# Are we the worst generation of spoiled idiots?



## KenOC

Comedian Louis CK captured that concept in one of his classic bits: "When I read things like 'the foundations of capitalism are shattering,' I'm like, maybe we need that. Maybe we need some time where we're walking around with a donkey with pots clanging on the sides. Because everything is amazing right now and nobody's happy... In my lifetime, the changes in the world have been incredible. Now we live in an amazing, amazing world and it's wasted on the crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots that don't care."

*The BBC* offers in support this graphic, showing how things have changed over the last two centuries. Whaddya think?


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## Manxfeeder

I think you're on to something there. There is always something to complain about, but the fact that you are allowed to complain about it is what is remarkable. 

I hope in all the zeal to censor everything offensive we don't end up losing not only freedom of speech but freedom of thought.


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## Pat Fairlea

Food for thought here. I sometimes feel even older than my 60+ years when I recall that kids of my generation were routinely vaccinated against diphtheria and smallpox, and that some were disabled by polio. In the UK. 
Too many of my generation have forgotten just how bad life could be in the 1950s to early 60s, and the generation of my children have no idea. 
But that doesn't make me resentful or conservative. It makes me more determined that those gains should not be lost through complacency or ignorance, or through the machinations of venal, devious politicians. 
I would not have survived childhood without early advances in antibiotics. I would not have had my academic career without the opportunities offered by free secondary education. And that's why I will always oppose stupidity such as anti-vaxxer movements and the elitism of some politicians that would undo the positive benefits of the last half-century.


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## mmsbls

I wish everyone (or many people at least) would read _Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong about the World - and Why Things Are Better Then You Think_ by Hans Rosling, a recently deceased Swedish doctor who spent much of his life investigating the medical and social status of people around the world. The progress in the past 50 years is simply staggering. In just about every metric, people's lives have improved enormously. Yes, there's plenty of problems, but there's simply no reasonable argument that the world's > 7 billion people's lives are getting worse.


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## philoctetes

I think we are simply spoiled by all this progress. "If we can do abc, then why not xyz?"

What Pat said about vaxxines could apply to everything that makes life better by our standards. Whatever we value about progress is probably fragile and needs to be protected. This is also true of political progress and I'm not sure that's appreciated enough when people feel like being radical.


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## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> I wish everyone (or many people at least) would read





mmsbls said:


> _Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong about the World - and Why Things Are Better Then You Think_
> by Hans Rosling...


​
Steven Pinker also explores this in his huge tome (800+ pages!) titled _The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined_. He presents exhaustive research showing pretty clearly that per capita violence of almost all types has declined by orders of magnitude over the past few hundred years.​


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## AeolianStrains

philoctetes said:


> I think we are simply spoiled by all this progress. "If we can do abc, then why not xyz?"
> 
> What Pat said about vaxxines could apply to everything that makes life better by our standards. Whatever we value about progress is probably fragile and needs to be protected. This is also true of political progress and I'm not sure that's appreciated enough when people feel like being radical.


It's easy to become radical when the reactionaries are always at the fore. Can you blame them when Nazis are marching in the street?

And let's not blame the kids. Both Trump and Sanders are baby boomers.


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## philoctetes

AeolianStrains said:


> It's easy to become radical when the reactionaries are always at the fore. Can you blame them when Nazis are marching in the street?
> 
> And let's not blame the kids. Both Trump and Sanders are baby boomers.


Thanks for providing an example for discussion.


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## tdc

History is written by those who win wars (and those who wish to keep in power). Amazing how things just keep getting better all the time.


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## Couchie

High infant mortality and more death from disease makes processing death easier when it does inevitably confront us.

More education means less ignorance, but it is ignorance, not education, which is bliss.

More literacy means experiencing the world through dusty books rather than real experience of the world.

Democracy means unstable governments and a populace divided against itself and confusion over national identity.


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## KenOC

Couchie said:


> High infant mortality and more death from disease makes processing death easier when it does inevitably confront us.
> 
> More education means less ignorance, but it is ignorance, not education, which is bliss.
> 
> More literacy means experiencing the world through dusty books rather than real experience of the world.
> 
> Democracy means unstable governments and a populace divided against itself and confusion over national identity.


Accepting that well-armed thugs can easily take all we have saves us the inconvenience of dialing 911.


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## philoctetes

We can dial 911 but the responders can't get through traffic in time.


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## Totenfeier

Do not forget the staggering influence of news and social media, with the attendant echo-chamber problems. ""4.7 million good, kind, gentle, and loving things happened today; our top story: the three worst, most horrific and polarizing things!" Imagine if Chicken Little and Mark Zuckerberg had a baby!


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## Strange Magic

"Don't Worry; Be Happy!"

https://thinkprogress.org/were-beyo...-the-population-boom-36c4712743ad/#.mpyzk3gm9


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## Bwv 1080

But scant progress has been made in reducing the overall mortality rate


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## Strange Magic

*A Serious, Realistic View of Where We're Headed*

Here are links to papers addressing both population growth and climate change as looming threats to the future health of the planet and happiness of our exploding billions:

http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6583e.pdf
https://na.unep.net/geas/archive/pdfs/GEAS_Jun_12_Carrying_Capacity.pdf
http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/exec-office-other/climate-change-full.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280423/

"Don't Worry; Be Happy!"


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## mmsbls

Strange Magic said:


> Here are links to papers addressing both population growth and climate change as looming threats to the future health of the planet and happiness of our exploding billions:
> 
> http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6583e.pdf
> https://na.unep.net/geas/archive/pdfs/GEAS_Jun_12_Carrying_Capacity.pdf
> http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/exec-office-other/climate-change-full.pdf
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280423/
> 
> "Don't Worry; Be Happy!"


There are a large number of dedicated people working hard on solutions to the problems identified by researchers. Progress in many fields is actually remarkable. I would suggest the following slogans:

"Be concerned and fix it"
"Things are problematic and getting better"


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## Jacck

the future will be bleak. Overpopulation, global warming, ecological crisis, draughts and water shortages, loss of freedoms, orwellian technocratic dicatorships, population control by means of artificial intelligence, wars. We are at the threshold of another mass extinction of species
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...opulations-are-plummeting-and-why-it-matters/
Of course some people are always in denial of any problems. Especially conservative people are always in denial of any real problems, but are scared by pseudoproblems created by their populist puppetmasters


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## Strange Magic

mmsbls said:


> There are a large number of dedicated people working hard on solutions to the problems identified by researchers. Progress in many fields is actually remarkable. I would suggest the following slogans:
> 
> "Be concerned and fix it"
> "Things are problematic and getting better"


Question: What should we think about AGW deniers rooted within governments, corporations, think tanks, and opinion factories? Should we call them out in strong, decisive language? Vanquish them at the polls? Should we Not Worry, and Be Happy? I certainly agree with being concerned and fixing it, and that things are indeed problematic. Getting better? Not so sure.


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## Jacck

Strange Magic said:


> Question: What should we think about AGW deniers rooted within governments, corporations, think tanks, and opinion factories? Should we call them out in strong, decisive language? Vanquish them at the polls? Should we Not Worry, and Be Happy? I certainly agree with being concerned and fixing it, and that things are indeed problematic. Getting better? Not so sure.


I have a suspicion that at least some of them were paid by Russia. At least in my own country the same morons who uncritically accept Russian propaganda uncritically accepted the anti-AGW propaganda. And those propagandists, who actively spread Russian disinformation, have been spreading anti-AGW propaganda
It makes sense from Russian perpective
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2017/10/03/russia-to-reap-benefits-from-climate-a59145
Their economy is totally dependent on fossil fuels, Siberia will melt and offer more land, and it is also a good controversial topic to sow dissent in the western societies.


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## mmsbls

Strange Magic said:


> Question: What should we think about AGW deniers rooted within governments, corporations, think tanks, and opinion factories?


Maybe that they don't understand climate change research as well as experts do? The world is moving past them (admittedly not as fast as we'd like).



Strange Magic said:


> Should we call them out in strong, decisive language? Vanquish them at the polls? Should we Not Worry, and Be Happy?


I prefer to work with the large number of governments, corporations, think tanks, and people who are bullish on technologies, fuels, and policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I've been working on climate change mitigation for 20 years, and generally I've thought the world's policies are way too conservative to reach our goals. However, in California, there are a series of new policies that are more aggressive than those in my models. Other states in the US will follow. People I work with and talk to are concerned but working hard to fix it.



Strange Magic said:


> I certainly agree with being concerned and fixing it, and that things are indeed problematic. Getting better? Not so sure.


I assume you mean the _potential future _for adverse effects of population and climate change. For the vast majority of the world, their health, wealth, safety, education, and many other metrics are improving at stunning rates. Their world is getting better - much better. It's possible everyone's world could start to get worse in the future due to a variety of factors. So... let's work with the governments, corporations, think tanks, and people who are willing to make changes towards a continuing better future.


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## Strange Magic

> mmsbls: "I assume you mean the potential future for adverse effects of population and climate change. For the vast majority of the world, their health, wealth, safety, education, and many other metrics are improving at stunning rates. Their world is getting better - much better. It's possible everyone's world could start to get worse in the future due to a variety of factors."


I agree that a vast majority of the world's health, wealth, safety, education, etc. are improving, much of the improvement being in the amazing rise of China out of poverty. We have a situation where, as populations grow and simultaneously increase in their consumption of food, materials, and fuel, other populations lag behind or slip further into desperation. As a planetary species, we are caught between forces that increase certainly material abundance and yet simultaneously increase AGW, environmental pollution, and destruction of habitat and wildlife. It's a race between forces up and forces, longer term, down. The story is encouraging short-term but what matters is what our grandkids and great-grandkids experience. They are certainly going to live in a species-poor biosphere; that much is established, also a warmer and more stressed environment. Nature bats last.


