Well, no. Was the 1918 pandemic also a sign that the planet was pushed past a "tipping point?" What about every pandemic before that? The article doesn't even make a coherent case for what the...
Well, no. Was the 1918 pandemic also a sign that the planet was pushed past a "tipping point?" What about every pandemic before that? The article doesn't even make a coherent case for what the "tipping point" might be. It's apparently just a news hook to advocate for other stuff?
I think the pandemic is more of a warning that we are more connected than we used to be (thanks to the airline industry), and this means disease can go worldwide faster. And also, many countries aren't prepared to do what it takes in an emergency, due to deep cultural problems that prevent proper planning ahead for foreseeable disasters, as well creating resistance to cooperation when a disaster does happen.
We do have a pretty amazing biotech industry, though: three vaccines in less than a year!
That's kind of a false dichotomy. It's not saying past pandemics were a symptom of a planet "past the tipping point" (although the planet was arguably past the tipping point back then too), but...
That's kind of a false dichotomy. It's not saying past pandemics were a symptom of a planet "past the tipping point" (although the planet was arguably past the tipping point back then too), but this one very well might be. This isn't a boolean thing. It makes sense that if you've got a society which is expanding more and more into what should be land preserved for nature, you're going to see a greater crossover between humans and animals that can be vectors for diseases.
The vitality of the virus and its ease of spread is certainly made more conducive by a highly connected and dense worldwide society however. Frankly I think modern humans are frogs in the pot of water: we accept our lives as normal and fail to recognise just how well and truly fucked the path the planet is heading on.
I think that’s stretching to try to make a connection to overpopulation that needs to be proven. There is contact between people and wildlife. There are also 8 billion people. Are these facts...
I think that’s stretching to try to make a connection to overpopulation that needs to be proven. There is contact between people and wildlife. There are also 8 billion people. Are these facts related? If so it’s not obvious how. Maybe there was more contact between people and animals before, because fewer people lived in cities?
I doubt the wildlife markets in China are anything new. Also, hunting goes back to before the dawn of civilization, while the idea that some land should be “preserved for nature” seems pretty new?
I’m just making a plausibility argument though. Something more would be needed to settle it one way or the other.
Can we agree, that generally, as the human population has grown, the amount of area humanity collectively occupies for the purposes of living, along with the production of goods and services has...
I think that’s stretching to try to make a connection to overpopulation that needs to be proven.
Can we agree, that generally, as the human population has grown, the amount of area humanity collectively occupies for the purposes of living, along with the production of goods and services has risen? While consequently, the amount of area available to wildlife has generally reduced?
I don't think it's a massive leap from here, if you answer yes to those questions, that there's likely to be more human interaction with animals—that much should be obvious from our population growth alone. There's more contact points, and collectively, more contact time available. For example: while the world is more urbanised now, as a proportion of total humans, hasn't the total number of people rural and non-highly urbanised people, and the total amount of contact time with wildlife continued to climb? National park visitor numbers are a good example, or total biomass extracted from the ocean, etc.
I doubt the wildlife markets in China are anything new
They're not, but the number of people being serviced by the markets has likely risen, driven primarily by population growth. But yes, western culture has only recently acquired a perspective that we need to be good stewards of the planet and to "preserve nature": species can't be expected to continue existing if we continue to destroy forests and change the climate in such a way that it alters or completely removes their habitat and they're unable to adapt.
It seems fairly obvious to me that if you're increasing contact time with animals, then the statistical likelihood of a animal-to-human jump for a virus is more likely—which returns to the main premise that COVID-19 is a surprising, but also not entirely unexpected outcome of us contributing to the planet's environmental stresses.
I'm not saying this is true, merely that it seems fairly plausible.
I think that good arguments can be made that overpopulation makes many problems worse. I just don’t think pandemics are likely to be one of them. In particular, it seems unlikely that the risk of...
I think that good arguments can be made that overpopulation makes many problems worse. I just don’t think pandemics are likely to be one of them.
In particular, it seems unlikely that the risk of disease is directly proportional to human contact with animals, because all contact isn’t the same. Human contact with deer, say, doesn’t carry the risk as human contact with bats, and most people don’t have any contact with bats. (Lyme disease is a different risk.)
It’s just too abstract, too broad a brush to be useful. It matters where people live and what they do, not just that they exist. There are more targeted ways to try to reduce the risk of new diseases if that’s what you want to work on.
