Sorry to be a downer, but I'm feeling down. It's the earliest ever Earth Overshoot Day. At least the rate at which it's getting earlier and earlier has slowed since 2010-ish, and I guess that...
Sorry to be a downer, but I'm feeling down.
It's the earliest ever Earth Overshoot Day. At least the rate at which it's getting earlier and earlier has slowed since 2010-ish, and I guess that passes for good news.
I'm more optimistic: if it's slowing down, then at some point it will, all other things being equal, come to a halt and start moving further and further away. At some point we'll even start...
I'm more optimistic: if it's slowing down, then at some point it will, all other things being equal, come to a halt and start moving further and further away. At some point we'll even start restoring.
It hurts me that our kids will live in a different world, and this for generations to come. But then again, so did I. I remember the scare in the 80's that the oil reserves will be used up. As fucked up that seems now, it was a genuine scare then. And so our kids will probably feel the same about us now.
I’d like to think this too because it would make it so much easier. But I’m worried that we’ll pass thresholds where there is no turning back because fundamental mechanisms will break, speeding up...
I’d like to think this too because it would make it so much easier.
But I’m worried that we’ll pass thresholds where there is no turning back because fundamental mechanisms will break, speeding up the decline, and make it impossible to undo. What worries me even more is that many many many scientists studying climate think this is how it works too.
Comment box Scope: comment response, opinion, speculation Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none That’s a reasonable concern. Keep in mind that climate scientists make predictions using...
Comment box
Scope: comment response, opinion, speculation
Tone: neutral
Opinion: yes
Sarcasm/humor: none
That’s a reasonable concern. Keep in mind that climate scientists make predictions using models based on past data. The overshoot chart seems to track largely with population growth and industrialization/QOL changes. That won’t necessarily continue.
Some animals, like coyotes, have the ability to change litter sizes according to their environmental conditions or stress. I don’t think humans have this ability biologically, but we emulate it economically.
Birth rates have dropped in industrialized countries for many reasons, but I think the biggest is that there’s less structural economic incentive to have children. It’s not like they’re going to help out on the family farm anymore; while children bring much emotional joy they are almost exclusively a financial expense and not an asset. Even later in life, parents are increasingly expected to manage their own retirements and live alone rather than being taken care of by children in a multigenerational household. Even one child is expensive and having several is a particular strain. Households can acquire even more capital if women work rather than taking care of children. It’s more efficient to spend capital on gaining more capital, rather than spending it on a child/labor. People still have children, but in industrialized places it is basically for fun/emotional fulfillment or by accident. And evidently it seems like having 1–2 children can provide most or all of those benefits without costing toooo much.
Inevitably this will result in population decline and therefore substantially less stress on earth’s resources. It is already happening locally in some countries and scientists seem to think that this will happen globally by around 2050–2080. The world will continue to industrialize and human labor will probably become less relevant in the economy as automation spreads and capital further establishes itself as the mechanism for financial prosperity, and tax policies are probably not going to be able to reverse it.
Environmentally, I think this means that we avoid some of the dreaded “tipping points.” No comment on how this affects culture.
That’s an interesting point. I’m not worried about overpopulation as most if not all countries are well below replacement rate and have been for decades. But all the rest: crop failures because...
That’s an interesting point. I’m not worried about overpopulation as most if not all countries are well below replacement rate and have been for decades.
But all the rest: crop failures because the water cycle won’t work anymore, the Gulf Stream stopping, extreme climate event creating even more extreme events; all these feedback loops amplifying each other. There are already significant portions of the world that are close to uninhabitable today because they’re just too hot or the sea is rising (and it’s not all in faraway countries either, there is one such place in the UK—can’t remember the name but you can’t build or insure there anymore)
I also remember reading that crop yields overall are down 4–13% compared to previous decades. It’s more or less okay because we waste so much anyway and we can afford to pay a little more in our rich countries for food, but that’s not the case in poorer countries. And it will affect us as this increase.
Why does the graph look like we were replenishing Earths resources in 1971? Theres no way thats accurate? We started burning coal on a massive scale 100 years before that.
Why does the graph look like we were replenishing Earths resources in 1971? Theres no way thats accurate? We started burning coal on a massive scale 100 years before that.
Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none While humans have been burning coal for a long time, the global population was low enough...
Comment box
Scope: comment response, information, opinion
Tone: neutral
Opinion: yes
Sarcasm/humor: none
While humans have been burning coal for a long time, the global population was low enough and resource use in general was low enough for most of that duration that the aggregate “overshoot” could have been negligible.
