Someone came to their senses and faced reality. And then went public about it. Amazing!

I think the main problem is that modern environmentalists do not understand how power is generated. They think you flip a switch at home and the light goes on. So, why can't we use solar power for that?

Nor do they care. Like a child demanding a cookie, they want what they want and no amount of logic or reason will convince them why they cannot or should not have it.

Their fantasies do not allow them to comprehend the limitations of their chosen technology. Like a wizard in a fantasy novel pulling power from ley lines, they think the power is there for the taking, if only we were enlightened enough to recognize that.

Beware of the word, "renewable", also. Like "liberal", "progressive" and "green", it has more emotional than physical content.

The greens have their own language to make demons and heroes out of that days hits, and to confuse anyone trying to pay attention.
Such as does renewable have anything to do with low Carbon dioxide? Not necessarily, burning a ton of wood is renewable (wood grows) but outputs a lot of CO2.
ethanol is renewable, but last I was spent more energy growing and making it than you get out so, no carbon low.

On a semi-related note...

Many people like to claim that for economic reasons, we just can't afford to slow down the birth rate (despite all the couples who, sensibly, do NOT want to have a baby during a pandemic and were not about to let politicians hinder their quest for good birth control), and one seldom hears a detailed argument against that.

Well, here's one - and it's long:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/opinion/low-population-growth-economy-inflation.html

(He doesn't discuss environmental issues in detail here, but by now, practically everyone has heard about the family planning/carbon footprint link.)

Last paragraph:

"The fact is that, like it or not, we’re going to be living for a long time with very slow population growth. And we need to start thinking about economic policy with that reality in mind."

> but by now, practically everyone
> has heard about the family
> planning/carbon footprint link

(Ahem.)

Paywall

Ooo, crid, from the page you sent us this looks neat

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/21/997954472/how-your-hot-showers-and-toilet-flushes-can-help-the-climate

As I read it, the article on the Simon Abundance Index is horrifying. All it says is that it's easier and cheaper to consume more commodities than it was 40 years ago. That's not good news for a growing population.

The snip below correlates population growth with production prowess. That's silly. No mention of technology as a main driver. No mention of practical limits on plywood, coconut oil, or shrimp harvesting. I think Abundance" gives too hopeful a gloss to this line of research.

"We found that every one percent
increase in population corresponded to an increase in personal resource abundance (i.e., the size of the slice of pizza) of 4 percent. We also found that every one percent increase in population corresponded to an increase in population resource abundance (i.e., the size of the pizza pie) of 8.03 percent.

Conclusion:

We found that humanity is experiencing what we term Superabundance – a condition where abundance is increasing at a faster rate than the population is growing."

> That's not good news for
> a growing population.

First of all, Peak Diaper was 2017. Population increases from this point out are from people living longer, and they're not likely to seek your approval for their continuing survival.

Second, "not good news" is a schoolmarmy/housewifely formulation of sarcasm — tepid and incurious — and I despise it.

Third, promise us that you'll be ᴠᴇʀʏ ᴄᴏɴᴄᴇʀɴᴇᴅ about this "not good news" for a very long time! Promise you'll have either a cluckingly stern or childishly wounded look on your face as you think about this for the rest of your life.

Here's is our 21st century! People are offended by our nearly-explosive abundance.

"Conclusion:" Take yourself very, very seriously.

> cluckingly stern

More drive-by screeching and name calling. You'd fling poo if you could get a handful out past your chin. It makes a person start to miss Artemis.

Lenona's topic was carbon footprint. Simon says, "The multiplier tells us how much more of a resource a person can get for the same hours of work " My guess is lower commodity prices will increase consumption, e.g. carbon footprint.

P.S. Here's where some "Super Abundance" comes from:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36734578.amp

Yours is a world of problems without solutions. On the real planet, things improve ALL THE TIME.
People are smarter than the ninny-warts, especially when they live in liberty. But dim bulbs pulse with the need to take command of the human project. Resources! Procreation!

> That's not good news for
> a growing population.

The poo line was kind of mean. It was fun, too, but I wonder exactly what you have in mind for the Chinese fisherman besides the clucking. Because that's what offends. If Lenona wants to get upset about "carbon footprints," that's her own beeswax, but it won't compel the rest of us to sign up for God-knows-what authoritarian measures to calm her down. Free people innovating in free markets provide solutions. Most everything else is just irritation: If your comment described something besides a religious distaste for human fulfillment, perhaps it could have been better worded.

Moar from Tupy.

No apology for triggering you with common phrases. Heck, we don't even know your pronouns.

> On the real planet, things improve ALL THE TIME

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/human-penises-are-shrinking-because-of-pollution-warns-scientist-12255106

Oh, thanks.
I didn't see the better wording suggestion before posting no apologies.