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## philoctetes

"Nature bats last"

Well, nature doesn't give a hoot about the environment, but biology does. Nature and biology are actually not very good friends.


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## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> Well, nature doesn't give a hoot about the environment, but biology does. Nature and biology are actually not very good friends.


I do not understand this. Biology is one of the sciences studying nature, and nature is.......nature.

Wikipedia:

"Biology is the natural science that studies life and living organisms, including their physical structure, chemical processes, molecular interactions, physiological mechanisms, development and evolution. Despite the complexity of the science, there are certain unifying concepts that consolidate it into a single, coherent field. Biology recognizes the cell as the basic unit of life, genes as the basic unit of heredity, and evolution as the engine that propels the creation and extinction of species. Living organisms are open systems that survive by transforming energy and decreasing their local entropy to maintain a stable and vital condition defined as homeostasis."


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## philoctetes

Of course, you are sure to disagree, and miss another chance to think. But people love quoting stuff. Not my problem.

Perhaps "biology bats last, nature always wins" would make my point better.

And loose metaphors are always worse as a language for ANY science than math.


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## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> Of course, you are sure to disagree, and miss another chance to think. But people love quoting stuff. Not my problem.
> 
> Perhaps "biology bats last, nature always wins" would make my point better.
> 
> And loose metaphors are always worse as a language for ANY science than math.


I don't understand why I am sure to disagree. And I do hate missing "another chance to think". The rest of that first part I don't underground at all--above my head. But I'm pleased you have somewhat modified and maybe even clarified your "biology bats last" etc. koan; it just wasn't making any sense. And I share your distaste for loose metaphors; they are messy and smelly.


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## philoctetes

"And I share your distaste for loose metaphors; they are messy and smelly"

Abstinence builds character. I first got metaphor overload when I read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues 45 years ago. Even Nabokov can't help me any more.


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## Steerpike

Your question inevitably raises the thorny issue of politics. I don't think there can be a serious question about whether our lives have improved throughout a period where capitalism has been the dominant political/economic ideology: they obviously have. However, the level of improvement has been far from uniform, and the result is inequality. The questioning of capitalism arises the sense that some have benefited more than others, and the fact that almost everyone has benefited in some way is overlooked. Inequality is the new 'poverty', and the utterly mistaken belief that we are all equal is used to justify the idea that inequality is wrong (rather than natural and inevitable).


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## DaveM

Regarding the OP:


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## tdc

Capitalism is not the current model in the West, it is a Corporate Oligarchy. Banks create money out of thin air and then charge interest for it. They control interest rates, and the economy. This means they hold the ring of power, and all are under their dominion. Hardly a free market.

Since its approximately the season I'll also mention income tax is unconstitutional. I would recommend watching the film _From Freedom to Fascism_ directed by Aaron Russo.

"I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." 
Thomas Jefferson

I predict things will continue to deteriorate in our current corporate oligarchy until there is so much inequality, the Government will then step in to offer you their pre-conceived socialist solution, which will make things much worse.


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## jenspen

Bwv 1080 said:


> But scant progress has been made in reducing the overall mortality rate


That brought to mind Tennyson's poor, immortal Tithonus and his beautiful lament:

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, 
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, 
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, 
And after many a summer dies the swan. 
Me only cruel immortality 
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, 
Here at the quiet limit of the world, 
A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream 
The ever-silent spaces of the East, 
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.

More prosaically, I find Hans Rosling's statistics (referred to in a previous post) compelling. Steven Pinker has made comprehensive use of them and other cheering stats in "Enlightenment Now". I mightn't have agreed with all of Pinker's conclusions but I respect his defence of scientific, quantitative methods of understanding the history and ways of the world.


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## Strange Magic

While I honor Steven Pinker's work and credentials as a cognitive psychologist and expert in linguistics, and concur that the current large trend is up for human happiness and well-being despite a strong down component in several areas like sub-Saharan Africa and certain parts of Southeast Asia and of Latin America, nevertheless Pinker joins a tribe of irrepressible optimists whose educational and vocational backgrounds are not in the areas of the sciences that deal directly with oceanic and atmospheric chemistries, climate modeling, population studies, or general environmental/ecological issues: carrying capacities, species and habitat loss, etc. In the long run, it is more prudent to assume worse rather than better scenarios and to lay plans accordingly. We have no fallback planet.


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## philoctetes

"Pinker joins a tribe of irrepressible optimists"

Who is their tribal chief? Or is it a council? Destroy their villages!

They probably want me to drink soy milk, huh? No way!


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## AeolianStrains

-------------------------


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## Strange Magic

Hans Rosling, Julian Simon are tribe members, as are many American politicians who find the thought of there being an actual serious, even world-threatening crisis looming ahead so profoundly disturbing that they find themselves locked into a state of total denial that anything could possibly go wrong. There are reasons for their terror of an unhappy future, mostly of an ideological nature but we will not go into that here; better to discuss downstairs in Groups.


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## KenOC

Pinker, in his book, is totally concerned with tracking the ways that life has long been getting better for an ever-growing portion of the earth's people. As I recall, he does not address in any way the future, which obviously presents us with serious and perhaps existential threats. In that regard, I am not at all optimistic and in fact suspect that the tipping point was passed some time ago. So eat, drink, and be merry!


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## philoctetes

Well, I'm an optimist even though I see bad things around every corner. I agree with those who weigh risk heavily, Sometimes I jump into the fire anyway, but outcomes are usually worse when I don't trust those instincts.

I disagree with a lot of climate change policy. My opinion, like Ken, is we already passed the turnaround point. This is why I get angry at people who point fingers when they are part of the problem themselves. I know a lot of enviros but few who would give up their jobs because they commute too much. For decades solutions have been typically short-sighted and delayed by economic realities, but now it's all Trump's fault, or the Republicans fault... no it's been OUR fault for decades... those who enjoyed the conveniences... the same ones that China wants now... seeking equality in a standard of living that isn't sustainable is going to be a bigger problem... pass the milk...


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## Jacck

Strange Magic said:


> Hans Rosling, Julian Simon are tribe members, as are many American politicians who find the thought of there being an actual serious, even world-threatening crisis looming ahead so profoundly disturbing that they find themselves locked into a state of total denial that anything could possibly go wrong. There are reasons for their terror of an unhappy future, mostly of an ideological nature but we will not go into that here; better to discuss downstairs in Groups.


It is mostly a combination of stupidity and immorality. The real culprit as always and as in every human society is greed and thirst for power. The greedy companies will ruin the environment for profit, whether it be fracking, or rainforest deforestation, or mass producing plastics. And these industries have enough money to corrupt politicians and manipulate laws in their favor and pay the PR companion to influence public opinion. The only ones who actually can stop it are the politicians, but most of them are stupid and corrupt, greedy and power firsty.

I was in Borne a couple of years ago, and it is painful to see the dissappearance of the beautiful rainforests and their replacement with oil palm plantations. The stupid villagers killing orangutans on sight etc. And the Indonesian/Malaysian politicians are unwilling to stop it, because they need the money. The same happens in Brazil, especially with their new psychopatic president Jair Bolsonaro. It is the same with Trump, who is more or less mentally ill (a severe case of personality disorder combined with severe stupidity). And it is similar in most of the countries, whether in China, in Europe, in Russia etc. Reasonable changes can be done only from above, from the politicians. And the politicians are not exactly the best examples of humankind.

Another problems is that the people who get involved with ecology can be pretty stupid themselves. For example, they have been fighting nuclear power, which is the only reasonable replacement for coal. The legislation to add biofuels is also more damaging than helping.

so overall, I see not much hope. The majority of mankind is just too stupid, too immoral, too greedy, too power hungry. And those who acutally see have no power to do anything.


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> Of course some people are always in denial of any problems. Especially conservative people are always in denial of any real problems,


Of course. That doesn't mean that the problems denied are real. Besides, they invent their own for the rest of us to deny. "Yellow peril" and "Reds under the bed" will mean different things to different people, but they are easy examples of cathc-phrases intended to scare the population.



mmsbls said:


> I assume you mean the _potential future _for adverse effects of population and climate change. For the vast majority of the world, their health, wealth, safety, education, and many other metrics are improving at stunning rates. Their world is getting better - much better. It's possible everyone's world could start to get worse in the future due to a variety of factors. So... let's work with the governments, corporations, think tanks, and people who are willing to make changes towards a continuing better future.


Exactly so. Few deny that the world faces continuing problems (Trump actively promotes the problem of immigration from Mexico) and some have the potentail for global catastrophe. In the good old days, when many more of us died in childbirth and life expectancy was 50 (40/60?) nothing had the global reach of AGW - not even the plague carried enough of us off (and some would say the consequent population reductions were beneficial!).

But as I've posted in another thread (unaware until now that this topic was being explored) only those who mourn a past that they didn't live in need to take off their rose coloured specs. It's the realist-optimists that will carry us forward - not the pessimists and doom mongers.



Jacck said:


> The majority of mankind is just too stupid, too immoral, too greedy, too power hungry. And those who acutally see have no power to do anything.


No place in your world for love, then? I'm sorry to hear that.


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## Strange Magic

It should be noted that I am the only poster who brings the problem of a metastasizing global population into the discussion of either problem or solution. This avoidance of talk about population screams out by its absence from almost any "serious" media coverage of AGW or other pollution or resource issues. This was not the case in the 1960s when people such as Paul Ehrlich and Garrett Hardin seized upon the inevitability of the Malthusian mechanism working itself out relentlessly in time, though postponed for perhaps several generations by the Green Revolution, etc. But today any talk of population is why certain countries are told they must feverishly increase their populations for reasons of either social economics or to ensure not being outbred by Others.