It's a broad brush, but frankly I don't think it's any less vague and classifiable as the attribution of climate change to hurricane intensification and development we've seen over the past few...
It's a broad brush, but frankly I don't think it's any less vague and classifiable as the attribution of climate change to hurricane intensification and development we've seen over the past few decades. No one hurricane is caused by climate change, but they're certainly surviving longer and intensifying quicker. These kind of stochastic effects of our impact on the planet are nearly impossible to conclusively pin point and reason with, especially with non-believers who want direct evidence as an implementation of causation.
Anyone saying this either is or is not true is being too narrow-viewed in my opinion. All we can say is more data is needed, and until we have better evidence one way for another, at least to me, this all seems fairly plausible.
I feel confident about the climate change stuff because I often see articles about scientific studies in that area. Although it's true that the relationship between any single hurricane and...
I feel confident about the climate change stuff because I often see articles about scientific studies in that area. Although it's true that the relationship between any single hurricane and climate change isn't something that can be proven, the trend towards the intensification of hurricanes is something that scientists study. For example: "Climate change causes landfalling hurricanes to stay stronger for longer".
I'm not saying that study is great (I don't know either way, I just did a quick search) but it seems like there are a lot of articles about research going on in this area.
By contrast, I'm not aware of similar studies exist linking population growth and an increase in infectious diseases. It seems like it would be better to stop discussing plausibility and actually look?
No. There are fewer people involved in agriculture than ever before, which is where the main sources of human/animal interaction happens. More people doesn’t mean more interaction if they’re all...
I don't think it's a massive leap from here, if you answer yes to those questions, that there's likely to be more human interaction with animals
No. There are fewer people involved in agriculture than ever before, which is where the main sources of human/animal interaction happens. More people doesn’t mean more interaction if they’re all clustered away from anything involving animal husbandry.
If COVID made a jump from rats or goats some other urban animal that might have been one thing, but the prevailing theory is that it was a bat or pangolin.
Let's hold on a second and unpack this. Here's why I disagree that human-animal interaction is dropping: Fewer people working in agriculture doesn't necessarily mean less human-animal interaction,...
No. There are fewer people involved in agriculture than ever before, which is where the main sources of human/animal interaction happens.
Let's hold on a second and unpack this. Here's why I disagree that human-animal interaction is dropping:
Fewer people working in agriculture doesn't necessarily mean less human-animal interaction, especially as production has increased, and total farm biomass has increased. The number of people doing the work may have shrunk, but the amount of work they're doing has never been higher, and on larger quantities of land.
Agriculture isn't the only place where human-animal interaction occurs. I mentioned national park visitor numbers as a rough indicator for how the number of humans exploring the wilderness has increased dramatically too. Over-tourism is a massive problem in many parts of the world.
but the prevailing theory is that it was a bat or pangolin.
Exactly. There may not be more people hunting for bats and pangolins, but due to overconsumption and overpopulation, there's lots of niches and resources that are experiencing record levels of demand—and higher demand for something found in nature means more human-animal interactions, which presents as a higher likelihood of disease spread.
Frankly I'm solid of the opinion our exposed interface with wildlife has never been greater, mostly due to sheer population growth.
Agriculture is where almost all jumps from human to animal happen. In no other context are humans interacting with the bodily fluids of other animals with any kind of intensity. Hanging out in the...
Agriculture is where almost all jumps from human to animal happen. In no other context are humans interacting with the bodily fluids of other animals with any kind of intensity. Hanging out in the wilderness exposes you to insect borne illnesses like Lyme disease, but not communicable between people.
The number of people doing the work may have shrunk, but the amount of work they're doing has never been higher, and on larger quantities of land.
Most of what makes that possible is mechanization, which means those people are interacting with the animals less than before.
There may not be more people hunting for bats and pangolins, but due to overconsumption and overpopulation, there's lots of niches and resources that are experiencing record levels of demand—and higher demand for something found in nature means more human-animal interactions
Or, at some point the disease was going to happen and because of global travel it spreads more rapidly rather than being confined to whatever random village it hits before tapering off.
I don't think there's a great deal of mechanisation involved in catching bats or in the setup and operation of chinese wet markets. Do you? Not every form of mechanical agriculture is some John...
