I can't imagine the amount of "non-valued" food, fruit vegetables etc which end up in the bin.

If you banned the pesticides, it would do a lot of good, but now consider how many more acres would need to be farmed in order to keep the overall yields the same. How many acres would be cleared that would not otherwise be cleared?

I agree that glyphosate (RoundUp now makes up less than half the market, which is largely Chinese-made and Chinese-consumed now) should probably be far more heavily regulated, but be aware that humans are not going to happily grow less food on the same land when yields drop.

Taste the rainforest.

This feels like saying we absolutely need multiple GB of RAM to display a website because how else would Angular work otherwise?

If the increased yield per acre is used primarily to support todays industrial-scale meat production, maybe we should address the latter first. The way meat production works today seems to have almost exclusively downsides: It's a moral bankruptcy considering current state of research in animal consciousness, it's a health hazard for consumers, it's an inefficient way to consume proteins and as you note, it monopolizes vast parts of crop production.

That is, you can’t just swap out corn/hay fields for rice and bean fields. I would love to be proven wrong though, it would help me rationalize further reducing my meat consumption

If these numbers are even close to accurate, eliminating roundup and modern farming would kill BILLIONS of humans.

I would love to get more accurate numbers, but what do you intend to do about the little "humans need food" issue in general ?

It’s a short term gain. Long term sustainability is more important.

Given how much food we throw away, I really don’t think the yield per acre is a problem. It’s a race to the bottom anyway.

The solution is obvious, straightforward, and would be relatively easy, but human nature makes it hard to discuss, let alone implement.

The argument above, if I'm not mistaken, is that we should produce less food, and so if that is the objective, we can farm the same acreage with a lower yield per acre just fine. Less supply is a fundamental part of the idea, in fact, to inflate food prices and reduce waste.

Also the wasted food cannot be shipped to countries that need it, like Africa, without a high cost, unless you're talking about food low in nutrients, like sugar, flour or corn, that can be stored for months or years and that does nothing to help those populations, because they need proteins, they need nutrients.

So the starvation argument makes absolutely no sense.

Also I believe that in some cases a lower yield per acre should reduce the costs. If you eliminate the waste, if you make the distribution channels efficient, if you keep the soil healthy, production costs should in fact go down.

I think other comments, however, did address the discussion of people who struggle to afford food at current prices-- additionally, in the U.S. specifically, 40% of food is wasted [1]. Maybe just a decrease in U.S. food supply would be in order? Or specifically countries where food waste is that high?

[1] https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf

So in a lot of places you can't swap out meat for, say, corn. It's meat ... or nothing (well, grass, which I guess you could make plastic from but little else).

All of agriculture is also pretty inefficient btw. From the sunlight to calories (before any processing) there's ~1.8% efficiency.

Better quality combined with eating less, both would be good and producing less waste.

Aquaponics is getting more and more popular and can be very cheap. I imagine that a good "how to" guide and a small monetary donation could help a lot of people.

Money is a tool for overcoming barriers to cooperation. People who can't self-organize to cheaply produce food for survival will continue to not be able unless enough money is available.

In terms of growing your own food, poverty of post USSR Russia is an interesting case study. The concept of a “dacha” became hugely important in subsistence. In last years of USSR shops became empty in most regions. You literally could not buy food even if you had money. Limited rations were provided so people didn’t die of starvation.

A lot of families turned to weekend farming. Usually not any kind of livestock, just vegetables. Potatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers and such. Pesticides were expensive, so not an option. Composting and dun from the villages who had livestock were primarily used.

My grandparents weekend farm produced enough to feed several families and we often gave away or bartered extra sacks of potatos. In all, the land used for this was less than .2 acre. Worked by 2 adults part time with rudimentary tools more reminiscent of 18/19th century than a modern operation.

I wonder if anyone has ever starved when some government came in to make the food free?

Edit: I wonder if I’m the only on that has seen HN move exponentially faster towards reddit in the last year?

The alternatives to Roundup tend to be worse than Roundup. That's why people use Roundup. That's not to say Roundup per se is absolutely necessary, but farming without pesticides doesn't work at the scale necessary to feed the human population. There's no choice between "overproduction" and "appropriate production" by getting rid of pesticides. Despite all the overproduction, we still have spikes in food prices caused by bad harvests. Limiting production even more would be risky.

> ... and organic farming techniques, of widely adopted, wouldn't make it impossible to continue to produce enough.

First of all, "organic farming" is marketing BS. It doesn't have any properly defined meaning, it also uses pesticides (just not those deemed "not organic") which aren't harmless either, it is vastly more expensive even at scale (which by now it has, due to high demand in rich countries). It's wishful thinking that it could replace modern farming.

Honestly, I think everything you said supports my point.

Now, maybe you don't tell anyone that you're more organic than the organic pope, but that makes you an extreme exception, not the rule.

That goop had better be poisoning dolphins or something, because the null hypothesis -- that it really isn't so bad and organic labels reject it on account of the FUD opportunity -- is pretty damning.