This is why the long-term path toward a stable global population--much smaller than today's--lies in full emancipation and equality for women, and their complete and confidential control over their reproductive functions. It is those societies which most closely approach that goal that have either stable or declining populations; the goal should be to so regulate other cultures so that female equality and (literal) self-control are universal. This will require profound changes in social and religious attitudes that must be implemented, or rampant population growth and its concomitant environmental havoc will continue until......


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## Jacck

Strange Magic said:


> It should be noted that I am the only poster who brings the problem of a metastasizing global population into the discussion of either problem or solution. This avoidance of talk about population screams out by its absence from almost any "serious" media coverage of AGW or other pollution or resource issues. This was not the case in the 1960s when people such as Paul Ehrlich and Garrett Hardin seized upon the inevitability of the Malthusian mechanism working itself out relentlessly in time, though postponed for perhaps several generations by the Green Revolution, etc. But today any talk of population is why certain countries are told they must feverishly increase their populations for reasons of either social economics or to ensure not being outbred by Others.
> 
> This is why the long-term path toward a stable global population--much smaller than today's--lies in full emancipation and equality for women, and their complete and confidential control over their reproductive functions. It is those societies which most closely approach that goal that have either stable or declining populations; the goal should be to so regulate other cultures so that female equality and (literal) self-control are universal. This will require profound changes in social and religious attitudes that must be implemented, or rampant population growth and its concomitant environmental havoc will continue until......


I named overpopulation as the No1 problem and the cause of most of the other problems. The optimistic news is that the growth is slowing down almost everywhere except Africa. Even the Muslim countries are rapidly slowing down and 2-3 child family is becoming the ideal
https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
but 10 billiion by 2100 is still enormous strain for the environment, especially with further strain added by the global warming and reductions in agricultural production etc.


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## philoctetes

Population control has been one of the biggest failures of my lifetime. You can talk about it like most breeders or actually do it like I have. You can talk about alternative trans like most drivers or actually do it like I have. You can talk about a lot of things or actually do them like I do. Since we're bragging today I can do that too.

My self-assignment is to smack up people who buy food in plastic clamshells. But I'm not perfect so I try to be nice about it. There is nothing I hate more than watching a large single-use piece of plastic packaging go in the trash right after purchasing the item. Lately Amazon has decided to go all plastic with their packaging. This really upsets me and I hate to order stuff anymore.


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## mmsbls

Strange Magic said:


> Hans Rosling, Julian Simon are tribe members, as are many American politicians who find the thought of there being an actual serious, even world-threatening crisis looming ahead so profoundly disturbing that they find themselves locked into a state of total denial that anything could possibly go wrong. There are reasons for their terror of an unhappy future, mostly of an ideological nature but we will not go into that here; better to discuss downstairs in Groups.


I have a very different take on Rosling. He was very aware of the problems that exist and how those problems could increase (at least in his area of expertise). He chose to devote his life to making the world a better place by understanding what works and what does not and by working diligently to use his knowledge to improve conditions throughout the world.

I work with many people who focus on climate change mitigation. Some of us are more optimistic than others, but all of us understand that a 2 degree C rise in temperature is better than a 3 C rise, and a 3 C rise is better than a 4 C rise. All the conferences I attend have participants that are working on technology, fuels, or policies that can potentially reduce the expected rise in global temperature. Those participants include companies such as Shell, Toyota, Daimler, GM, Total S.A., and others. When they talk to us, it's clear that they believe zero-emission vehicles and renewable fuels (low carbon intensity) will dominate the future. And not just because of government requirements.

Yes, a lower population would help. The present trend is towards increased wealth and consequent lower fertility rates. That's a very good thing.

Understand the potential risk and work diligently to fix it.


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## Guest

I, for one, am infinitely grateful for plastics. They are a wonderful invention. Single-use plastic medical devices have done wonders for preventing infections - particularly in hospital settings. I use plastics in my research constantly. Other than my dissecting instruments, virtually everything else I use is plastic, save for a few random lasers and lenses.

I am grateful for the plastics in my insulin pump infusion sets, that allow me to easily insert a pre-sterilized plastic cannula under my skin to deliver the insulin I so desperately need. And for my plastic pump.

What is the alternative for packaging? Plastics are cheap, lightweight, and durable. Take a look at your life, and realize just how much better your standard of living is thanks to things like plastics. Show me a better medium we can use to safely and cleanly package food that will last longer, be lightweight, and even allow for sterilization if necessary?

I wish there was more use of nuclear energy. Countries like France have proven just how beneficial and safe it can be. 

I have little and less use for the Malthusians like Ehrlich and Hardin. Ehrlich's scarcity predictions have yet to be proven true - more evidence that he was wrong. Hardin was a racist eugenicist who wanted to see "undesirables" eliminated, and his "Tragedy of the Commons" was very handily refuted by Nobel-prize winning work by Elinor Ostrom. His reading of history and how common resources were used proved to not be true. It was never the case that people would quickly consume all of a limited common resource - humans have since ancient times been very good at creating local means to control the use of those resources.

The dire predictions have yet to really come to fruition. In my mind, I think that is explained by one of two explanations (I am open to the possibility there are more): 1. the predictions were wrong; or 2. mankind, as so often in the past, has proven incredible ingenuity in preventing upcoming disasters.


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## Potiphera

Dr. Mike.

*''I wish there was more use of nuclear energy. Countries like France have proven just how beneficial and safe it can be ''

*
Could somebody advise whether Fukushima has put under control after 6 or so years, and where do they store all the nuclear waste?? 
I think nuclear energy poses a dangerous for the whole planet.


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## philoctetes

The ultimate problem with lefties is that they have no control over anything outside the US without making deals which undermine their objectives. So they keep beating up their fellow Americans to do more while allowing other countries to remain non-compliant. These are not effective solutions and they actually take away leverage through compromise. I've seen this for a long time while the leaders who propose these solutions have no idea how to live frugally themselves. I will no longer vote for people who propose radical solutions when they refuse to stop being part of the problem.

Inside the US, the compromises are also evident. I live in one of the most liberal places in the US and our river is a disaster. Do you like wine? Then you are part of that problem. Yet the wineries (Korbel has a lot of riverside vinyards) claim that a few residential septic systems along the river do more damage than all the ground crap they use. So our county puts pressure on residents to upgrade all septics while the wineries keep fertilizing... money always talks and works against you, even when your favorite pols are firmly in control. 

Do you like redwoods? Again, wineries are pushing for the right to clear coastal redwoods for wines that nobody can afford. But real forestry, the kind that builds houses and reduces fires, was eliminated long ago for enviro concerns. The oaks that burned in Paradise could not be bothered with. Misappropriation everywhere. When there is a disaster about to happen and everybody ignores it, it's going to happen eventually. Do not make today's California a model for progress or you'll be sorry.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> I, for one, am infinitely grateful for plastics. They are a wonderful invention. Single-use plastic medical devices have done wonders for preventing infections - particularly in hospital settings. I use plastics in my research constantly. Other than my dissecting instruments, virtually everything else I use is plastic, save for a few random lasers and lenses.
> 
> I am grateful for the plastics in my insulin pump infusion sets, that allow me to easily insert a pre-sterilized plastic cannula under my skin to deliver the insulin I so desperately need. And for my plastic pump.
> 
> What is the alternative for packaging? Plastics are cheap, lightweight, and durable. Take a look at your life, and realize just how much better your standard of living is thanks to things like plastics. Show me a better medium we can use to safely and cleanly package food that will last longer, be lightweight, and even allow for sterilization if necessary?
> 
> I wish there was more use of nuclear energy. Countries like France have proven just how beneficial and safe it can be.
> 
> I have little and less use for the Malthusians like Ehrlich and Hardin. Ehrlich's scarcity predictions have yet to be proven true - more evidence that he was wrong. Hardin was a racist eugenicist who wanted to see "undesirables" eliminated, and his "Tragedy of the Commons" was very handily refuted by Nobel-prize winning work by Elinor Ostrom. His reading of history and how common resources were used proved to not be true. It was never the case that people would quickly consume all of a limited common resource - humans have since ancient times been very good at creating local means to control the use of those resources.
> 
> The dire predictions have yet to really come to fruition. In my mind, I think that is explained by one of two explanations (I am open to the possibility there are more): 1. the predictions were wrong; or 2. mankind, as so often in the past, has proven incredible ingenuity in preventing upcoming disasters.


The plastics are of course a great invention, and no one would object to their use in medicine, but the problem is that they are used in absurd quantities for things that could have been done without them (such as plastic wrappings for everything). 
http://plastic-pollution.org/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/02/plastic-bottles-coca-cola-recycling-coke
Things like water bottled in plastic bottles are absolutely unnecessary. I remember a time, where water/milk/beer etc. was sold in returnable glass bottles. 
and what you repeated at the second half of your post are the same arguments that I heard hundred times from likes of you, about the human ingenuity, inventivness blah blah blah.


----------



## Jacck

philoctetes said:


> The ultimate problem with lefties is that they have no control over anything outside the US without making deals which undermine their objectives. So they keep beating up their fellow Americans to do more while allowing other countries to remain non-compliant. These are not effective solutions and they actually take away leverage through compromise. I've seen this for a long time while the leaders who propose these solutions have no idea how to live frugally themselves. I will no longer vote for people who propose radical solutions when they refuse to stop being part of the problem.


I agree that the American lefties are ultimately powerless to do anything. But Americans are by far the biggest comsumers and polluters per capita in the world and they consume and pollute third-world countries. 
http://theconversation.com/when-som...seas-they-also-offshore-their-pollution-75371
this is globalism and no single country can solve this. That is why I am rather pessimistic that much can be done.


----------



## Guest

Potiphera said:


> Dr. Mike.
> 
> *''I wish there was more use of nuclear energy. Countries like France have proven just how beneficial and safe it can be ''
> 
> *
> Could somebody advise whether Fukushima has put under control after 6 or so years, and where do they store all the nuclear waste??
> I think nuclear energy poses a dangerous for the whole planet.