Agriculture is where almost all jumps from human to animal happen. [...] Most of what makes that possible is mechanization
I don't think there's a great deal of mechanisation involved in catching bats or in the setup and operation of chinese wet markets. Do you? Not every form of mechanical agriculture is some John Deere tractor plowing a Soya bean field. There's such a diverse array of agricultural resources we use as a species and there's literally thousands of potential unique classes of transmission amongst them all.
And while I agree that mechanization has allowed for an increase in the overall output of agriculture, this also means more animals in tight proximity with another for long periods of time, which gives each human-animal interaction a greater opportunity of transmitting a disease, as the virus can linger in the host population's reservoir for longer and more easily spread.
Or, at some point the disease was going to happen and because of global travel it spreads more rapidly rather than being confined to whatever random village it hits before tapering off.
In my view, if this is true, it would frankly satisfy this article's premise that this pandemic is a symptom of a planet past it's tipping point.
While I don't think overpopulation is strictly the problem, I think that it is virtually impossible to sustain all 8 billion at USA-levels of consumption. If it was, you'd think we'd be trying to...
I think that’s stretching to try to make a connection to overpopulation that needs to be proven.
While I don't think overpopulation is strictly the problem, I think that it is virtually impossible to sustain all 8 billion at USA-levels of consumption. If it was, you'd think we'd be trying to make more inroads to making it so. Our lifestyles are fueled by mass environmental destruction.
Oh sure, but then we are talking about different risks. If we were talking about wildfires or hurricanes then we would make different connections. It is easier to say that there are more people in...
Oh sure, but then we are talking about different risks. If we were talking about wildfires or hurricanes then we would make different connections. It is easier to say that there are more people in harm’s way.
To be fair, a lot of the things that make our consumption higher are also things that are actively reducing our quality of life. I don't imagine a lot of counties are keen on repeating our...
If it was, you'd think we'd be trying to make more inroads to making it so.
To be fair, a lot of the things that make our consumption higher are also things that are actively reducing our quality of life. I don't imagine a lot of counties are keen on repeating our mistakes on things like car culture, for instance. It's certainly not care for the environment keeping them from trying to grow consumption, at least not in my opinion.
Because of the premise laid out in the article, and in my comment above. The working hypothesis being that more humans, occupying and interacting with more land, increases the statistical...
Why would this pandemic be a result of a planet "passed the tipping point"?
Because of the premise laid out in the article, and in my comment above. The working hypothesis being that more humans, occupying and interacting with more land, increases the statistical likelihood of an event where a virus jumps from an animal to a human.
Pandemics have been with us since the beginning of civilization. This pandemic isn't even particularely deadly or virulent compared to those pre-globalization.
Yes, but, I'd ask: so what? The existence of other pandemics doesn't necessarily prove or disprove this hypothesis—it just indicates that there are many contributing factors that can allow a pandemic to occur, and this article is hypothesising that overpopulation and overconsumption is one of those factors.
So why is this particular pandemic, the one?
Because of the reasons I pointed out in my comment above, and as per the article: increasing human contact time and frequency of contact with animals may be making pandemics more likely to occur.
I've been saying for awhile now that we're going to need WWII level mobilization to have a shot of saving our civilization. It's nice to see other sources agreeing with me. Capitalism is killing...
I've been saying for awhile now that we're going to need WWII level mobilization to have a shot of saving our civilization. It's nice to see other sources agreeing with me.
Capitalism is killing the planet. It is a system that depends on continual expansion in order to maintain profits.
We don't need profits. We need to rebuild decimated ecosystems. We need to add an additional 250,000 square miles of forest to the continental USA just to break even on current carbon emissions.
One of the best ways we can accomplish this is to fundamentally restructure our economy. Emissions dropped in the USA from COVID lockdowns over 5%. This tells me that we need to abolish as many jobs that are not producing essential goods as possible, re-allocating that labor towards re-building infrastructure in a sustainable way.
Suburban sprawl is a great example of that wasteful land usage. I live in the Philadelphia metro area. There are two counties I would like to highlight: Delaware County and Montgomery County.
Montgomery County is a much wealthier area...about $5,000 more income per-capita. It also has just slightly more than half the population density of Delaware County. If Montgomery County was re-structured such that the population density was the same as Delaware County's, that frees up a ton of land to repurpose for other uses.
I'm not saying this is an ideal way to go about this by any stretch. But there is going to need to be some serious min/maxing of efficient land use in order to maximize arable land and wilderness. And that's going to take a lot more laborers and a lot less office workers.