At least in the US, there is a "certified organic" label regulated by the USDA. https://www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/programs-offices/national...

1: https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/splash_en

https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-labeling-s...

The part that makes it BS has nothing to do with regulation. Homeopathy and Chiropractic are regulated and certified in various ways, they're still BS.

Organics pesticide use is much more selective and heavily controlled than standard regulations[1]. Your notion that most consumers of organic food have unrealistic expectations ( with no survey to support that ) is really just a statement of your own expectations.

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...

Who decides which pesticides are okay, what is the criterion that everyone can agree on? Why are there differences across countries, if there is a proper definition of it?

By the way, you can slap a "gluten free" label on table water and it'll be marketing BS, but at least "gluten free" has a properly defined meaning.

> Who decides which pesticides are okay, what is the criterion that everyone can agree on?

You know in this age of IT you can find answers to your questions. [3]

> Why are there differences across countries, if there is a proper definition of it?

Because it is a developed practical system, its not defined by dictionary definition - it is very complicated. Why are there differences across countries in safety regulations? How well is the term "safety" internationally defined ? Where did you get the idea that dictionary definition of "organic farming" should be able to completely explain the practice. What other well defined terms do that ?? Renewables, Genetic Engineering, Nuclear, Carbon reduction?

I think this involves unwillingness to observe context and make sense of terms, for the sake of the sort of argument which is fun for supporting sport teams.

[1] https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/labeling

[2] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=9874504b6f1...

[3] https://www.ifoam.bio/en/about-us

It's a bunch of semi-religious practices that were made up on the spot with no scientific basis whatsoever. For you to put it next to Genetic Engineering or Renewables is quite misleading.

Organic farming has its origins in nonsense beliefs, the practices that exist today are still based on them, even if they're regulated now. Farmers practice organic farming for basically two reasons:

1) To make money by selling inefficiently produced food at inflated prices

2) Because they irrationally and dogmatically believe organic farming is "better", without any scientific basis

The people in group #1 don't actually believe in the principle, they just believe in the money they'll make.

https://southsaskfarmer.com/2015/01/11/why-im-not-an-organic...

Please don't defend untrue claims in these discussions by asking questions "not to be answered"

It's not untrue to say there is no clearly defined meaning of "safety", just like there is no clearly defined meaning of "organic farming". The fact that there are standards bodies or certifications doesn't change that.

The other claim is that organic farming is marketing BS. I don't even see you arguing that it isn't. Even many organic farmers agree!

So, what's the issue?

No, rhetorical questions have expected answers. You simply rejected answers which you did not expect and then declared your own questions "not to be answered".

>It's not untrue ((its true)) to say there is no clearly defined meaning of "safety"

Agreed (see - rhetorical). There is not one clear definition of safety, there are many for different contexts and in different jurisdictions.

Your idea that organic farming should be atomically definable, doesn't make nonsense bullshit out of organic agriculture and labeling - it has made nonsense of your understanding of organic agriculture.

Im not continuing this with you, but may link to it in the next discussion featuring insubstantial and false claims about organic farming. Organic agriculture deserves fair assessment and criticism for these times, not so much name calling. Have a good weekend.

Not necessarily, but either way the answer is not the point.

> You simply rejected answers which you did not expect and then declared your own questions "not to be answered".

Okay Dr. Mind Reader. Do you believe I didn't expect that someone could google who does organic certifications and give me links to that? Do you believe I have never heard of such a thing as organic certification, even after multiple people have pointed it out to me right here?

Once again, I don't actually expect you to answer these question. The point of the questions is to make you think. You could answer them, but you would be missing the point.

> Your idea that organic farming should be atomically definable, doesn't make nonsense bullshit out of organic agriculture and labeling - it has made nonsense of your understanding of organic agriculture.

I didn't say it should be and indeed it doesn't. I really just mentioned it, you don't even seem to disagree that it doesn't have a clearly defined meaning, so what is your problem?

Anyway, what actually makes organic farming bullshit is the fact that it's based on bullshit theories. It has no basis in science. It comes out of nonsense beliefs, like Antroposophy. What makes it marketing bullshit is the fact that "organic" is used as a label of quality, even though the practice is based on bullshit theories, just like Homeopathy, which also has certifications. The farmers following these inefficient practices often do it only for the marketing effect. I don't even see you contest that at all, so I must conclude that you actually agree with me on this. Glad we're on the same page!

But, in addition to being neither of those things, it is an utter disaster for the environment.

Also most of the plants we cultivate are invasive species, and their main pests are invasive as well, so we have plenty of opportunities to experiment on this invasive species before before we kill native species in their original habitats.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity...

Read the article and you'll see that it's a decline in population, not in number of species.

What incentives do scientists have to lie about this? Why is everyone so skeptical about warnings that scientists around the world agree on and have been saying for 20 or 30 years? It's maddening

But insects are also a foundation of natural food webs; we can't lose lots of insects without losing lots of other animals too. And as a couple of us have posted already, a recent study showed that we've reduced the populations of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles by 60% since 1970: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity...

The worst part is that the people making the exaggerations think they are helping.