Something's going wrong (says one scientist)! Therefore the human project is corrupt!

Dood...

…But don't you understand? SAD STUFF IS HAPPENING!.....

Ninnies wannabe Fonda in that movie. It's not responsible environmentalism, and it ain't convincing politics.

> As I read it, the article on
> the Simon Abundance Index is
> horrifying.

You're on the start of a suicidal bender, right?

Rule of thumb: People who say they're horrified by human flourishing aren't kidding.

They're sometimes wrong about why, but their horror ought not be discounted.

> As I read it, the article on
> the Simon Abundance Index is
> horrifying.

Yes. An upbeat article an how easy mass consumption is, is definitely alarming when you're talking about 8 billion people. Raising a couple billion out of poverty is a good stunt and capitalism is a tremendous boon. We are much to be congratulated for it.
The downside is resource allocation to fuel consumer society. We fought a war for cheap oil. China and the Philippines are trading elbow jabs over fishing territory. We mowed the Amazon for cheap carbohydrates. Wars, threats of wars, and obesity are not good news.

But who am I? Nobody from nowhere. Here's a Peer of the Realm, Sir David Attenborough.

"Since 1970, vertebrate animals - birds, mammals, reptiles, fish and amphibians - have declined by 60%, another tells us."
(No mention of losing a flu virus, but we have lots of those.)

"Species have always come and gone, that's how evolution works. But, says Sir David, the rate of extinction has been rising dramatically.

It is reckoned to be now happening at 100 times the natural evolutionary rate - and is accelerating.

"Over the course of my life I've encountered some of the world's most remarkable species of animals," says Sir David, in one of the most moving sequences in the film.

"Only now do I realise just how lucky I've been - many of these wonders seem set to disappear forever.""

This was during the same period (1980 - 2020) covered in Simon's chirpy article about cheap commodities.

> Raising a couple billion out
> of poverty is a good stunt

Got it!… You *are* being clear. You'd rather cluck at misbehavior than acknowledge spectacular human flourishing, especially among those who've not tasted so much of it as you have.

According the World Population Clock (UN + US Census), there are 7,870,623,881 people on this planet as I beginning typing this sentence.

But you aren't alone! Let's say there are one million, or ten, or one hundred million who're so provincially deluded about their "footprint" on global biology, and so grovelingly shamefaced about their inability to find meaning in lives of plenitude and safety.

That leaves ~7,770,623,881 who will be on the other side of the battle for how we're going to proceed… And be certain: fisticuffs are coming. Well, I'll be on the side of the civilized, and not the theatrically downbeat mob.

> in Simon's chirpy article about
> cheap commodities.

It's not Simon's "article," which makes me think you didn't read it anyway. (Rejection of facts is precisely the problem.) The man himself has been dead for twenty-three years.

> Raising a couple billion out
> of poverty is a good stunt

Tupy & Co. can be rational far more proficiently than you can be needy.

> lives of plenitude and safety
You sound like you live in a cornfield under a nuclear umbrella. Oh, wait . . .

Cardboard cutout stereotypes about people who like the outdoors are as old as Love Canal, or acid rain, or lead paint. Civilized people stepped in and put a stop to that shit. Oh, sure, Dow Chemical, GM, Dupont, and the rest of them pissed and moaned. Laws had to be passed to get them to stop. I've seen your corporate overlords up close. Great problem solvers, but don't depend on them liking you.
I have good connections with the under-30 STEM educated set. Not theatrically downbeat, but scimitar-eyed about saving the planet. I cheer for them.

I haven't a clue what you're saying. Raddy does the "oh wait" thing too. All of life's a circle.

NicoleK, I found this by searching on one of the phrases I quoted. (I trust THIS doesn't have a paywall...)

https://goodwordnews.com/opinion-the-challenge-of-low-population-growth-for-the-economy/

One thing I don't get is why so many now claim that by 2050, we'll "only" have 9.5 billion people - or even fewer.

Ever since 1987, the global population has increased by a billion every 12 years. Assuming we reach 8 billion by 2023, the above prediction would mean it should take 18 more years to reach 9 billion. That would be quite a sudden slowdown. Where are the signs it's starting to happen? Especially when the Pill has been around for six decades - but the rate only sped UP, drastically, between 1960 and 1999?

Maybe people will change their tune in 2035 (or earlier), when, chances are, we'll already be at 9 billion.

(As it happens, back in 1994, the U.N. officials certainly thought the number would be a lot higher in 2050 - a little over 10 billion. Again, why should we assume they were wrong?)

Correction - the U.N. made that prediction in 1990.

> Again, why should we assume
> they were wrong?

A couple generations ago, people thought intellectual life was ending because there'd be no way to read at night.