I think calling them "profits" misses the point of why you won't be able to get rid of capitalism that easily, certainly not by saying "this is what we should do in an ideal world, and it involves...
We don't need profits. We need to rebuild decimated ecosystems.
I think calling them "profits" misses the point of why you won't be able to get rid of capitalism that easily, certainly not by saying "this is what we should do in an ideal world, and it involves everyone radically changing everything of their own free will".
Call them "incentives" instead, and suddenly you'll not only see why your comment doesn't make sense (imo), but what an actual solution looks like:
We don't need incentives. We need to rebuild decimated ecosystems.
And there it is. Of course we need incentives. We just need to direct those incentives to more productive ends. So we need to incentivize being better about our planet.
Anyway, let's talk about "wasteful land usage" since you mention it: Ever seen that nobody lives here map? This is just the fully uninhabited parts of the US. I think it's pretty easy to fall into the trap of thinking "if only nature had more room". Nature has a lot of room. You just don't see it, because you're unlikely to live close to it.
There's advantages to compact cities of course, they tend to be more efficient overall. But they also bring a lot of disadvantages, many of them to human health, and if anything they disconnect us even more from nature.
So what can you do, concretely? You probably don't have a billion dollars, let alone a trillion. You alone can't effect major change.
But you definitely can have a long-term impact by focusing on more local problems.
Let's say for example you're a cyclist. You can promote cycling! If you help popularize cycling in your area, you can push your city to have more cycle-friendly roads. Such infrastructure existing in effect is a permanent promotion for more cycling.
Programs that work well in your city may get picked up by other cities as well, so don't just push for something people don't want: create incentives instead.
Not a cyclist? Got a car? Using it to commute 45 mins every day? Promote remote working. Less time in office is less time on the road. Help make the remote work setup successful (even if it is probably not your job to do so). COVID has hugely boosted remote work, so there's even more tooling than before, and plenty of guides out there to help companies and employees previously unfamiliar with it. And once again, the successful things you do will get picked up by others.
Flatly, I just don't think we're going to fix the planet by saying "let's convert from capitalism to something else", especially when the "something else" is TBD, and an opportunity for every backseat populist to try out their pet idea. And even when they actually came through, these types of changes have seldom been positive, be it for the planet or for the humans.
I'd like to address the statements you made regarding land usage. I realize some of this will only be somewhat related to the topic of urban sprawl, but I promise I'll bring it around. I don't...
Exemplary
I'd like to address the statements you made regarding land usage. I realize some of this will only be somewhat related to the topic of urban sprawl, but I promise I'll bring it around.
I don't believe the "nobody lives here map" is at all an adequate rationale for dismissing evident wasteful land usage. The short text that accompanies the map you linked actually offer a debilitating caveat, that this map in its raw value only shows uninhabited areas. Uninhabited doesn't mean undeveloped and available for wildlife.
According to the CIA World Factbook: 16.8%% of the land in America is considered arable land, this is cultivated, agricultural land that is harvested regularly; another 0.3% is agricultural land for permanent crops, including "crops like citrus, coffee, and rubber that are not replanted after each harvest", but does not include timber; lastly 27.4% of land in America is considered to be permanent pasture which is used for cattle grazing. An astounding 44.5% of land in America is used for agriculture (excluding timber), and given that subdivisions don't generally co-occupy agricultural land it's safe to say that a good segment of the green space on the "nobody lives here map" is agricultural.
Now take into consideration the environmental impacts of agriculture: excessive pesticide use, forced monocultures as part of unsustainable farming models, soil loss, and more - I could go on for hours. This is not land that nature can occupy in any sort of ecologically sound manner. Nature does not have plenty of room on this land.
Once again, logging activities make this land that nobody lives on, land that truly nobody lives on. Logging, while arguably needed, significantly harms the environment. Habitat segmentation, watershed destruction, and an overall decrease in biological diversity are all direct results from logging activities that make these non-ideal or even completely inhospitable environments for wildlife. You ever seen a stand of trees after it was clear-cut? I have, and it made me cry to be honest.
This all relates to suburban sprawl in that sprawl requires resources, massive amounts of resources. All of those houses in all of those subdivisions require timber from unsustainably logged forests. They require roads that only serve to further segment the ecosystem we now claim as our own. These roads now imply that we drive our cars, not cycle as you posit. Sure we can incentivize cycling routes and even public transportation, but when you have suburban sprawl in excess those solutions now become nonviable because of the impractical geographic characteristics inherent to sprawl.