Consider the two years a 'final notice period' in which we actually can change the course of the cruiser. Until we start facing the dire consequences a bit more time might pass, but it will have been to late for a long time.

It's only a matter of time until the results of our predatory overcultivation catch up with us. Do you sincerely doubt that? How much more punishment can our habitat suffer before in finally collapses?

> Besides, humans will never die out because of lack of "resources".

We are in grave danger of dying out; because of lack resources and because of our mind-boggling stupidity, sheer arrogance and our inability to deal with our tribal instincts.

You might (or not) have noticed that humans don't exist outside of the ecological system that our plant harbors. We're part of this ecological network, we're fully, totally, no-exceptions dependent on it. Techno-utopian dreams (nightmares, more like it) of being independent of the 'natural' world are not going to save mankind; we're part of 'nature', we exist within nature, there's no existence for humans outside nature. We need an ecosystem that provides us with calories and oxygen. The only ecosystem in existence that is capable of providing that is the very ecosystem we're working tirelessly to dismantle and destroy. So yes; we might die out because of lack of resources. We very probably will. Maybe

There's only so much damage that an ecosystem can take. And there are tons of signs that signal that our earthly ecosystem is reaching it's breaking point; - we've lost about a third of the arable land in the last forty years. - we've lost about 30% of bio diversity in the last twenty years. - we've lost almost 75% of insect biomass in the last thirty years.

The loss of insects is especially alarming; insects play a major role in all food webs on earth. The disappearance of 75% of insects (biomass, not species) has a catastrophic impact of everything further up the food chain. Yes, including humans.

We're currently working non-stop to destroy our ecosystem's capacity to carry animals in the upper food chain. Guess who's on top of that food chain. Yes, us humans.

Don't kid yourself; we're currently rushing full-speed ahead towards a full-scale ecosystem collapse. And don't fool yourself on our ability to create and maintain a man-made closed ecosystem as a replacement; we're not able to do that and we probably won't for many, many, many decades to come.

The only ecosystem we have to save our collective asses is the one we're currently punishing every day with our overproduction, overconsumption, with our fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides and waste.

It's so past high times that we - humans, as a collective - have a hard talk how much longer we want to exist as a 'civilized' species, with global trade, no struggle for survival, boundless capitalism.

Because if we keep going, we've got a dozen or so decades left. It's back to hunter gathering for the rest of mankind's existence after that.

If we leave enough prey species alive, that is. Otherwise that will be the end of mankind's short stint.

> Depending on skills and technology, they are not scarce for a world population of 10 billion humans or they are scarce with a world population of 1 human.

This is very true. If organized properly we could very easily feed the 7.7 billion people that live on earth today. We could easily feed the 11 billion people that are expected to exist in about 50 years or so on earth. I do not doubt that the technological hurdles are gigantic, but the could be overcome.

Alas, I don't see that happening. Not because of the technological difficulty, but because of human stupidity or shortsightedness, our tribal instincts and the tendency towards reckless acquisition of resources that allowed our ancestors to become the dominant species on this planet in the first place.

You see, the problem is not our abilities to change the environment. The problem is our inability to change ourselves.

/If/ we all went vegan, /if/ we stopped needles, wasteful wars, /if/ we stopped consuming more than we need, /if/ ...

... then we could make it. But we don't change our behavior. We are still greedy little apes that are driven to resource acquisition to improve our social status in order to have higher reproductive success. We are reproduction machines, nothing that is changed by a few decades of wealth in some parts on earth.

It is this inability to overcome our biological imperatives that will doom us, because they prevent us from recognizing the foreigner as our sibling. And so we compete for resources, even though we've already so many resources that we die from over saturation.

So, unless all the peoples around the world start working together very soon to combat climate change, mitigate species and biomass loss, reduce the consumption of resources to a degree our planet can actually provide, I don't see how the human species will be able to survive.

It's not that we couldn't do it. It's that we're not willing to pay the cost in the /now/ to be able to survive in the /future/.

Second: Fortunately only few people need to introduce or enforce change to make big changes for all. Modern societies would have never happened if change was not imposed by a few on all.

Unfortunately climate change is a bad problem because it is also a political problem because appropriate technology might not be available and imposed soon enough. Politics are determined by the stupid ignorant democratic majority. Even in dictatorships like China because a dictatorship must be tolerated by the democratic majority.

Fortunately, the stupid ignorant democratic majority could die and leave the surviving elite (not a money based elite of billionaires) with a better society. Natural evolution.

IMO, relatively few humans will die because of climate change but many more other species will die out.

https://theconversation.com/capitalism-is-killing-the-worlds...

> One tweet, posted in response to the WWF publication, retorted that “we are a virus with shoes”, an attitude that hints at growing public apathy.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/google-deepmind-founder...

> "Either we need an exponential improvement in human behavior — less selfishness, less short-termism, more collaboration, more generosity — or we need an exponential improvement in technology."

> "If you look at current geopolitics, I don't think we're going to be getting an exponential improvement in human behavior any time soon."

> "That's why we need a quantum leap in technology like AI."