The population in 1970 was about 3.7 billion compared to over 8 billion today. In the 1970s far less of the world was industrialized than present, and even in industrialized places, absolute and per capita energy use was substantially lower.
Environmental destruction at that time was still occurring, and has occurred for most of human history, but the scale of our society and resource consumption now is on a different level!
That makes sense, when I was a kid in the 90s the number was 6-7 billion. I always felt like the rat city guy was right and theres a point at which our minds just cant handle the scale of our...
That makes sense, when I was a kid in the 90s the number was 6-7 billion. I always felt like the rat city guy was right and theres a point at which our minds just cant handle the scale of our population and we all go insane. I recognize that, more logically, the way we get energy is not scaleable.
Sorry to be a downer, but I'm feeling down.
It's the earliest ever Earth Overshoot Day. At least the rate at which it's getting earlier and earlier has slowed since 2010-ish, and I guess that passes for good news.
I'm more optimistic: if it's slowing down, then at some point it will, all other things being equal, come to a halt and start moving further and further away. At some point we'll even start restoring.
It hurts me that our kids will live in a different world, and this for generations to come. But then again, so did I. I remember the scare in the 80's that the oil reserves will be used up. As fucked up that seems now, it was a genuine scare then. And so our kids will probably feel the same about us now.
I’d like to think this too because it would make it so much easier.
But I’m worried that we’ll pass thresholds where there is no turning back because fundamental mechanisms will break, speeding up the decline, and make it impossible to undo. What worries me even more is that many many many scientists studying climate think this is how it works too.
Comment box
That’s a reasonable concern. Keep in mind that climate scientists make predictions using models based on past data. The overshoot chart seems to track largely with population growth and industrialization/QOL changes. That won’t necessarily continue.
Some animals, like coyotes, have the ability to change litter sizes according to their environmental conditions or stress. I don’t think humans have this ability biologically, but we emulate it economically.
Birth rates have dropped in industrialized countries for many reasons, but I think the biggest is that there’s less structural economic incentive to have children. It’s not like they’re going to help out on the family farm anymore; while children bring much emotional joy they are almost exclusively a financial expense and not an asset. Even later in life, parents are increasingly expected to manage their own retirements and live alone rather than being taken care of by children in a multigenerational household. Even one child is expensive and having several is a particular strain. Households can acquire even more capital if women work rather than taking care of children. It’s more efficient to spend capital on gaining more capital, rather than spending it on a child/labor. People still have children, but in industrialized places it is basically for fun/emotional fulfillment or by accident. And evidently it seems like having 1–2 children can provide most or all of those benefits without costing toooo much.
Inevitably this will result in population decline and therefore substantially less stress on earth’s resources. It is already happening locally in some countries and scientists seem to think that this will happen globally by around 2050–2080. The world will continue to industrialize and human labor will probably become less relevant in the economy as automation spreads and capital further establishes itself as the mechanism for financial prosperity, and tax policies are probably not going to be able to reverse it.
Environmentally, I think this means that we avoid some of the dreaded “tipping points.” No comment on how this affects culture.
That’s an interesting point. I’m not worried about overpopulation as most if not all countries are well below replacement rate and have been for decades.
But all the rest: crop failures because the water cycle won’t work anymore, the Gulf Stream stopping, extreme climate event creating even more extreme events; all these feedback loops amplifying each other. There are already significant portions of the world that are close to uninhabitable today because they’re just too hot or the sea is rising (and it’s not all in faraway countries either, there is one such place in the UK—can’t remember the name but you can’t build or insure there anymore)
I also remember reading that crop yields overall are down 4–13% compared to previous decades. It’s more or less okay because we waste so much anyway and we can afford to pay a little more in our rich countries for food, but that’s not the case in poorer countries. And it will affect us as this increase.
Why does the graph look like we were replenishing Earths resources in 1971? Theres no way thats accurate? We started burning coal on a massive scale 100 years before that.
Oil crisis.
Comment box
While humans have been burning coal for a long time, the global population was low enough and resource use in general was low enough for most of that duration that the aggregate “overshoot” could have been negligible.
The population in 1970 was about 3.7 billion compared to over 8 billion today. In the 1970s far less of the world was industrialized than present, and even in industrialized places, absolute and per capita energy use was substantially lower.
Environmental destruction at that time was still occurring, and has occurred for most of human history, but the scale of our society and resource consumption now is on a different level!
That makes sense, when I was a kid in the 90s the number was 6-7 billion. I always felt like the rat city guy was right and theres a point at which our minds just cant handle the scale of our population and we all go insane. I recognize that, more logically, the way we get energy is not scaleable.