From the 18th through the mid-19th century, whale oil provided light to much of the Western world. At its peak, whaling employed 70,000 people and was the United States’ fifth-largest industry. The U.S. stood as the world’s foremost whale slayer. Producing millions of gallons of oil each year, the industry was widely seen as unassailable, with advocates scoffing at would-be illumination substitutes like lard oil and camphene. Without whale oil, so the thinking went, the world would slide backward toward darkness.

By today’s standard, of course, slaughtering whales is considered barbaric.

Two hundred years ago there was no environmental movement to speak of. But one wonders if the whalers, finding that each year they needed to go farther afield from Nantucket Island to kill massive sea mammals, ever asked themselves: what will happen when we run out of whales?

Such questions today constitute the cornerstone of the ever-louder logic of sustainability.

In other words, humanity is doomed.

By the way, how's that Chromebook working out? Do you use it at night?

Moar stunts for Spidey.

We could play good news/bad news until Christmas:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/30/china-beijing-fishing-africa-north-korea-south-china-sea/

And from Puget Sound:
"
There are three main reasons for the decline in Southern Resident Orcas: lack of food, noise pollution, and chemical pollution. ... Today, two-thirds of orca pregnancies fail due to nutritional stress. Their population decline is primarily due to a decline in Chinook salmon abundance."

So you see, better tech also means faster harvesting. Whales are still endangered even after the blessing of electric lighting. Chinese trawlers are plundering native fishing stocks to fill out the 10.99 fish plate special in Wu Dang. It's the same resource grab that the Native Americans went through.
Not to pick on China. Check out the 1992 collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery. Still not back. But fill your plate. We can get by with farmed fish. Check out the 2017 salmon pen collapse in Puget Sound; a quarter million disease-plagued Atlantic salmon got loose.
Just last month China introduced a three child policy - to help fill the labor ranks. And working people have got to eat.

Stunts

Or wait a minute…

Did you just promise not to eat?

Okay with that.

Crid, I agree that caution and conservation aren't the answers to everything. As John Augustus Shedd (1859-1931) wrote: "A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."

But at the same time, it's interesting that the Newsweek article never mentioned the tragedy of the commons, which is all too real, again and again. That is, the more leisure time and toys we get, the more of them we demand (especially young people, who have no memory of harder times) and the harder it can be to appreciate the value of school, studying, and useful work in general, paid or unpaid. Self-discipline is too valuable to lose - and too easy to lose. "Waste not, want not."

Yes, I read at night, being something of a night owl. But my electric bill will be less if I force myself to go to bed earlier and rely more on daylight. (Since I typically need about 9 hours of sleep anyway, that shouldn't be a problem.)

Just because one might be able to AFFORD to have all the lights burning, all day, doesn't make it ethical to do so.

> That is, the more leisure time and toys
> we get, the more of them we demand
>( especially young people, who have no
> memory of harder times) and the harder
> it can be to appreciate the value of
> school, studying, and useful work in
> general, paid or unpaid.

You've drawn a direct causal link between leisure (+ toys) and failures of "school, studying, and useful work." I want evidence. Every experience of every culture I've studied, visited or engaged has demonstrated that lazy, distracted assholes are always with us.

You in particular, Lenona, write almost every day as if you're certain that if you were turning the keys to the machine — whether in the family, the principal's office, the Cotillion Committee, the manager's office, the policy desk, the Board of Elections, or maybe even law enforcement — you could clean this mess right the heck up.

I like you a lot, admire you tremendously, and don't believe it for a fuh-reeeeeking moment.

Human flourishing is what we want. None of us will be allowed to distinguish exceptions by personal taste.



Me? Personally?

Thanks for asking! On planet Cridmo, there's no Country music, and that includes the banjos of my childhood county in Indiana: Nashville is a ghost town; as is Lincoln Center, or wherever opera happens. Who knows. And who cares.

They flourish without my affection— as they ought, and as they must.

> Air pollution from fossil fuels kills
> over eight million people a year--
> and that's a conservative estimate.

Citation? (Include the "conservative" part… Original research only.)

And provide data on the number defended by that same carbon usage— Nourishing food, safety in harsh climates, provision of meds & medical, comms, etc.

Honey, in the Mafia sense of the word, you have been made by modernity. If someone decides to take it down, Nebbish Little You is the first one sleepin' with the fishes.

> the Newsweek article never mentioned
> the tragedy of the commons

FFS, Lenona, that's the topic of the article!

THAT is the madness of this. THAT is the gruesome, pornographic obsession clouding the popular mind in assessment of the human condition.

You're saying—

…But if you ever say that some things are going okay, that means you're not using every word to say how things are actually terrible!

We'll take care of everything.

Here's some more misery pornography:

The disruption may have caused issues for citizens booking COVID-19 vaccinations or reporting test results, the Financial Times reported.