A "Permie" farm is more productive than any other mode of food production. By setting up ecosystems that consist of a preponderance of human-usable crop species you can grow multiple times the amount of food-per-acre of conventional agriculture (even with GMOs and pesticides, et. al.) After the initial set-up very little labor is required.

Permie farms foster biodiversity.

"Permaculture Behind `Greening the Desert` with Geoff Lawton" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q41b05ku9U Salt desert to figs in two years.

Toby Hemenway - "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nLKHYHmPbo

"Alcohol Can Be a Gas!" http://permaculture.com/ Small-scale alcohol fuel production integrated with a Permaculture farm. You can grow your own energy. The economics are totally different from large-scale industrial ethanol production. You can start this in your backyard and be driving your converted car from your own home-grown carbon-neutral solar energy within a few months. Faster if you scavenge feedstock. Farmer Dave used to have an arrangement with a donut shop to ferment their old leftover/scrap dough.

Wouldn't it just cause certain creatures to be more dominant?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_collapse

Let's look at it from a different perspective though. If thousands of scientists are wrong and we improve the environment but there was never any danger of human extinction then we still end up with a more enjoyable planet. If thousands of scientists are right and we don't improve the environment then we all die.

Seems like a pretty easy decision to me.

No pollination means many fallow meadows and dead plants.

This means either weeds spreading or top soil depletion.

This also means many crops we depend on will not survive because various helper species aren’t available.

Earthworms dying mean no areation of soil, or the impact of other insects to improve the eco system.

So no those other species aren’t taking up the slack as you put it. Wasps aren’t interchangeable with moths for example.

But I too want to understand better how far this collapse impacts human beings.

- Commercial bee populations aren't declining. (There has been an increase in Colony Collapse Disorder, but lost colonies are replaced and total bee population hasn't declined.)

- The vast majority of the world's food supply does not depend on pollination from insects. To quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated...:

> The most essential staple food crops on the planet, like corn, wheat, rice, soybeans and sorghum, need no insect help at all; they are wind-pollinated or self-pollinating. Other staple food crops, like bananas and plantains, are sterile and propagated from cuttings, requiring no pollination of any form, ever.

- None of the crops that require pollination from insects are essential to human survival. It's hard to see how their loss could lead to our extinction.

- Crops can be pollinated by hand or machine.

- Crops can be propagated without seeds.

- Crops can be grown in all kinds of unbelievable conditions. Crops can be grown without soil. They can be grown in space stations, completely isolated from Earth's ecosystems.

- Extinction is a very strong claim. To support it, it wouldn't be enough, for example, to show that 90% of the population would die off, leaving 750 million people. They need to propose a mechanism by which all humans would die.

Fertile soil is not just dirt. Talk to a soil expert and you'll find out very quickly how difficult it is to keep soil healthy, especially if you punish it every day with pesticides and herbicides. See you long you can maintain production if you don't have a support system of insects, arachnids, worms, fungi and so on. You'll end up with just dirt. Nothing grows in just dirt. You can try to keep up production by downing it in fertilizer, but in the end you'll just prolong the inevitable; loss of crop and collaps of production.

See how many humans you can feed by growing crops in space stations. See how long you can maintain a closed ecosystem in space.

To your last point; if you lose more than 30% to 30% of the productive workforce, you can kiss human civilization goodbye; our manufacturing is highly de-centralized, but heavily interdependent and without safety buffer.. Our infrastructure is wide-spread and needs tons of maintenance. Lose enough people and it all comes crashing down, leaving the survivors with broken machinery for which they don't have energy, don't have the knowledge to operate let alone repair if (not when) they stop working. They will also have to deal with all the poison and radioactive fallout from all the fission reactors that experience core-meltdown because nobody's around anymore to power them down over the period of ten years.

Don't kid yourself; saving what's left of this earth's ecosystem is the only shot we have. There's not techo-utopia down the road to carry us to eternity and the heat-death of the universe. Its you and me and the rest of us puny humans that will have to do the saving.

Say plankton dies off, say animals eating plankton die, say humans eating those animals now have less food. Say all the fish die and we are reduced to land-based food. Now we have more space competing for farm land, we have to clear forest. Clearing adds to CO2 emissions, construction, more emissions, less CO2 being taken out. It's clear how this is all one giant feedback loop. Less biodiversity, more overabundance of something else, which leads to less consumption of something else which leads to collapse of ecosystems which leads to use trying to patch things up and doing even more harm.

Just zoom out and think about things that consume things and how that loops back directly to humans, environment, overproduction, overuse and eventually unsustainable usage of resources until there are none left.

Just a speculatory example, losing migratory birds could weaken the soil microbiome and seed biodiversity in the places they migrate to, from, and over. There could be a crop-critical organism in their path that relies on the regular influx of new bacteria or seeds from a certain place.

On what we have already removed: a building likely still stands if you remove 60% of the contents of the building, the last 40% is what is really holding it up.

No imagine halving the number of species in yellowstone

This must change if we are to prevent Earth’s intact ecosystems from disappearing completely.[..]