Sure, occupied land may be a minority compared to "empty" land, but in reality the demand for sprawl not only consumes land on its own, but causes continual destruction of environments in an unsustainable fashion. It's a double-edged sword we keep stabbing ourselves with.
The way we are living today is unsustainable, anybody who says otherwise has their head in the sand. We are not going to fix the world by cycling to work or working remotely. The reality is the reason nothing is changing is that people are profiting off of this environmental destruction. Agricultural corporations, the timber industry, auto manufacturers, mineral extraction companies, etc. all profit directly from environmental damage they cause. To imply that the average consumer can cause incremental change like this is silly. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all global emissions!
Furthermore, while I share your concern about sudden changes causing power vacuums and give the potential for unintended results, there are alternatives. This isn't some to be determined result, a planned economy along the lines of embedded neoliberalism seen during the post World War II years is not out of reach and would not have to be brought about by a Marxist coup. I personally would prefer to completely abandon neoliberalism all together, but we've slid so far down the Overton Window that any sort of non-capitalist system is a spec on the horizon.
Yeah didn't mean to imply that. To be clear, concrete action on climate change involves moving billions or trillions of dollars around. The problem of course is that this is a very hopeless thing...
We are not going to fix the world by cycling to work or working remotely.
Yeah didn't mean to imply that. To be clear, concrete action on climate change involves moving billions or trillions of dollars around.
The problem of course is that this is a very hopeless thing to think about if you don't have immense power or cash reserves. But there are ways for individuals to have their impact amplified, and the examples I gave are ways that can easily be amplified.
Cycling is a powerful one because individual action can lead to city-wide changes. Do it enough times and the changes start to have enough momentum to lead to country wide rectification.
The bottom line is we no longer have the time to piecemeal grassroots change together in any meaningful way to cause enough substantive change to resolve the current crises we face. "...moving...
The bottom line is we no longer have the time to piecemeal grassroots change together in any meaningful way to cause enough substantive change to resolve the current crises we face.
"...moving billions or trillions of dollars around." is a very vague term and doesn't really lend to any realistic solution. I don't know if you imply any particular plan you had in mind, but saying things like this only foster more apathy which you actually describe as part of the problem.
This conversation has veered away a bit much from the original topic, so I'll keep this brief. I posit that substantial, effective environmental regulations enacted on a national and international scale will rein in uncontrolled polluters. Progressive tax reforms like carbon taxes, other taxes on negative externalities such as excess resource usage and other pollutant emissions, capital gains and taxes on the wealthy will encourage more efficient resource usage and level economic playing fields which contribute to inequitable distribution of the impacts of climate change. Lastly but not in totality, land reforms, specifically in the areas of agriculture and suburban development will foster sustainable land use and farming, minimizing the carbon and land footprint of our society.
These are all very realistic solutions, that can be implemented in the current capitalistic economic framework we have today. To bring these about, we must challenge the political barriers. Methods such as common goal collectivism against destructive capital holders and their politicians, unionization, socio-political efforts via community groups to mend partisan divides, and other more bureaucratic efforts like protests, civil disobedience, civic duty and so on.
I know that your cycling example is just that, an example, but it points to a significant characteristic of the current corporatocracy that has been founded. My issue is not that actions are being taken, it is what actions are being taken. We must take our actions to the root of the problem, not the symptoms or the victims.
Again, I'm not saying you're going to prevent climate change by cycling. What I'm trying to get to is ways that most people can have to amplify their voices and actions. Getting cycling roads in...
The bottom line is we no longer have the time to piecemeal grassroots change together in any meaningful way to cause enough substantive change to resolve the current crises we face.
Again, I'm not saying you're going to prevent climate change by cycling. What I'm trying to get to is ways that most people can have to amplify their voices and actions.
Getting cycling roads in your city might not fix the planet but it will have a positive impact on your city. This isn't just about climate change.
You're mistaking my attitude for one of "the system is fine if only the common people would act". It's my fault for not being clearer. But that isn't what this is. I agree with you that action needs to be taken at the root, that is why I prefaced with: real change will only come from those who are able to move huge amounts of money around. But then what's the point to have this discussion if we're just outright dismissing anyone's ability to improve on the status quo?