How many deaths from Fukushima?

As to the nuclear waste, France has been using nuclear power for decades - this article details how they are being incredibly frugal, recycling the waste to get even more use out of it.
https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nuclear-fuel-the-french-do-it-why-cant-oui


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## philoctetes

I never buy death counts as a measure of damage done by a disaster. Way too misleading.


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> and what you repeated at the second half of your post are the same arguments that I heard hundred times from likes of you, about the human ingenuity, inventivness *blah blah blah*.


Well I certainly can't argue with that logic.


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## Strange Magic

Again, disappointingly little about both rampant population growth and the link to full female emancipation, equality, and secret and confidential self-control over their fertility as the only real, demonstrable way to for long-term population stability and reduction. A love of plastics and nuclear power, and the repudiation of the coming Malthusian crisis is par for the course among deniers and Pollyannas. Their thesis is that if nothing bad has happened yet, it will never happen. Is this scientific? Is it even sensible?


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## Guest

philoctetes said:


> I never buy death counts as a measure of damage done by a disaster. Way too misleading.


True. But count up all the nuclear energy disasters (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you only need one hand to do so) since it was brought into being. With the exception of Chernobyl, the impact has been minimal at best. In fact, Chernobyl even did not have as many of the long-term effects as predicted. And if the information is correct, I think it is safe to say that your average coal-burning plant, functioning as it is supposed to, has done much more harm to the environment than all nuclear power plants combined, even factoring in disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima.


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## philoctetes

Jacck said:


> I agree that the American lefties are ultimately powerless to do anything. But Americans are by far the biggest comsumers and polluters per capita in the world and they consume and pollute third-world countries.
> http://theconversation.com/when-som...seas-they-also-offshore-their-pollution-75371
> this is globalism and no single country can solve this. That is why I am rather pessimistic that much can be done.


Which is why we have to ignore the knee-jerk panic mongers who will have no impact and keep doing things that do have an impact, even if others aren't doing it. Practicing material efficiency is not the kind of heroism that fills forum posts or attracts Hollywood stars but it's the kind that matters most.

"this is globalism" aka Clintonism, NWO, etc...


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## philoctetes

Strange Magic said:


> Again, disappointingly little about both rampant population growth and the link to full female emancipation, equality, and secret and confidential self-control over their fertility as the only real, demonstrable way to for long-term population stability and reduction. A love of plastics and nuclear power, and the repudiation of the coming Malthusian crisis is par for the course among deniers and Pollyannas. Their thesis is that if nothing bad has happened yet, it will never happen. Is this scientific? Is it even sensible?


I thought you were going to participate. This is just a synopsis and not an accurate one at that.


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## Guest

Ehrlich and Hardin and Malthus were more social science than hard, empirical science. Their predictions have yet to come true, so going simply off of empirical evidence, not predictions, it would appear that your side is on the shakier ground. So why am I the one labeled a denier? As I pointed out, Ostrom's Nobel-prize winning work refuted the claims of Hardin in his paper on common resources. Not only were his policy proposals for limiting population growth repugnant, even Nazi-like in their approach, but his model that in his mind necessitated such draconian limitation of human reproduction was flawed in that it had not actually ever happened as he described. Outside of small islands, where have Malthusian predictions ever shown to be accurate? Small scale observations are not necessarily scalable to a planetary level.


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## mmsbls

Potiphera said:


> ...
> Could somebody advise whether Fukushima has put under control after 6 or so years, and where do they store all the nuclear waste??
> I think nuclear energy poses a dangerous for the whole planet.


The question is not whether nuclear energy poses a threat but rather which energy pathways pose the lowest threat overall (wealth, health, environment, etc.). I can tell you all the wonderful qualities for just about every fuel (fossil fuels, natural gas, electricity, hydrogen, biofuels, nuclear), but I also can tell you all the problems those fuels have. The real trick is to lay out scenarios for fuels and technologies (behavior would be great as well) that get us to our goals with the fewest negative consequences.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> Ehrlich and Hardin and Malthus were more social science than hard, empirical science. Their predictions have yet to come true, so going simply off of empirical evidence, not predictions, it would appear that your side is on the shakier ground. So why am I the one labeled a denier? As I pointed out, Ostrom's Nobel-prize winning work refuted the claims of Hardin in his paper on common resources. Not only were his policy proposals for limiting population growth repugnant, even Nazi-like in their approach, but his model that in his mind necessitated such draconian limitation of human reproduction was flawed in that it had not actually ever happened as he described. Outside of small islands, where have Malthusian predictions ever shown to be accurate? Small scale observations are not necessarily scalable to a planetary level.


Ehrlich, Malthus etc lived in the 1960's? What is 60 years from the perspective of geological timescales? 2 generations? How many generations does it take for bacteria to eat the agar on a Petri dish? If they are in the middle of the feast, they do not worry about the future, that in 200 generations, there will be nothing to eat. The analogy is of course not perfect, because many resources on Earth are renewable, but many are not. Biodiversity, rainforests, oceans etc are not renewable and are being degraded/disappear forever. Concerning climate change, no one can predict what will happen. Read something about geological history of the Earth. Climate changes are always followed by massive die outs. There are many positive feedback loops such as methane trapped in permafrost in Siberia or on the ocean floors, and if the warming releases it, it will trigger more warming etc. The climate could spiral out of control (that is the scary scenario). I say could, because noone knows. During climate changes, sea levels oscillate in a range of several hundred meters. So if in 200 years, the sea levels rise some 10m, New York and similar cities will be gone. Only denialists with a lack of imagination pretend that everything will be fine, because it was fine during the last 200 years.


----------



## mmsbls

philoctetes said:


> ... Do not make today's California a model for progress or you'll be sorry.


I can't speak knowledgeably about many of the issues you've raised, but I will say that I very much hope the entire world will follow California's lead on climate change mitigation. Their policies may not be perfect, but none are given our understanding of these complex issues. They have taken the problem incredibly seriously and have both instituted and proposed a set of policies that are incredibly aggressive and aimed to bring California greenhouse gas emissions (and air quality) in line with our best understanding of desired goals.


----------



## philoctetes

mmsbls said:


> I can't speak knowledgeably about many of the issues you've raised, but I will say that I very much hope the entire world will follow California's lead on climate change mitigation. Their policies may not be perfect, but none are given our understanding of these complex issues. They have taken the problem incredibly seriously and have both instituted and proposed a set of policies that are incredibly aggressive and aimed to bring California greenhouse gas emissions (and air quality) in line with our best understanding of desired goals.


California has had many great ideas for decades. The problem comes with implementation and political interference. The domination of energy policy by PG&E is just one example. Too much financial inertia that keeps good ideas from becoming real action.

And who can blame a corporation for limiting its cost of operations? I'm especially bothered by the idea that we take all the benefits they provide while holding them 100% responsible for correcting poor but perfectly legal practices. In a truly free market, we would have other choices. As it is, we have to drag all these miscreants to court - from water companies to Facebook - and watch how they can hire the world's best lawyers to lie their way through the lawsuits and then claim bankruptcy...


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> Ehrlich, Malthus etc lived in the 1960's? What is 60 years from the perspective of geological timescales? 2 generations? How many generations does it take for bacteria to eat the agar on a Petri dish? If they are in the middle of the feast, they do not worry about the future, that in 200 generations, there will be nothing to eat. The analogy is of course not perfect, because many resources on Earth are renewable, but many are not. Biodiversity, rainforests, oceans etc are not renewable and are being degraded/disappear forever. Concerning climate change, no one can predict what will happen. Read something about geological history of the Earth. Climate changes are always followed by massive die outs. There are many positive feedback loops such as methane trapped in permafrost in Siberia or on the ocean floors, and if the warming releases it, it will trigger more warming etc. The climate could spiral out of control (that is the scary scenario). I say could, because noone knows. During climate changes, sea levels oscillate in a range of several hundred meters. So if in 200 years, the sea levels rise some 10m, New York and similar cities will be gone. Only denialists with a lack of imagination pretend that everything will be fine, because it was fine during the last 200 years.


Um, you might want to go check your sources on Malthus' birth year. It's been a few more than 2 generations. But the thing is, all of these people predicted work their models that the disasters from population growth would already be upon us. They weren't speaking in terms of geologic timeframes. And if we were to speak in geologic timeframes, then what point is any of this? On that scale, everything changed very drastically. Continents come and go. Mass extinctions occur work great regularity in that context. 200 generations ago, the Earth looked very different than today, with most of those changes happening in a pre-industrialized world with population levels well within the range that Malthus, Hardin, and Ehrlich would find acceptable.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I can't speak knowledgeably about many of the issues you've raised, but I will say that I very much hope the entire world will follow California's lead on climate change mitigation. Their policies may not be perfect, but none are given our understanding of these complex issues. They have taken the problem incredibly seriously and have both instituted and proposed a set of policies that are incredibly aggressive and aimed to bring California greenhouse gas emissions (and air quality) in line with our best understanding of desired goals.


Be that as it may, they have precious little to show for those aggressive policies, other than a seriously out of date water infrastructure, still some of the highest pollution in the country, and dead growth in forests ready to go up in flames with great regularity.


----------



## Jacck

DrMike said:


> Um, you might want to go check your sources on Malthus' birth year. It's been a few more than 2 generations. But the thing is, all of these people predicted work their models that the disasters from population growth would already be upon us. They weren't speaking in terms of geologic timeframes. And if we were to speak in geologic timeframes, then what point is any of this? On that scale, everything changed very drastically. Continents come and go. Mass extinctions occur work great regularity in that context. 200 generations ago, the Earth looked very different than today, with most of those changes happening in a pre-industrialized world with population levels well within the range that Malthus, Hardin, and Ehrlich would find acceptable.


so where are the limits of Earth's carrying capacity for human populations according to you? Or do you believe that Earth can sustain infinite number of people? If not, then some form of Malthusian argument must still be valid. You simply cannot pack an infinite amount of objects into a finite space. There has to be a limit. The overpopulation already has clearly negative consequences for many ecosystems and is not sustainable long term. 
I am not talking about geological scales of milions of years, but about the range of hundreds to thousands years, because these are the time scales where the consequences of will be felt.