There are many struggles ahead of us. But not all hope is lost. I wholeheartedly reject any fatalistic notion. There is always something that can be done to improve the situation.

> When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.

-- Hannah Arendt

> a lot of people will have to die of violent death for humanity to evolve and come to its senses

I hate to be that person, but I think that's still optimistic. People don't get smarter after having been sufficiently brutalized, both learning and evolution break down when there's just a whole lot of pressure and chaos, rather than speeding up. Just like children need both stimulation and "action", as well as "peace" and feeling of acceptance and security in which to assemble and integrate their personality from their experiences. If it's all just loud noises and bright colors, development gets stunted or halted, not accelerated.

Furthermore I also think it's also optimistic to think it would just "burn down" with everyone starting from scratch: I think it would just consolidate the power of assorted sociopaths further, or even finally. I'm not worried about human extinction, if anything I'm worried of us constructing a gravity well totalitarianism we might never escape from.

> Every era of civilization was build on the ashes of the former,

By definition, because we use such catastrophes to divide things into "eras". However, it's not like civilization is stagnant between "eras", eras are just labels, lines we draw, that could also be drawn in different ways.

That said, environmental damage is expensive, and we should mitigate it. But we should do so with an accurate, not inflated, knowledge of the consequences.

Environmental damage /is/ an /existential/ threat. We're part of an ecosystem, we're not independent of it. We have no way to produce food or oxygen without an ecosystem. In what artificial Biosphere do you live in?

The sheer audacity leaves me (almost) speechless.

Google for 'arable soil loss' and read a bit about it, please.

Each time we lose an organism, we lose an entire repo of commits made over billions of years.

We are lucky that we do have all the knowledge but instead of taking action we constantly bathe ourselves in dystopian fantasies and social media whining (Q.E.D.) without any vision other than what seems like a global death-wish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Chimpanzee#Environme...

It’s not too late technically, we could make changes now that would save us. But it’s far too late politically because people are stubbornly doubling down on the behaviors that are killing us.

http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199539...

Let's not kid around; if the ecosystem of goes the way of the way of the dodo, humans will go along for the ride.

You might (or not) have noticed that humans don't exist outside of the ecological system that our plant harbors. We're part of this ecological network, we're fully, totally, non-negotiable dependent on it. Techno-utopian dreams (nightmares, more like it) of being independent of the 'natural' world are not going to save mankind; we're part of 'nature', we exist within nature, there's no existence for humans outside nature. We need an ecosystem that provides us with calories and oxygen. The only ecosystem in existence that is capable of providing that is the very ecosystem we're working tirelessly to dismantle and destroy. So yes; we might die out because of lack of resources. We very probably will. There's only so much damage that an ecosystem can take. And there are tons of signs that signal that our earthly ecosystem is reaching it's breaking point; - we've lost about a third of the arable land in the last forty years. - we've lost about 30% of bio diversity in the last twenty years. - we've lost almost 75% of insect biomass in the last thirty years.

The loss of insects is especially alarming; insects play a major role in all food webs on earth. The disappearance of 75% of insects (biomass, not species) has a catastrophic impact of everything further up the food chain. Yes, including humans.

We're currently working non-stop to destroy our ecosystem's capacity to carry animals in the upper food chain. Guess who's on top of that food chain. Yes, us humans.

Don't kid yourself; we're currently rushing full-speed ahead towards a full-scale ecosystem collapse. And don't fool yourself on our ability to create and maintain a man-made closed ecosystem as a replacement; we're not able to do that and we probably won't for many, many, many decades to come.

The only ecosystem we have to save our collective asses is the one we're currently punishing every day with our overproduction, overconsumption, with our fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides and waste.

It's so past high times that we - humans, as a collective - have a hard talk how much longer we want to exist as a 'civilized' species, with global trade, no struggle for survival, boundless capitalism.

Because if we keep going, we've got a dozen or so decades left. It's back to hunter gathering for the rest of mankind's existence after that.

If we leave enough prey species alive, that is. Otherwise that will be the end of mankind's short stint.

The collapse is the imbalanced system naturally correcting itself, and the humans who survive will go on to create more and the cycle repeats.

Extinction means no more cycles for humans.

Your view strikes me as a very my-generation me-centric attitude, focused on the sheer numbers of people living now vs. future generations.

I'm not so sure at all.

If really needed bacterias and plants would be enough for humans to survive. Wouldnt be pleasant though, so we should try our best that it doesnt happen.

I just dont see the apocalyptic prophecies coming true.

Markets are levered if not overlevered, and maintenance of biodiversity is going to have both spending costs for the govt and resource extraction reductions (arguable), followed by compliance costs for firms.

Sure we save ourselves, but face it, our economic system is a rational system which at the end must put a finite price on a human life. Whether by market price discovery or by fiat, we are going to say, “there’s only this much we can spend”.

I’m really curious because I pretty much see a dead rock and humans under domes, in the far future.

Is there some other plausible outcome?

———-

Edit: people are correctly targeting the rational part of markets, but here’s the counter.