Incremental permanent improvements (regardless of how much they impact the climate specifically) are always worth it, because they carry a permanent influence on their surroundings. So it's not just a QOL improvement for those that live / work there, but it also becomes a new point of reference for everyone else. Sort of like when Google started working on Google Fiber, this became a reference point for other cities, and some of them started to compete.
This is a mechanic you, as an individual, can make use of. If you maximize its potential, you can turn it into a "race to the top".
A few minor thoughts: Arable land is fantastic. Lots of suburbia sits on former agricultural land that got subdivided in the post-WW2 boom. Recovering that land is beneficial for a few reasons. By...
A few minor thoughts:
Arable land is fantastic. Lots of suburbia sits on former agricultural land that got subdivided in the post-WW2 boom. Recovering that land is beneficial for a few reasons. By having more agricultural land, we can return to more sustainable farming, that while it has lower yields, doesn't poison the earth. If not that, it's the easiest land to re-forest.
An additional thought is that logging periodically from natural forests is quite beneficial long term. Wood that is harvested into construction materials is carbon that isn't getting released into the atmosphere, and provides the opportunity to re-grow, as removing the largest trees provides more room for younger trees to grow.
The problem comes when the logging out-paces the forest growth.
Regarding the 'nobody lives here' map: That vast unpopulated region is like that for a reason. It's not exactly conducive to society. Profit is hardly any incentive for the vast majority of the...
Regarding the 'nobody lives here' map: That vast unpopulated region is like that for a reason. It's not exactly conducive to society.
Profit is hardly any incentive for the vast majority of the population. 42% of the USA makes less than $15 an hour. Hell, I'm cracking the top 20% of earners and it's still just a daily grind to keep my head above debt. Here is the incentive instead of profit:
If we don't do these things, we all will die. If not us, certainly our children.
At this point, it's not good enough to throw our hands in the air and say 'the market will provide.' Everyone complains how we can't expect radical change, but frankly, that's what's needed. These tactics you're suggesting might have worked well if we started circa 1971. But right now, we gotta collectively get our priorities in order, and fast.
We need a planned economy, like was done in WW2. We need to see our current inputs and outputs, ration the outputs, lower the inputs, and drag 'the economy' down to it's bare minimum.
The only way to lose weight is to reduce your caloric intake. The only way we're going to reduce carbon emissions is by reducing consumption, and that's going to require rationing.
Rationing is by far the fairest way to distribute a limited resource, such that they don't automatically and by default be given to the wealthiest.
A problem with the WWII analogy is that It’s hard to say whether the US would have entered WWII without Pearl Harbor, and there doesn’t seem anything equivalently motivating on the horizon. Based...
A problem with the WWII analogy is that It’s hard to say whether the US would have entered WWII without Pearl Harbor, and there doesn’t seem anything equivalently motivating on the horizon.
Based on the US response to the pandemic, you need to drastically lower your expectations of what the average US citizen is willing to sacrifice even in a clear emergency. Our state capacity for doing anything other than our normal way of life seems really low.
Not even state governors are willing to do what it takes and set a good example. Look at airline traffic.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't think what's needed is gonna happen short of a literal war. It's more of a thought experiment than anything. We had our hands in the war well before Pearl Harbor,...
Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't think what's needed is gonna happen short of a literal war. It's more of a thought experiment than anything.
It’s hard to say whether the US would have entered WWII without Pearl Harbor
Our state capacity for doing anything other than our normal way of life seems really low.
This is by design. Notice how one of the main complaints from the top about the $600/week unemployment bonus was that it was more than a lot of people were making before COVID. When you're tied down with debt and worrying more about how to feed and house your family, it's hard to think past next week, let alone the next 5 years. Can't give people too much time to think about how different their lives could be, lest they start demanding it.
Yes, I think UBI would go a long way towards fixing a lot of things, precisely because it reduces the pressure to do things solely for the money, especially for the people under the most pressure....
Yes, I think UBI would go a long way towards fixing a lot of things, precisely because it reduces the pressure to do things solely for the money, especially for the people under the most pressure. Incentives can be stupid, so sometimes reducing their power allows people room to give other considerations more weight.
It would help, but only so much. People will still be idiots. The pandemic has made it clear, if it wasn’t already. UBI wouldn’t do anything about the danger of misinformation and might make it worse, because with increased freedom there is less incentive to cooperate, and we are low on cooperation already. I will still advocate in favor of increased financial freedom, but it’s a risk, somewhat of a leap of faith.
