there. I think that's the real choice we have. If we reduce carbon emissions enough, we can blunt the effects of climate change and adapt without too much pain. If we don't, we get to LARP Bladerunner with billions taking shelter in air conditioned mega-blocks when the deadly heat waves hit. Nature isn't happy life in harmony. Nature is suffering and death. It's an amoral Darwinian meat grinder. Let me make it concrete. I have kids. Let's say you give me a choice. Option 1: I go to the future where we live closer to nature, more primitively, but my daughter died of a childhood disease. Option 2: I go to the future that looks like Bladerunner or Kowloon Walled City with killer heat waves requiring air conditioning to survive, but my child is alive because of modern medicine. I'd pick two and so would most people, which is why we'll never go back. The infant and child mortality rates alone in "wild nature" are enough to turn people away. It's better to reign in hell. But I don't think we have to do that. We could do things like carbon taxes, provided we stop spending the social and political capital on guilt trip tactics and back to the land bullshit that will just be ignored, which is why I'm wasting my time ranting about this.
- throwaway5752 17d ago
  It's popular right now because the impacts are visibly getting worse. This weather event in Europe is far from normal, and the trend is accelerating. If we fail to control it, what will happen is that we'll be reduced in population by an order of magnitude or two. We won't be able to sustain the technology we've created, we'll have mined easily accessible minerals and energy, and there is a real chance we will not return to being an advanced species in the same way we are today. A simple reduction to greens vs not-greens is not helping anything. We can use more solar and wind. We can be more efficient with energy. We can stop burning hydrocarbons immediately and reserve the for material science and we can replace most car energy sources with electric. None of this is even difficult, it just hurts some established interests who are fighting it with everything they have. They would rather that the planet get destroyed than to lose their wealth and power. I'd prefer my kids not live in Bladerunner, also, and right now that's the path we're on.