It’s very rational for business firms to lobby against externalities being priced in. It’s rational for ranchers to cut forests for economic gains. And it’s rational for the many many people who are being propelled up out of poverty to want better food, clothing and power.

That guy burning crops in India says “shit, sorry for the bad smoke Delhi. But it costs too much to do anything else. Sucks to be you.”

That’s why my point on our economy being levered. It’s not in anyone’s rational interest to halt growth. Every % of global gdp growth is millions of people out of poverty.

Which is why the question. Are people really incentivized to bell the cat - to actually price in externalities ?

Homo economicus is the perfect caricature, as humans usually make purchasing decisions for far from rational reasons. They buy for emotion, because of brand, etc. Read any current marketing book. The system within which we operate claims rationality solely on the basis of conveniently ignoring anything that might impinge: pollution, environmental damage, cost of cleanup or restoration of a site, societal and human damage. All of those get lumped in a category called "externalities" that might be more honestly labelled inconvenient truths.

A rational system would be more holistic and somehow account for the value of lives, planet, society and so on. It would find a market way to penalise those actors continuing to saw the branch on which humanity or other species sit.

This confuses the map with the territory.

The economy is built by actual people, with dreams, desires, etc, whose behavior is usually far beyond what the "Homo economics" would dictate.

Homo economicus is just a crude model.

>The cost of that externality will never get priced in fully, because it’s in the interest of people to pretend it’s someone else’s problem (especially when they’re people’s jobs and food on the line.)

Well, it will be fun to see them suddenly rebalance their "interests" when they are plagued to death, and it's their life and the life of their children on the line.

Who is going to pay for the billions of corpses of men, women, and children? (And the "reduction in growth" that that entails)

>It’s very rational for business firms to lobby against externalities being priced in. It’s rational for ranchers to cut forests for economic gains. And it’s rational for the many many people who are being propelled up out of poverty to want better food, clothing and power.

This confuses "profitable" with "rational".

Motives (e.g. the profit motive, or altruism, or thinking about the commons) are not "rational" or "irrational", they are personal and sentimental.

One can think rationally about what their actions will bring on. The decision depends on their intentions and feelings, which themselves have little to do with rationality.

Picking the most profitable of two courses of action, externalities be damned, doesn't require reasoned thinking (only as much as to figure out which is the most profitable).

But while calculation "this will bring me profit" involves rational thinking, so does the calculation "this will also eventually destroy this place, or hurt society".

People are perfectly able to reason about the general (e.g. societal) and future impact of their actions, and avoid doing stuff that will have negative consequences.

It doesn't take irrationality to do that -- just not being a selfish greedy prick, which is orthogonal to rational thinking.

Humans don’t act like a hive. Instead, we have local alliances and local optimums.

You know, I bet, right now, there’s a plan somewhere in America for what to do in a doomsday scenario to ensure survival of the American way of life.

Our way of life will end, our beautiful planet will lose its fish and insects and great fauna. But we’re busy creating fantasy world and games and movies. Kids are excited about magical beasts, and where to find them.

I’m being stark here, because I’m not finding an actual path to what I want ( a healthy planet and responsible species ). Instead the highest probable path I see is a husk of a planet and us figuring out a way to reintroduce life after terraforming is complete.

It's pretty much make or break for humanity.

(As an aside: we've pretty much exhausted the easily available fossil energy sources, so no re-starting a civilsation on the glowing embers of knowledge and wisdom hidden in deep bunkers. Nobody's going to read that, ever.)

Your fixes are fantasy, not reality.

I see this as the likely path forward. It is not a fix, it is essentially the car careening off the cliff and people the survivors picking up and moving on.

Could you let me know what was confusing in my text? I'll fix it up.

Terraforming is fantasy. Reintroducing life is a process that takes eons and is on the scale of the Gods, not of us mortals.

We have a functioning planet with a well developed eco-system, we do not have a back-up and we do not have the abilities you ascribe to us. We would not be around to do any of the things you describe because this is all we have and when it goes we go with it.

   We have a functioning planet with a well developed eco-system, we do not have a back-up 

It's like watching parrots trying to run a fusion reactor.

I put it forward for two reasons - To leaven the bleakness and because pursuit terraforming is inevitable.

It’s just the perfect PR product. Spend money; create jobs, fix the environment.

That is a short-term view. Look how growth will stall and turn into decline if we continue on our present path.

> Which is why the question. Are people really incentivized to bell the cat - to actually price in externalities ?

Probably not by themselves, because most people put their own self-interest first, and our economic systems stimulate them that this is the best way.

It needs the concerted effort of many to apply sufficient pressure to take the long-term view and affect real change.

And I guess this is particularly hard, as our current (broken?) systems also promote wealth inequality, and the rich and powerful - those who can help the most - are less inclined to do so, because they'll be among the last to really suffer the consequences of inaction.

Their conclusion was a rapid and uncontrollable decline in population and industrial capacity, and the signs of that would be apparent by 2072.