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> Be that as it may, they have precious little to show for those aggressive policies, other than a seriously out of date water infrastructure, still some of the highest pollution in the country, and dead growth in forests ready to go up in flames with great regularity.


Yes, apparently my comments on California rivers were lost on the recipients. I can vouch for CA air pollution, it has improved dramatically since the 70s when I moved here. But our water systems are not so healthy, and we can certainly blame population growth to some degree for that.

As a water conservation advocate I've seen the battles since Jerry Brown's Peripheral Canal in the 80s and the flooding of the Stanislaus River by New Melones Dam. Read about this stuff before you think that CA progressives are always united on this front. Read Cadillac Desert, or even watch Chinatown again. Then you have the off-shore drilling that everybody hates but Brown sided with it anyway. Gavin Newsome is stealing revenue from the Feds that was intended for a long-distance train. But this looks good to those who hate Trump. Water is one thing that CA abuses badly by promoting growth while claiming there isn't enough water.

How do you stop the growth promoters and baby boomers when liberals love their dogs and babies and the new commodities and services that their loved ones all must have? Only but the best!!!

Capitalism has a lot of rotten aspects about it. But all I see lining up to replace it is a mix of non-profit orgs who have little expertise, GoFundMes that scam on false premises, and a kind of landowner-serf caste system for housing that is constantly being subdivided. I recall Turgenev wrote prolifically about this kind of "sportsman's life" and I see it in the rural areas I'm familiar with - compounds everywhere with people in closets, garages, cars and trailers for homes. I lived briefly like that as a student but these people are all ages.

If the Fed was not so busy keeping all asset prices inflated beyond reason, if not for tax-funded bailouts, things might be a lot better for the poor. At least we would not see the continuously spreading wealth gaps that separate the poor from the rich. While liberals likes to accuse their foes of "trickle-down" economics, I can't think of a better term for what they actually support. The difference is that they want the government to divert most of the trickle to its own pool.

Some "progressive" governments would rather subsidize these compounds in the cities and clear the rural peeps so they can stop servicing rural communities. See the ridiculous proposals for San Francisco where a 1BR home sells for over $1M now. Some want to close up state and national parks to keep us out of the habitats they deem to protect. But even with good intentions they can lose power and the intentions can be corrupted. We'll never be able to witness the damage they impose on these places if we can't go there.

A big problem with American politics is that policies are always subject to revision or corruption no matter how hard one works to put them in place. No system of government can be truly immune, it's always about the cheating, selfish, competitive aspect of human nature. Animal Farm.


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> The ultimate problem with lefties


I can't speak for "lefties" everywhere - that is, the left in the US isn't the same as the left in the UK - but I'm willing to bet that the left/right dimension has long since ceased to be the dominant in today's politics, and is certainly much less relevant when it comes to the environment.

Setting that aside, the problem for all politicians of all colours is that on any policy you'd care to name, some will be compromised by their own behaviours and practices, whether as individuals or as organisations. Why pick on lefties? (and yes, I have left-leaning tendencies, though am compromised by my comfortable middle class materialism!)

Last weekend, I attended a local presentation on behalf of XR. The most impressive thing was how they presented a more complete analysis of the collection of environmental challenges, rather than focusing on one alone, and the potential for one catastrophic faliure to trigger another.

https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/the-emergency/

On plastic, the problem is not the product itself, but our use of it - or rather, misuse. That has to be taken into account in our production of it. It's no use just saying that it's great for medicine and shrugging our shoulders at the quantity finding its way into waterways and oceans.

On population, the issue is not just about numbers, but about the reasonable expectation that people live close to the resources they need, and that some resources are not off limits just because (in the UK more especially) of historical land ownership. Here's one view on the matter.

https://whoownsengland.org/2017/05/08/the-dukes-their-tax-breaks-an-8million-annual-subsidy/

Then there's the disfiguring effect of property ownership, especially in London, by Russian oligarchs and Arab oil billionaires.

In the UK, there's plenty of _space _for the population to increase - just not where it's wanted, or where it can be easily resourced.


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> so where are the limits of Earth's carrying capacity for human populations according to you? Or do you believe that Earth can sustain infinite number of people? If not, then some form of Malthusian argument must still be valid. You simply cannot pack an infinite amount of objects into a finite space. There has to be a limit. The overpopulation already has clearly negative consequences for many ecosystems and is not sustainable long term.
> I am not talking about geological scales of milions of years, but about the range of hundreds to thousands years, because these are the time scales where the consequences of will be felt.


Obviously no system can sustain infinite growth. My objection is primarily to arbitrary, unnatural mechanisms implemented to prevent population growth. And my argument is also with where people like Malthus, Ehrlich, and Hardin place those limits. I think they seriously underestimate the actual carrying capacity of the planet, and they underestimate the adaptability to changing resources. You bring up bacterial growth. Ultimately a limit is reached. I don't have to go in to artificially establish that limit. The current population growth estimates show that, in fact, we are leveling off.

Ironically, it is a lot of the progress and innovation that has led to the slowing of population growth. When you are barely surviving, more hands help. When you are a pre-industrialized agricultural community, you need people to help plant and harvest crops. You need to grow the population. It is innovation and technology that results in less of a need for higher population levels. Industrialization and the technology boom have increased the overall wealth and reduced the need for as high of a birth rate.


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## philoctetes

Just to be clear, I've been leftie all my life, was proud to say so, and always voted Democrat. I've lived most of my life in CA which once held a world standard for progress and education. Things have changed. I also have a contrarian streak as well, and can remember when Noam Chomsky and other lefties were like that...

I'm not so biased (at least I try to check myself), but you are demonstrating how one post that is critical of a certain side can be taken as proof of bias. In fact, if you look at my entire post instead of just the first line, I think it is obvious I don't "pick on lefties", but it's true I'm very disappointed in them now, and I want to tell them so. Sorry if my edits are hard to keep up with.

Reading your entire post, it seems that we agree quite a bit. But you are welcome to disagree.


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> Yes, apparently my comments on California rivers were lost on the recipients. I can vouch for CA air pollution, it has improved dramatically since the 70s when I moved here. But our water systems are not so healthy, and we can certainly blame population growth to some degree for that.
> 
> As a water conservation advocate I've seen the battles since Jerry Brown's Peripheral Canal in the 80s and the flooding of the Stanislaus River by New Melones Dam. Read about this stuff before you think that CA progressives are always united on this front. Read Cadillac Desert, or even watch Chinatown again. Then you have the off-shore drilling that everybody hates but Brown sided with it anyway. Gavin Newsome is stealing revenue from the Feds that was intended for a long-distance train. But this looks good to those who hate Trump. Water is one thing that CA abuses badly by promoting growth while claiming there isn't enough water.
> 
> How do you stop the growth promoters and baby boomers when liberals love their dogs and babies and the new commodities and services that their loved ones all must have? Only but the best!!!
> 
> Capitalism has a lot of rotten aspects about it. But all I see lining up to replace it is a mix of non-profit orgs who have little expertise, GoFundMes that scam on false premises, and a kind of landowner-serf caste system for housing that is constantly being subdivided. I recall Turgenev wrote prolifically about this kind of "sportsman's life" and I see it in the rural areas I'm familiar with - compounds everywhere with people in closets, garages, cars and trailers for homes. I lived briefly like that as a student but these people are all ages.
> 
> If the Fed was not so busy keeping all asset prices inflated beyond reason, if not for tax-funded bailouts, things might be a lot better for the poor. At least we would not see the continuously spreading wealth gaps that separate the poor from the rich. While liberals likes to accuse their foes of "trickle-down" economics, I can't think of a better term for what they actually support. The difference is that they want the government to divert most of the trickle to its own pool.
> 
> Some "progressive" governments would rather subsidize these compounds in the cities and clear the rural peeps so they can stop servicing rural communities. See the ridiculous proposals for San Francisco where a 1BR home sells for over $1M now. Some want to close up state and national parks to keep us out of the habitats they deem to protect. But even with good intentions they can lose power and the intentions can be corrupted. We'll never be able to witness the damage they impose on these places if we can't go there.
> 
> A big problem with American politics is that policies are always subject to revision or corruption no matter how hard one works to put them in place. No system of government can be truly immune, it's always about the cheating, selfish, competitive aspect of human nature. Animal Farm.


I grew up 40 miles south of the Oroville Dam. My father was a civil engineer working on the California aqueduct. There hasn't been an increase in water infrastructure in over 30 years, while the population has doubled in that time.

Air may be better in California now, but it is also so in most of the country. But it is still possibly the most polluted. According to the American Lung Association, in terms of ozone, California has 7 of the 10 worst cities in the country. For year-round particle pollution, they have 6 of the 10 worst. And for short-term particle pollution, 4 of the worst 10. In each of those categories, they have the top 2 worst cities for pollution.
https://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/sota/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities.html


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## Guest

philoctetes said:


> Just to be clear, I've been leftie all my life, was proud to say so, and always voted Democrat. I've lived most of my life in CA which once held a world standard for progress and education. Things have changed.
> 
> I'm not so biased (at least I try to check myself), but you are demonstrating how one post that is critical of a certain side can be taken as proof of bias. In fact, if you look at my entire post instead of just the first line, I think it is obvious I don't "pick on lefties", but it's true I'm very disappointed in them now, and I want to tell them so. Sorry if my edits are hard to keep up with.
> 
> Reading your entire post, it seems that we agree quite a bit. But you are welcome to disagree.


