5155

Isn’t it with the ones who don’t agree where the problems crop up?

Personally, I wouldn’t try to sell the link between population and carbon footprint too hard as a solution, because 1) it isn’t actually that clear, and 2) it’s the hardest sell.

5156

Oh, no, that’s “here in the shadows” talk, not anything anyone with half a brain cell would say in public.

In real life of course this is implausible. But it also means that the most effective tool we have, and literally the easiest solution (over time), just not having as many kids, is off the table.

5157

I don’t get why you think it’s easy. What happens to societies that collapse to 1% of their population size in 10 generations? I’m guessing it’s…not pretty.

5158

Oh, obviously i’m not saying we should go to 8 million, only that I used that math as an example that we can reduce the population surprisingly quickly by reducing the number of births. Like three generations worldwide of 1 kid each would drop the population by 7/8.

Sure, society would have to adapt, it would be hard, debt driven economics would have to be shelved. But do we really believe climate change is an existential threat? Because existential threats demand serious consideration.

If people say “Oh, well, sure, it’s an existential threat… but we can’t do that! Because that’s… not what I had in mind” then it’s not an existential threat to them, not really.

And if climate change isn’t an existential threat, not really, then we can muck around for a hundred years with the “other side” that wants things to be the same and not do anything, and we’ll cut carbon emissions by 10% by 2050 and 20% by 2100 and call it a day.

5159

I assumed you weren’t saying 8 million, because that would be 0.1%, wouldn’t it?

But again, what happens to societies that lose 87% of their population in 75 years? I think historically they collapse, don’t they?

“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed.”

So, we avoid the massive decline in human population caused by climate change by…initiating our own program to reduce human population? I mean, that sounds a bit like saying we need to reduce social security benefits now so we don’t have to…reduce them later.

5160

There’s a pretty huge difference in the journeys between Rome not having enough kids for 200 years and dropping to a quarter of the population and every major city in the Roman empire getting sacked for 200 years and dropping to a quarter of the population.

Climate change will drive the world into the haves and the have nots, between mass migration on a scale we’ve never seen before and never dealt with since the Dark Ages in Europe. I’d rather see a world peacefully reduce its size than a world that goes through the kind of political conflict and human cost the worst possible outcomes of climate change could cause.

I don’t necessarily think decreasing the population is the only solution, but i’d rather not see 1-5 billion people starve to death either. If one were to posit that the result of climate change is inevitably a decline of population, though, I think the answer is pretty clear.

5161

So will any policy of you can’t have kids. I mean, propose one. Describe it, and how it is enforced, and by whom, and then consider the obvious consequences.

Sure, but propose a policy to reduce the global population by 87% in 75 years, and then explain how you’ll enforce it, and then try to guess which of those examples it will look like. I’m trying to save you a step in that process — it’s going to look like the sack of Rome every year.

5162

Well clearly we need a global authority of some kind, whether by consensus or not. China did it for a while, and it sucks.

That’s the point! All this sucks! There isn’t a good solution! That’s why I started this conversation with the “boot on neck” imagery.

Basically whatever the solution to is, it’s going to require telling people. Whether that means they can’t use straws, they can’t drive wherever they want, they can’t belch unfiltered exhaust from the stack pipes of their dualy trucks waving the Confederate flag; they can’t have or do X.

The only other solution, that I mentioned, is technological.

So we either starting thinking seriously how we’re going to tell people what to do, or we throw all our money into tech research, or we shrug and say “humans gunna human” and enjoy the nice days still left to us and nibble improvements from the margins and hope our great grandkids still get to see snow once in a while.

5163

Yes,I imagine so. But I personally think having a global authority which uses force to prevent people from having kids is going to produce a reaction very different from having one that forces people to give up cars. So to me, I can’t see it as the easy solution.

5164

AFAIK, plastic straws aren’t contributing to Climate Change in any meaningful fashion, just regular old pollution.

5165

Is it A&W that serves those? I heard something on NPR, but didn’t catch which chains offer it. I thought it might be Carl’s Jr. I have no serious need for meat, but I do like burgers. And fewer calories is a win-win for sure. I want to try out these newer alternative meat burgers.

As I see the issue in the U.S., the solution needs to not only be profitable, but profitable to the exact same people that are already profiting from the current situation. The politics here don’t allow markets to work right anymore. There is a very visible “invisible” hand, and it looks like said hand is okay cashing the same checks right on over the edge of humanity.

5166

The solution does not lie in reducing population, meat consumption or similar changes on an individual level. It’s almost wholly about energy production. You’ve probably seen this headline:

Spoiler alert: All 100 are fossil fuel companies, led by China Coal, ARAMCO (Saudi Arabia), Gazprom, National Iranian Coal and Exxon.

That doesn’t mean individuals shouldn’t control their own carbon footprints. Every little bit, etc. But an actual solution will require huge, global changes in how we produce energy (unless some miracle sequestration tech emerges).

This is the source of my cynicism. Political will, exercised effectively on a global scale? Corporations acting against the short-term interests of their investors/ owners? That seems unlikely.

5167

It does seem unlikely. But if the alternative is to just throw up our hands and prepare for extinction, then I say people who care should do what by their lights seems most effective to move this immovable object. Countries and world orders have been overturned for far, far, far lower stakes.

Meanwhile, Pod Save America interviews Jay Inslee. I want to see this guy in the debates beating the climate drum.

5168

I tend to disagree. If the solution is profitable, then eventually it will overcome the existing answers in relatively short order. Giving the existing players first-crack at the new profits may accelerate the process a bit.

5169

It’s such a stupid argument as well. Look at Thomas Malthus.

Especially well to do, well educated folks. The kids who will solve this problem, even partially, will be mostly coming from well educated backgrounds.

5170

Malthus’s math was correct, he just didn’t factor in agricultural improvements. (Also, I think he was advocating for chastity rather than killing anyone, but I confess I haven’t read him directly.)

That’s the trick, isn’t it? Again and again, particularly in modern times, human ingenuity and engineering have solved seemingly insoluble problems. Whether it be the horse poop crisis of the fin-de-siecle or polio or the Green Revolution, it seems like we can always innovate our way out of a tight spot.

Of course, sooner or later physics will impose hard constraints on innovation. And there’s a danger of being lulled into complacency, too. It may be a failure of imagination to suppose that nobody will come up with a magical carbon-capture technology within the next couple of decades, but it’s also very tempting to just assume that will happen because then the rest of us don’t have to do a damn thing.

5171

I guess. If patent fencing, horizontal integration, buy to bury, special interest earmarks (or flat out legislation), mass discounts to industry leaders, tax breaks “for jobs”, perpetual re-election campaign financing, or industrial economic entrenchment all were not things. Sure, maybe. But we don’t live in that wide eyed, wistful view of “free” market. It is more profitable to keep doing what a company is already winning at and use power to crush, absorb, buy, or legislate out any possibly profitable competition than it is to change.

This is as big of a problem as a solution “needs to be profitable”. It needs to be soooo profitable or just profitable to the right people, otherwise change won’t happen in the limited window we seem to have.

5172

Yuuupppp.

Which is why I only expect change to really happen once some of the rich and powerful feel consequences. And unfortunately the only consequence that seems to penetrate the current crop of would be oligarchs would be mortal in effect.

So, yeah, I expect things will only change when they get bad enough that a few oil barons and the like get assassinated.

5173

I agree with you – the stakes are too high for anything but. I would say that, if anything can work, it will be due to political and consumer power exercised from the ground up. It’s almost all about energy production, which is something governments and even individuals can influence. And we obviously have to try.

5174

There is no place in the entire world where markets have ever ‘worked right’.