Given that the "business as usual" scenario has persisted, we are on track to that sudden crash "overshoot" scenario. In addition, now there is the looming climate catastrophy as well. Countries and regions have to become more resilient to all kinds of impacts from climate change, as it does not look like we can avoid or prevent it.

In addition, another economic system than one expecting continuous growth is required.

Therefore the question of "who pays for the reduction in growth" is a rather non-starter, as the reduction in growth is inevitable.

Edit: crash not at 2072, signs visible at 2072.

I had a good laugh at this. It's only "rational" (or efficient) at optimizing the parameters we give it.

I'd argue that if "saving ourselves" is not a priority, then right now there are some important parameters missing.

If we'd put a sizable tax/cost on causing environmental harm, you can bet that "economic system" is gonna optimize the heck out of its processes to not cause that harm.

Sure in the long run we will have a better planet, but then famously in the long run we’re dead too.

I do not think there is a rational incentive for many firms to actually allow externalities to be priced in. Making investment in lobbying more valuable (and America is case in point; it’s been decades of FUD and denial).

This is just the rational business game plan. Delay the onset of regulation for as long as possible, maximize profits and then adapt to the new world of regulations (hopefully diversify by the time regulations hit)

I’m hoping someone has a way to argue that this is incorrect.

Ultimately, we measure the success of our capitalist economies in total receipts, and optimise accordingly. Our markets (and our cultures) prioritise consumption over repair or even abstention. That last point might seem contentious but truth be told, most of us would rather buy something new than repair something broken unless it is prohibitively expensive or repair is easy. In short, if we changed the yardstick to determine progress then the matter becomes much simpler to solve. However, this is not likely to change so we are forced to look for solutions within our economic framework.

There are plenty of ways to correct these market failures but they must stem from government and have the support of the people. Private initiatives have nowhere near the influence or the scale to tackle such problems. Tax on goods and services could be proportional to how damaging it is to the environment. Regulations on animal welfare could be broadened and prioritised. Creative solutions exist for almost every issue, the problem is that they are not part of the public discourse.

For instance, while I personally abhor hunting, I feel we should encourage regulated African trophy hunting, where older animals are auctioned off so that the money can be reinvested to protect current populations from poaching. In places like Africa where money is the only thing that matters, it is of the utmost importance that conservation look to market solutions to assist wildlife, as we might as well nuke the poor bastards if their survival depended on African governments.

The biggest hurdle to overcome is the relentlessness of special interests to dictate policy around the globe. In fact, this is the root of the majority of global economic issues. I would imagine the only feasible way to do this is for the people to engage with these issues, which means we are most likely doomed.

But in a rational world, it is obvious that people will use whatever tools at their disposal to improve their chances.

So by definition, any sentient and rational society will have lobbying - anywhere in the universe.

So this is not a bug but a feature. In theory these lobby groups will be dragged to a stale mate by counter lobby groups, but practically the more unethical group will win just because of operational flexibility.

I don’t see any way this worst case out come doesn’t come to pass because of these very issues.

The collective action problem can’t be solved.

I want to touch on what you said about lobbies and give you my take on it.

The characteristics of successful lobbies have three key properties. Within any dispute/issue the most important quality that determines influence of a group/cause is organisation. An organised faction will always triumph over the disorganised masses. Then, the second most important factor is possession of any tactical advantages to advance their goal over their adversaries. These can be anything from superior methods to a willingness to do things that the other side is not. The last, and least important, is the size of the group. Each factor is meaningless without the preceding one.

As a consequence, I would agree that other groups would 'win' in this case. But they wouldn't actually need to win, they would just need engage in dirty tactics such as proliferation of fake news, muddying public discourse, bribe political officials, etc. Humanity would face the greatest difficulty dealing with the lengths that special interests are willing to go to to wield undue influence and stagnate progress.

However, I do not share your abject and defeatist view. I concede that humanity is facing a battle in the trenches to ensure the health of our ecosystems. We all must take responsibility for what is coming because to do nothing is to allow bad actors to get away with being shitheads. Given that the survival of our species and many others on Earth is at stake this should not be acceptable to any one with a shred of empathy to possible future generations.

By the way, If the issue is with my tone or perceived attitude, please note that this is my question- what precisely is the path to success?

I don’t get the issue with the term rational, I mean it in the same way you define it.

Locally solutions may not result in a global solution to the climate problem (because of externalities). What the issue with rational in this case ?

The path to success is simply education. It is not a sexy suggestion by any means, but I would point to how successful bad education is at stopping progress as evidence that it is the determinant factor. It is not a quick or a guaranteed solution. But by staying informed and engaging in conversation with people, this can have a knock-on effects on others. Further, key moments in contemporary human history show that shifts can occur seemingly out of nowhere. Will it be enough? Who knows? Realistically, this is our only play left and to squander it to apathy is not acceptable.