For example, I don’t think financial incentives have much to do with our capacity to do something different than usual for Thanksgiving. Some of us have changed our plans, but we are still seeing a lot of Lemmings-like behavior, people doing things the same way as before because of traditions. (I like some traditions, but I think you should always question them to make sure they make sense, and be willing to change them when needed.)
I don’t blame the airline workers for working or for the airports being busy. I blame the people deciding to travel despite everything. They are paying money to do this. Spending, for non-necessities anyway, is an exercise of power, and people’s judgements about how to spend matter. These judgements, collectively, are what make the economy the way it is.
It’s just, what is the alternative to people spending their own money? Someone else making decisions for them. I’m willing to entertain ideas but they would need to be fleshed out more than they usually are.
I do like the idea of both a UBI and a jobs gareuntee. Especially paired with a hard rent cap so that landlording becomes less desirable. I think part of the reason community has fallen by the...
I do like the idea of both a UBI and a jobs gareuntee. Especially paired with a hard rent cap so that landlording becomes less desirable.
I think part of the reason community has fallen by the wayside is burnout and lack of time. I'd love to spend more time volunteering for my community, but I just don't have the time/energy. Right now I mostly just remove glass and trash from the local creek bank when playing there with my kid.
There's something to be said about eliminating financial incentive, especially for non-critical work: It frees people to work on things they desire and not what they need to do to make ends meet.
I'd like to drop my IT job and get certified as an electrician, and spend my days working at a leisurely pace fixing up and building houses.
I think that would be a lot more useful, but I certainly can't afford a financial hit to transition.
Fair enough. But there's plenty of folks out there who think Elon Musk and company are gonna save us with some new brilliant invention to fix all our problems.
Fair enough. But there's plenty of folks out there who think Elon Musk and company are gonna save us with some new brilliant invention to fix all our problems.
So, no one can say, for instance, that "hurricane 11 happened because of Global Warming", or that "hurricane 8 was Cat 4 but would have been Cat 3 w/o Global Warming" ... but they can absolutely...
So, no one can say, for instance, that "hurricane 11 happened because of Global Warming", or that "hurricane 8 was Cat 4 but would have been Cat 3 w/o Global Warming" ... but they can absolutely say that hurricanes and the hurricane season are/is getting more extreme.
I think this is the same. Yeah, 8 billion people are too many (at least, with our lifestyles and consumption habits) ... but trying to pin any specific calamity on it is a fool's errand.
Well, no. Was the 1918 pandemic also a sign that the planet was pushed past a "tipping point?" What about every pandemic before that? The article doesn't even make a coherent case for what the "tipping point" might be. It's apparently just a news hook to advocate for other stuff?
I think the pandemic is more of a warning that we are more connected than we used to be (thanks to the airline industry), and this means disease can go worldwide faster. And also, many countries aren't prepared to do what it takes in an emergency, due to deep cultural problems that prevent proper planning ahead for foreseeable disasters, as well creating resistance to cooperation when a disaster does happen.
We do have a pretty amazing biotech industry, though: three vaccines in less than a year!
That's kind of a false dichotomy. It's not saying past pandemics were a symptom of a planet "past the tipping point" (although the planet was arguably past the tipping point back then too), but this one very well might be. This isn't a boolean thing. It makes sense that if you've got a society which is expanding more and more into what should be land preserved for nature, you're going to see a greater crossover between humans and animals that can be vectors for diseases.
The vitality of the virus and its ease of spread is certainly made more conducive by a highly connected and dense worldwide society however. Frankly I think modern humans are frogs in the pot of water: we accept our lives as normal and fail to recognise just how well and truly fucked the path the planet is heading on.
8 billion humans is too many.
I think that’s stretching to try to make a connection to overpopulation that needs to be proven. There is contact between people and wildlife. There are also 8 billion people. Are these facts related? If so it’s not obvious how. Maybe there was more contact between people and animals before, because fewer people lived in cities?
I doubt the wildlife markets in China are anything new. Also, hunting goes back to before the dawn of civilization, while the idea that some land should be “preserved for nature” seems pretty new?
I’m just making a plausibility argument though. Something more would be needed to settle it one way or the other.
Can we agree, that generally, as the human population has grown, the amount of area humanity collectively occupies for the purposes of living, along with the production of goods and services has risen? While consequently, the amount of area available to wildlife has generally reduced?