No, you're OK - I didn't assume that you were, let's say, "attacking lefties from the position of being a rightie", I just thought that the point you made was applicable to more than just the left.

I've been voting since 1979 and have voted Tory (once only, in a safe Tory seat - rather like those who choose to support an already successful football team) Labour, Liberal, Green. I've not yet voted any further left or right, usually because where I've lived, those options haven't existed. The last time I did an online survey to determine my political position, I was closer to communism than anything else, but my instincts are liberal (liberal in its UK sense, not in its derogatory US sense).


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## philoctetes

MacLeod said:


> No, you're OK - I didn't assume that you were, let's say, "attacking lefties from the position of being a rightie", I just thought that the point you made was applicable to more than just the left.
> 
> I've been voting since 1979 and have voted Tory (once only, in a safe Tory seat - rather like those who choose to support an already successful football team) Labour, Liberal, Green. I've not yet voted any further left or right, usually because where I've lived, those options haven't existed. The last time I did an online survey to determine my political position, I was closer to communism than anything else, but my instincts are liberal (liberal in its UK sense, not in its derogatory US sense).


Thanks. Also, through my river / whitewater volunteer work, I've crossed paths with some of the top river activists in the state. Some of my comments above are based on conversations and interactions with people who work in Sacramento, sometimes while floating down a river, and I can tell you some outrageous stories about these people. Always watch for saboteurs whenever boats are involved. But some of them are still doing valuable work that i support.


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## Jacck

From a global perspective, California is a small piece of land and in many respects very untypical and you cannot judge the rest of Earth by californian standards. And you also cannot judge the world by the standards of petty American politics. These problems are global and irrespective of politics and no country (let alone a single american state) has the power to solve them. My prediction is that only when the consequences hit the humankind harder will there be more will to do something, but it might be too late. It will certainly be too late for many species, and rainforests and God knows what else. Humans are greedy, power hunger and mostly very short-sighted, prefering short term comfort and profit, over long term sustainability, and will not change until they really suffer. Unfortunatelly, it will again be the people in third-world countries, who will suffer the most.


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## philoctetes

Jacck said:


> From a global perspective, California is a small piece of land and in many respects very untypical and you cannot judge the rest of Earth by californian standards. And you also cannot judge the world by the standards of petty American politics. These problems are global and irrespective of politics and no country (let alone a single american state) has the power to solve them. My prediction is that only when the consequences hit the humankind harder will there be more will to do something, but it might be too late. It will certainly be too late for many species, and rainforests and God knows what else. Humans are greedy, power hunger and mostly very short-sighted, prefering short term comfort and profit, over long term sustainability, and will not change until they really suffer. Unfortunatelly, it will again be the people in third-world countries, who will suffer the most.


Please don't misinterpret my post as some kind of California chauvinism, because that's exactly what I'm warning about. I did not grow up here so I have multiple perspectives. But at one time - 50 years ago - CA was a place where things got done, for better or worse, but better than now is perhaps my point.

For many Californians, saving the world is equivalent to finding a gig in a non-profit with good travel benefits. A friend of mine was lucky to escape with his life on one of these conservation visits. The natives don't care who you say you are or what you plan to do, just don't come around or you might die.


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## KenOC

Jacck said:


> From a global perspective, California is a small piece of land and in many respects very untypical and you cannot judge the rest of Earth by californian standards...


Please, sir, you arouse my patriotic instincts! California a "small piece of land"? It's over five times the area of the Czech Republic and, in fact, quite a bit larger than Germany. If it were an independent country, its economy would be the world's fifth largest. Unfortunately, it's not called "the land of fruits and nuts" for nothing. :lol:


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## Jacck

KenOC said:


> Please, sir, you arouse my patriotic instincts! California a "small piece of land"? It's over five times the area of the Czech Republic and, in fact, quite a bit larger than Germany. If it were an independent country, its economy would be the world's fifth largest. Unfortunately, it's not called "the land of fruits and nuts" for nothing. :lol:


yes, California can be compared to Germany in terms of size and economy, but both Germany and California are still small compared to the rest of the world and quite insignificant from a global perspective . Czech republic is of yourse even smaller and and more insignificant with a population of some 10 million, many chinese cities are larger. But even California has some ecological problems from what I read. The trees in Sierra Nevada are dying, there were draughts, the aquifers could be depleted etc
https://phys.org/news/2016-12-groundwater-resources-world-depleted-2050s.html
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/19/tree-death-california-hawaii-sudden-oak


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## Guest

In many cases it has a lot to do with resource management. The water in particular. Most of it comes from the Northern part of the state, but is controlled by the South, which had the greater political power. Like I said, no new water infrastructure in over 3 decades, during which time the population doubled. There is water, it just is not being effectively managed.


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## KenOC

Jacck said:


> ...But even California has some ecological problems from what I read. The trees in Sierra Nevada are dying, there were draughts, the aquifers could be depleted etc
> https://phys.org/news/2016-12-groundwater-resources-world-depleted-2050s.html
> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/19/tree-death-california-hawaii-sudden-oak


Absolutely -- some items caused by man, some not. Droughts for instance -- there have been SEVERE droughts lasting decades a few centuries ago, but nobody was around to record them. Normally deep lakes in the Sierras dried up -- submerged stumps of trees that grew in the lake bottoms have been discovered deep down. If that happened today, much of California would be depopulated.

The mass deaths of pines in the Sierras is, again, due to a recent 5-year drought combined with fire suppression practices that have greatly increased tree density. The culprit, the bark boring beetle, is a native species that has always been around.

The drawing down of underwater aquifers, and the resulting sinking of vast tracts of land, is entirely man's work and may be largely irreversible. The clay strata that hold the water physically collapse as the water is pumped out and recharge simply doesn't happen.

I'm sure there's more!


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## Strange Magic

Some perspectives on Earth's carrying capacity:

https://na.unep.net/geas/archive/pdfs/GEAS_Jun_12_Carrying_Capacity.pdf
https://thinkprogress.org/were-beyo...-the-population-boom-36c4712743ad/#.mpyzk3gm9

For those interested.......


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## Strange Magic

> DrMike: "Obviously no system can sustain infinite growth. My objection is primarily to arbitrary, unnatural mechanisms implemented to prevent population growth. And my argument is also with where people like Malthus, Ehrlich, and Hardin place those limits. I think they seriously underestimate the actual carrying capacity of the planet, and they underestimate the adaptability to changing resources. You bring up bacterial growth. Ultimately a limit is reached. I don't have to go in to artificially establish that limit. The current population growth estimates show that, in fact, we are leveling off."


I am pleased that there is a consensus that no system can sustain infinite growth--Julian Simon is dead now, so that bit of nonsense can be put behind us. Among arbitrary and unnatural methods to prevent population growth, does that include the drive for full female emancipation and equality with total women's self-control over their fertility? I trust not, but much of the world would be horrified at that prospect. As to carrying capacity, I offer above some input, but the actual historical track of human global population growth has been practically straight up for the past few centuries. Recent growth, as Hardin noted, comes from those already committed culturally, ideologically, religiously to unchecked reproduction. As we "stabilize"--if we stabilize--global population at double the current number and simultaneously give everyone a Western standard of living and food choice (meat, and plenty of it), we are going to be in a fine state indeed! The future is a land of dreams.


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## Guest

Hardin suffered greatly from a seriously racist eugenicist mindset that argued for forced sterilization to prevent what he called the tragedy of the commons, which was refuted. I realize environmentalist groups still adore his paper, but you haven't addressed the fact that Ostrom refuted his contention in that paper in her work that ultimately was awarded a Nobel prize.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> Hardin suffered greatly from a seriously racist eugenicist mindset that argued for forced sterilization to prevent what he called the tragedy of the commons, which was refuted. I realize environmentalist groups still adore his paper, but you haven't addressed the fact that Ostrom refuted his contention in that paper in her work that ultimately was awarded a Nobel prize.


I am not that familiar with Hardin and understand only the concept of the tragedy of the commons. Of course it happened locally many times, a famous example being the Easter Island
http://sustainablefootprint.org/teachers/theme-lessons/easter-island-a-lesson-for-us-all/
but it happens also globally the oceans. 
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2014/02/22/the-tragedy-of-the-high-seas

I am not familiar with Ostrom. I have not much respect for economy as a profession and for economists, even those with a Nobel prize. It is the biggest pseudoscience of all sciences, largely driven by ideology. They can never predict anything, all their explanaining happens ex post
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...l-prize-economics-not-science-hubris-disaster


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## Strange Magic

Garrett Hardin got the diagnosis right, but offered a repellent solution. That has nothing to do with the accuracy of his analysis of the problem. Between Ostrom and Malthus, Nobel Prize or no, my money is on the inexorable logic of Malthus: we must control our numbers and I have marked out the very difficult path towards that goal through massive improvement in the lives and personhood of women. But, please, instead fixate on Hardin's solutions: make a wax doll of him and stick it full of pins.

We are rapidly losing our megafauna, maybe our mesofauna also, through our mushrooming numbers, not through the rare geological or astronomical catastrophe, but that seems not to remotely faze the Keep It Growing crowd; maybe they'll tell the grandkids that the tigers just couldn't compete with 7-8 billion people and deserved to become extinct. Going to be a fun planet.


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## philoctetes

Again, human nature and progress interfere with each other. Note that "full female emancipation and equality with total women's self-control over their fertility" is a particular spin that rejects any objections a priori before objections can even be made. Such is the nature of "debate" nowadays. But the spin goes so over the top that it suggests there can be such a thing as gender "equality" in reproductive rights.