Re: rational. I guess this becomes a semantic issue, which means it is a non-issue to begin with as we are in agreement. I personally just feel that the word doesn't add much to the discussion as it is implicitly understood that economic actors will be driven to certain decisions by their own self-serving motivations. Using the word rational, while I agree that if we were to take your definition would be absolutely correct, connotes the notion that they are acting in absolute self interest, which is not the case in this example as that would mean individual actors would find a way to cooperate given that the existence of humanity is at stake. So, despite the fact that there is nothing wrong with the word, I avoid using it as I find it to be quite confusing.

My opinion on the matter probably reflects quite well on why I switched out of an economics degree :)

I suppose it’s a rhetorical construct I’m working on to effectively move the needle forward.

Unfortunately, my current iteration requires the negative attitude variant to move other people into the correct line of questioning. There’s other issues with it Too, I’m sure.

A major problem with discussing issues today, is getting people up to speed on the problem and having a shared language and idea base which is both accurate, flexible and easy to share and reuse to create new insight and tools to deal with the problem.

It takes a lot of work to unravel the various issues, without getting bogged down with minutiae- or just championing unworkable ideas (lets all stop showering; the world should go vegetarian)

As such this thread did well in serving as a test run.

In essence the term I’m trialing is “Homo economicus is hacking Homo sapiens”, and building from there into showing collective action problems

I really didn’t have a solution for the larger systemic issue, and recently the only one I’ve come up with is the gandhian idea of re-awakening people as moral actors.

The larger system is amoral, as you well know having done Econ. This is by design and not a flaw.

Morality is only exercisesble by Homo sapiens. Homo economicus is not designed to have that capacity, it is an assumed constant, imposed by “policy” or by “consumer choice”.

Since policy and consumer choice are pre reqs to targeting externalities, we need people to feel that they are moral agents who can impose rules upon the working of society.

anyway the goal of this statement was to get the bleak but correct picture forward. We can’t sit on the sidelines anymore.

Realistically, shouting "biodiversity" doesn't say all too much. What biodiversity? Deforestation is a different problem to the disappearance of the bee population (in terms of economic pressures on these things), and each needs to be tackled in a thoroughly researched, carefully considered manner. There probably isn't a single correct solution to this problem, and solving it will require a collection of viable solutions that incentivise economically, socially and morally.

Speaking of rational choices: if faced with paying everything you have or your own extinction, the most rational choice would be to pay everything you have. Nobody would spontaneously make that choice, but it really is.

Making this a very irrational question, in a way.

There are four scenarios to consider:

1. You do what’s best for the world, and the world is saved.

2. You ignore the big picture and the world is lost.

3. You do what’s best for the world, but the world is still lost because too many others didn’t do the same.

4. You ignore the big picture and the world is still saved because enough other people did the right thing.

Regardless of what happens, you’re personally better off ignoring the big picture and hoping that other people fix the problem. If disaster is coming, at least you’ll have a better life in the remaining time you have. If it’s not, why hurt yourself?

The exception to this is if your own personal actions make the difference to avoid disaster, i.e. that you go from scenario 2 to 3 above by changing what you personally do. But the chances of that being the case are extremely tiny. You need collective action to solve these problems.

If we put a price tag on different things, markets will shift.

We don't need to 'stop growth' we just need to grow differently.

We may need to slow down population growth, though.

"Is there some other plausible outcome?

Uhm, yes, people value walking around in clean air and would be willing to pay a premium for it.

It's one of the reasons people leave China and come to Canada, for example.

Completely implausible. Who's going to pay for these "domes"?

Part of the reason why we're doing so little to fight climate change is the misalignment of incentives because at least in the mid-term the groups who would have to pay for this fight don't overlap that much with the groups who'll suffer the first major consequences.

For the long term (100+ years?), there's tragedy of commons scenario - we want everyone else to restrict their economy, because doing it unilaterally won't help, so unless we can agree on binding restrictions for most countries, it's not going to happen; but in the mid-term it's not even a common environment, as the majority of expected harm is expected at places who don't have a meaningful impact on the global economy.

Extinction is not about money. The choice is to 'pay' now or to 'pay' later in a much harsher way.

this is the most ignorant thing I've ever seen written on the internet. Get back to me once you have 1/10000000th the bio-diversity of earth on your habitable satellite.

1) change our paradigms, economic system, and other social factors. I can assure you that this is far more maleable than Martian soil composition...

our social structures evolved in the context of low population densities and plentiful resources.

our economic system is what needs to give, it doesn't even function for humans, let alone the planet and the rest of life we share it with...

need I remind you that 1) we are only ONE species, and haven't the RIGHT to destroy our shared home, nor the other species. Some of us humans are upset about this, and we WILL take you other humans on over this issue!

2) our planet is STILL the only known place with LIFE in the entire universe. This is likely to change, at some point, but not if you get us all killed first.

3) our social systems are flexible, arbitrary, dare I say "PRETEND"... change em.

If we can not rescue Earth, a biological paradise, we have no hope to make it on Mars, a biological hell.

As the famous quote goes: "it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism:_Is_There_No_Alternative

And it's a great lecture, everyone should watch it.

As for mars, what we really need is to build technology that can make inhospitable places livable without infusing additional resources. A key point is water extraction, which would make a lot of desert environments much more hospitable with the right technology.