"much of the world would be horrified at that prospect" Being human is complicated, isn't it? Especially when that prospect is so much more immediately mortal than the one you fear. Kill yourselves to save yourselves is not a strong campaign platform. Kinda like Jim Jones.


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## Strange Magic

^^^^If only I could figure out what such posts actually mean. If you have objections to my proposal, or can offer a clear alternative, please do so, but I find your comments relentlessly opaque. Maybe it's just me.


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## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> We are rapidly losing our megafauna, maybe our mesofauna also, through our mushrooming numbers, not through the rare geological or astronomical catastrophe, but that seems not to remotely faze the Keep It Growing crowd; maybe they'll tell the grandkids that the tigers just couldn't compete with 7-8 billion people and deserved to become extinct. Going to be a fun planet.


Two quick finds on a "biomass" search"

"Humans account for about 36 percent of the biomass of all mammals. Domesticated livestock, mostly cows and pigs, account for 60 percent, and wild mammals for only 4 percent. The same holds true for birds. The biomass of poultry is about three times higher than that of wild birds."

"A huge amount of evidence exists to show that the overall biomass on land has been massively reduced over the past 3,000 years and increasingly evidence is coming to light in respect of the loss of biomass in the oceans. Loss of biomass on land may well be as great as 50%, loss of biomass in the seas could be as high as 80%."

Here's some underlying research published by the US National Academy of the Sciences.


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## Strange Magic

Thank you KenOC for the excellent link. I post this unhappy nugget from the Abstract:

"*Finally, we highlight that the mass of humans is an order of magnitude higher than that of all wild mammals combined* and report the historical impact of humanity on the global biomass of prominent taxa, including mammals, fish, and plants."


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## AeolianStrains

Strange Magic said:


> ^^^^If only I could figure out what such posts actually mean. If you have objections to my proposal, or can offer a clear alternative, please do so, but I find your comments relentlessly opaque. Maybe it's just me.


Not at all. For some reason philoctetes has resorted to subtle insults and obscurantist BS than actually engage in this thread.


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## AeolianStrains

DrMike said:


> Hardin suffered greatly from a seriously racist eugenicist mindset that argued for forced sterilization to prevent what he called the tragedy of the commons, which was refuted. I realize environmentalist groups still adore his paper, but you haven't addressed the fact that Ostrom refuted his contention in that paper in her work that ultimately was awarded a Nobel prize.


Note that there is no Nobel prize in economics. The "Nobel Memorial Prize" was founded and funded by a bank, and is not without a controversial rap sheet.


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## Guest

AeolianStrains said:


> Note that there is no Nobel prize in economics. The "Nobel Memorial Prize" was founded and funded by a bank, and is not without a controversial rap sheet.


Most of the Nobel prizes have some controversy associated with them. Especially the Peace Prize. But Ostrom did refute the central claim behind Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons. Both his conclusions and his policy recommendations were wrong.


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## philoctetes

AeolianStrains said:


> Not at all. For some reason philoctetes has resorted to subtle insults and obscurantist BS than actually engage in this thread.


I'm not trying to insult anyone, but I'm hearing that people object to my comments on style and content as if I am. Now I'm too cryptic or too curt. The latter was actually cited by the mod today. So I'm not supposed to comment on style but mine is up for grabs. It's a big world and we're all big kids and if that's how this game is played I can easily moderate myself. I really don't need the aggravation and you all don't need me. At least I listen and I get the message. See ya on the back nine.


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## mmsbls

Jacck said:


> yes, California can be compared to Germany in terms of size and economy, but both Germany and California are still small compared to the rest of the world and quite insignificant from a global perspective . ...


In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, yes. But California climate change policies are being exported in large part to other regions of the world. China has taken great interest in some of California's policies and is working hard to get significant market penetration of zero emission vehicles in their fleets. What happens in China strongly affects the world.


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## philoctetes

Assuming we fix the emissions, what do we do with all the trash? Where does the one-time plastic go? Outta sight outta mind. Plastic is in the water, the oceans, etc... and the water is getting more "medicated"...

I often think that space travel is the only way out for humanity. A dismal prospect.


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## KenOC

philoctetes said:


> Assuming we fix the emissions, what do we do with all the trash? Where does the one-time plastic go? Outta sight outta mind. Plastic is in the water, the oceans, etc... and the water is getting more "medicated"...
> 
> I often think that space travel is the only way out for humanity. A dismal prospect.


Just to keep the population level, we'd have to fly 225,000 people each day into space. This assumes they have somewhere to go.

And of course, that's a whale of a lot of air pollution.


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## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> Just to keep the population level, we'd have to fly 225,000 people each day into space. This assumes they have somewhere to go!


No way that will happen. After that last post I conceived a plot for a sci-fi novel about this. The elites tax the masses to fix the planet but secretly use the funds to build a giant starship in which they depart and leave the masses behind. Think Blows Against The Empire without the hippie sub-line.

I didn't say it was a great novel.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Most of the Nobel prizes have some controversy associated with them. Especially the Peace Prize. But Ostrom did refute the central claim behind Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons. Both his conclusions and his policy recommendations were wrong.


Ostrom's "refutation" consisted of finding small instances involving stable and well knit small populations where resource management had been worked out so that people did not overfish, overhunt, over extract necessary materials. She thought such cooperation could/would be relevant to larger units, scaled up to make the Tragedy of the Commons go away. She didn't refute Hardin or disprove Hardin; she merely found some examples where something seemed to work. There are no obvious mechanisms at work today that come remotely near the sort of intervention needed to break the working of the Commons now. The Japanese have announced they are going to resume whale killing; the last rhinos, tigers, pangolins, orangs, etc. are going to the wall to make dagger handles for wealthy Saudis, and Chinese traditional medicines, or become "pets". The resource is not being well-managed--in fact, the rarer these items become, the higher the price, and the greater the incentive to hunt, capture, kill until the resource vanishes forever.

The Economics Nobel: almost a badge of shame. Economists pontificate on all sorts of issues that are actually the purview of serious science yet they have the feeblest understanding of the physical and biological world that can be imagined, which makes it easy for them to so pontificate. Ostrom, Simon, Pinker, Rosling--not a scientist in the lot.


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## KenOC

philoctetes said:


> No way that will happen. After that last post I conceived a plot for a sci-fi novel about this. The elites tax the masses to fix the planet but secretly use the funds to build a giant starship in which they depart and leave the masses behind. Think Blows Against The Empire without the hippie sub-line.
> 
> I didn't say it was a great novel.


Done, or close to it. See Neill Blomkamp's movie _Elysium _(2013), a quasi-Marxist screed where the privileged live in orbital luxury while the wretched of the earth labor in squalor below to support their lifestyles.


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## Josquin13

Philoctetes writes, "Assuming we fix the emissions, what do we do with all the trash? Where does the one-time plastic go? Outta sight outta mind. Plastic is in the water, the oceans, etc... and the water is getting more "medicated"..."

The Pyrenees mountains were thought to have had the cleanest air in all of Europe, and yet a new study has shown a significant amount of 'microplastics', or tiny pieces of plastics, in the Pyrennes air & soil:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...-in-remote-region-frances-pyrenees-180971973/

Since microplastics are known to effect animals' reproductive systems (and digestive tracts, too), my guess is that they are contributing to the reduced male sperm counts in our population. But of course it'll take 20-30 years of tests, before 'science' can know for sure, and we move to act upon what common sense should already tell us--that if it's destructive to animals, it's also destructive to the human species.

Yet, Starbucks, and other grossly irresponsible purveyors of plastic into the world, continue to offer no recycle bins at their stores--so as not to lose a step on their quarterly earnings; while every day Americans toss out some estimated 60 million plastic bottles into the trash, and that's just in America (and only bottles...). Sadly, it's a gigantic global problem.

You mention space travel--I wonder if there are microplastics on the moon?...


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## SixFootScowl

DrMike said:


> I grew up 40 miles south of the Oroville Dam. My father was a civil engineer working on the California aqueduct. *There hasn't been an increase in water infrastructure in over 30 years*, while the population has doubled in that time.


Well, I suppose the National Environmental Policy Act, The Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, etc. may have had a big effect in putting the brakes on these mega infrastructure projects. Besides that, the pork barrel days were over about 40 years or so ago and the government started requiring local communities to foot part of the bill for these projects. Not many communities can cough up such huge wads of money.


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> I grew up 40 miles south of the Oroville Dam. My father was a civil engineer working on the California aqueduct. There hasn't been an increase in water infrastructure in over 30 years, while the population has doubled in that time.


Depends on how you count. The Oroville Dam spillway fix, after 2017's damage and emergency, is now finished at a cost of $1.1 billion. Major rebuilds of the State Water Project are needed because land subsidence, caused by overpumping of groundwater, is interfering with gravity flows in the canals taking water south. And the government continues to struggle with the planned 35-mile Delta water tunnel(s) that will take water from the Sacramento River to the Bay area and points south (notably Los Angeles).

California's population has grown tremendously since Pat Brown (Jerry Moonbeam's father) led the creation of our current water infrastructure. Changes are needed, and they will be very costly. But they will be made.

Added: Note also the construction of a number of major desalination plants up and down the coast, the relining of canals that bring water west to San Diego from the Colorado River, major increases in underground water banking, the increasing use of purified sewage for drinking water recharge, and other initiatives. Things are not standing still.


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## SixFootScowl

KenOC said:


> Depends on how you count. The Oroville Dam spillway fix, after 2017's damage and emergency, is now finished at a cost of $1.1 billion.


Wow, that much just for the spillway! That's more than the whole cost of a new lock at Sault Ste. Marie Michigan (estimated $922 million) to pass 1000-foot freighters between Lakes Michigan and Superior!


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## KenOC

Fritz Kobus said:


> Wow, that much just for the spillway! That's more than the whole cost of a new lock at Sault Ste. Marie Michigan (estimated $922 million) to pass 1000-foot freighters between Lakes Michigan and Superior!


Yes...it's not uncommon for infrastructure projects in California to exceed original budgets by many many times. People have been conditioned to just roll their eyes and soldier on... 

Example: The high speed rail project, linking the LA and Bay areas, was sold to voters with a cost of at most $40 billion. Now it's looking more like $100 billion. The governor has put most of the project on hold. The feds want their grant money back because the promised project looks like it won't be built. The state isn't anxious to write the refund. The saga continues.​


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## philoctetes

"the increasing use of purified sewage for drinking water recharge"

Up here they release treated wastewater into the river upstream and catch it downstream after the turds dissipate or drop to the bottom. You can see the sewage wavefronts come down the river when it's released. This effluent runs through my neighborhood, Korbel wineries, Guerneville, public beaches, etc. But the county blames the river water quality on residential septics and mandates upgrades. Welcome to Shakedown Street California!

The processed water is OK but the process is pretty gross.


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## SixFootScowl

philoctetes said:


> "the increasing use of purified sewage for drinking water recharge"
> 
> Up here they release treated wastewater into the river upstream and catch it downstream after the turds dissipate or drop to the bottom. You can see the sewage wavefronts come down the river when it's released. This effluent runs through my neighborhood, Korbel wineries, Guerneville, public beaches, etc. But the county blames the river water quality on residential septics and mandates upgrades. Welcome to Shakedown Street California!
> 
> The processed water is OK but the process is pretty gross.


Reminds me in the Sci Fi novel Dune, which I didn't read but quit partway in, I recall from about 40 years ago that they collected their urine and it was processed in their climate suits and re drank.


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## philoctetes

Fritz Kobus said:


> Reminds me in the Sci Fi novel Dune, which I didn't read but quit partway in, I recall from about 40 years ago that they collected their urine and it was processed in their climate suits and re drank.


Too bad you quit, it was one of my favorite novels in the day... Dune is being filmed again, as I type perhaps, with release planned for November 2020. Timed with the presidential election... that should generate a lot of noise - Barron the Baron, etc... cue up you-know-who...


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## Guest

I love the Dune series.


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## KenOC

philoctetes said:


> Assuming we fix the emissions, what do we do with all the trash? Where does the one-time plastic go? Outta sight outta mind. Plastic is in the water, the oceans, etc...


Maybe that's good news? :lol:


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## philoctetes

More on the way...


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## Couchie

philoctetes said:


> Assuming we fix the emissions, what do we do with all the trash? Where does the one-time plastic go? Outta sight outta mind. Plastic is in the water, the oceans, etc... and the water is getting more "medicated"...
> 
> I often think that space travel is the only way out for humanity. A dismal prospect.


We assume our purpose is found in self-perpetuation. But it could be that humanity's purpose is merely as a warning to an alien or a future intelligent race that arises out of our ashes.


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## philoctetes

I guess we should plan accordingly.


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## KenOC

Back on original topic: The Hominidae are a family of primates of which eight species are extant. Only one species, humans, flourishes. The others are all endangered or critically endangered, primarily through the efforts of humans. These are our closest relatives.


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## Strange Magic

Fewer than 5,000 tigers left in the wild. https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/tiger


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## Totenfeier

Just to throw a stinkbomb (pun intended) into the mix, does anyone think that Ted Kaczynski had a valid and coherent viewpoint in his manifesto _Industrial Society and Its Future_? We know there was madness in his method, but was there method in his madness? Have we reached or passed the point of no return with regard to the dismantling of industrial capitalism and the return to "wild nature?" His critique of "surrogate activities," and his predictions about human genetic engineering and the behavior of both the Left and the Right seem spot-on.


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## Strange Magic

^^^^Can you briefly summarize Kaczyinski's central point? I never read his manifesto and would be content with a postcard précis.


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## Larkenfield

KenOC said:


> Back on original topic: The Hominidae are a family of primates of which eight species are extant. Only one species, humans, flourishes. The others are all endangered or critically endangered, primarily through the efforts of humans. These are our closest relatives.


 Interesting figures! Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, not to mention the polar ice caps, with the balance of species, of which humans are only one. But on the brighter side, human beings will be so plentiful that they'll be able to replace or imitate the real species going extinct with themselves by wearing the proper costumes, and no one will care if they disappear because of the replacements that will be available. People will be able to wear tiger costumes and monkey costumes, polar bear costumes, walrus costumes, but what humans will be gigantic enough to pose as elephants with tusks?


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## Luchesi

Totenfeier said:


> Just to throw a stinkbomb (pun intended) into the mix, does anyone think that Ted Kaczynski had a valid and coherent viewpoint in his manifesto _Industrial Society and Its Future_? We know there was madness in his method, but was there method in his madness? Have we reached or passed the point of no return with regard to the dismantling of industrial capitalism and the return to "wild nature?" His critique of "surrogate activities," and his predictions about human genetic engineering and the behavior of both the Left and the Right seem spot-on.


A daunting and depressing hypothesis is that once a species takes control over its planet, it's already on the path to self-destruction.


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## Totenfeier

Basically it's the New England Transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau on steroids. The industrial revolution was a disaster for the human race for basically two reasons: it separated the individual from the direct enjoyment of the fruits of his own labor, and it created an economic/industrial ruling class that came to realize that it needed to use all the tools given it by advances in technology to keep the population of workers docile, in order to secure its dominance. So, bread and circuses, dumb down culture, and increasingly regulate the ideas and behavior of human beings so that they passively conform to the system, rather than developing alternative economic and industrial systems that would provide tangible rewards for real labor. The cure is to stop technological progress and radically return to a more pre-industrial lifestyle. A bit of Ludditeism as well, but the manifesto was recognized back then as a very significant social analysis, and not simply the deluded ravings of a crank.


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## Luchesi

Totenfeier said:


> Basically it's the New England Transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau on steroids. The industrial revolution was a disaster for the human race for basically two reasons: it separated the individual from the direct enjoyment of the fruits of his own labor, and it created an economic/industrial ruling class that came to realize that it needed to use all the tools given it by advances in technology to keep the population of workers docile, in order to secure its dominance. So, bread and circuses, dumb down culture, and increasingly regulate the ideas and behavior of human beings so that they passively conform to the system, rather than developing alternative economic and industrial systems that would provide tangible rewards for real labor. The cure is to stop technological progress and radically return to a more pre-industrial lifestyle. A bit of Ludditeism as well, but the manifesto was recognized back then as a very significant social analysis, and not simply the deluded ravings of a crank.


Even families living from paycheck to paycheck have more improvements and comforts and opportunities than the richest kings and dictators who ever lived before the foundations of an industrial revolution. Or at least it's close, depending upon how you qualify things.

So, it's quite idealistic to think that this could've happened without the Industrial Revolution. But maybe I don't know enough about "the tangible rewards for real labor" and what those benefits would be.


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## Totenfeier

Luchesi said:


> Even families living from paycheck to paycheck have more improvements and comforts and opportunities than the richest kings and dictators who ever lived before the foundations of an industrial revolution. Or at least it's close, depending upon how you qualify things.
> 
> So, it's quite idealistic to think that this could've happened without the Industrial Revolution. But maybe I don't know enough about "the tangible rewards for real labor" and what those benefits would be.


I think Kaczynski's point was that living paycheck to paycheck was demeaning wage slavery, but that living one-killed-cleaned-and-cooked-rabbit-and-one-pot-of-homegrown-beans-onions-and-tomatoes...to the next, was more ennobling and (God, I hate this word) empowering (hey, let's say enfranchising). Why work for a symbol (money), that proves you worked, that you can exchange, for something that someone else had made, that you want or need? Cut out all the middlemen and make your own stuff instead. Now, I agree that there's more than a little romanticizing going on here, and a hint of Rousseau's "noble savage," but that also is kind of Kaczynski's message: that industrialized society was engaged in the _necessary_ project (necessary to it, anyway) of emasculating the independent man. Ralph Waldo Emerson, still early on in the Industrial Revolution, could say "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." He was speaking philosophically, but Kaczynski took it and ran with it economically.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

How many generations of spoiled idiots are there?


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## Jacck

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> How many generations of spoiled idiots are there?


Millennials, Gen X, Y, Z and Baby Boomers


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## Strange Magic

Totenfeier, many thanks for the summary. Some recent analyses of contemporary China, with their growing use of surveillance cameras and social rewards and punishments (triggered and patterned, we're told, by examination of the Singapore model) suggest that China is headed down a similar path, but with a greater percentage of their citizens learning to love the system.

While on the subject of tigers, there are tiger farms now where tigers are raised to be dismembered and dissected and harvested for their body parts. Traditional medicine, it seems.


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## Luchesi

Totenfeier said:


> I think Kaczynski's point was that living paycheck to paycheck was demeaning wage slavery, but that living one-killed-cleaned-and-cooked-rabbit-and-one-pot-of-homegrown-beans-onions-and-tomatoes...to the next, was more ennobling and (God, I hate this word) empowering (hey, let's say enfranchising). Why work for a symbol (money), that proves you worked, that you can exchange, for something that someone else had made, that you want or need? Cut out all the middlemen and make your own stuff instead. Now, I agree that there's more than a little romanticizing going on here, and a hint of Rousseau's "noble savage," but that also is kind of Kaczynski's message: that industrialized society was engaged in the _necessary_ project (necessary to it, anyway) of emasculating the independent man. Ralph Waldo Emerson, still early on in the Industrial Revolution, could say "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." He was speaking philosophically, but Kaczynski took it and ran with it economically.


One obvious advantage of money is that you can buy anything anytime it's available. Also, as you get older and lose energy hopefully you've socked enough away so that you can still have a nice life.

Young people who have lived only part of a life make very poor philosophers about changing things. They just don't have the perspective and awareness that's required.


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