I don't think it's a massive leap from here, if you answer yes to those questions, that there's likely to be more human interaction with animals—that much should be obvious from our population growth alone. There's more contact points, and collectively, more contact time available. For example: while the world is more urbanised now, as a proportion of total humans, hasn't the total number of people rural and non-highly urbanised people, and the total amount of contact time with wildlife continued to climb? National park visitor numbers are a good example, or total biomass extracted from the ocean, etc.
They're not, but the number of people being serviced by the markets has likely risen, driven primarily by population growth. But yes, western culture has only recently acquired a perspective that we need to be good stewards of the planet and to "preserve nature": species can't be expected to continue existing if we continue to destroy forests and change the climate in such a way that it alters or completely removes their habitat and they're unable to adapt.
It seems fairly obvious to me that if you're increasing contact time with animals, then the statistical likelihood of a animal-to-human jump for a virus is more likely—which returns to the main premise that COVID-19 is a surprising, but also not entirely unexpected outcome of us contributing to the planet's environmental stresses.
I'm not saying this is true, merely that it seems fairly plausible.
I think that good arguments can be made that overpopulation makes many problems worse. I just don’t think pandemics are likely to be one of them.
In particular, it seems unlikely that the risk of disease is directly proportional to human contact with animals, because all contact isn’t the same. Human contact with deer, say, doesn’t carry the risk as human contact with bats, and most people don’t have any contact with bats. (Lyme disease is a different risk.)
It’s just too abstract, too broad a brush to be useful. It matters where people live and what they do, not just that they exist. There are more targeted ways to try to reduce the risk of new diseases if that’s what you want to work on.
It's a broad brush, but frankly I don't think it's any less vague and classifiable as the attribution of climate change to hurricane intensification and development we've seen over the past few decades. No one hurricane is caused by climate change, but they're certainly surviving longer and intensifying quicker. These kind of stochastic effects of our impact on the planet are nearly impossible to conclusively pin point and reason with, especially with non-believers who want direct evidence as an implementation of causation.
Anyone saying this either is or is not true is being too narrow-viewed in my opinion. All we can say is more data is needed, and until we have better evidence one way for another, at least to me, this all seems fairly plausible.
I feel confident about the climate change stuff because I often see articles about scientific studies in that area. Although it's true that the relationship between any single hurricane and climate change isn't something that can be proven, the trend towards the intensification of hurricanes is something that scientists study. For example: "Climate change causes landfalling hurricanes to stay stronger for longer".
I'm not saying that study is great (I don't know either way, I just did a quick search) but it seems like there are a lot of articles about research going on in this area.
Similarly with wildfires, although any specific wildfire is set off essentially randomly, there are articles like "Climate Change Has Doubled Riskiest Fire Days in California"
By contrast, I'm not aware of similar studies exist linking population growth and an increase in infectious diseases. It seems like it would be better to stop discussing plausibility and actually look?
I did find one article from 2008: Global trends in emerging infectious diseases.
No. There are fewer people involved in agriculture than ever before, which is where the main sources of human/animal interaction happens. More people doesn’t mean more interaction if they’re all clustered away from anything involving animal husbandry.
If COVID made a jump from rats or goats some other urban animal that might have been one thing, but the prevailing theory is that it was a bat or pangolin.
Let's hold on a second and unpack this. Here's why I disagree that human-animal interaction is dropping:
Fewer people working in agriculture doesn't necessarily mean less human-animal interaction, especially as production has increased, and total farm biomass has increased. The number of people doing the work may have shrunk, but the amount of work they're doing has never been higher, and on larger quantities of land.
Agriculture isn't the only place where human-animal interaction occurs. I mentioned national park visitor numbers as a rough indicator for how the number of humans exploring the wilderness has increased dramatically too. Over-tourism is a massive problem in many parts of the world.
Exactly. There may not be more people hunting for bats and pangolins, but due to overconsumption and overpopulation, there's lots of niches and resources that are experiencing record levels of demand—and higher demand for something found in nature means more human-animal interactions, which presents as a higher likelihood of disease spread.
Frankly I'm solid of the opinion our exposed interface with wildlife has never been greater, mostly due to sheer population growth.
Agriculture is where almost all jumps from human to animal happen. In no other context are humans interacting with the bodily fluids of other animals with any kind of intensity. Hanging out in the wilderness exposes you to insect borne illnesses like Lyme disease, but not communicable between people.
Most of what makes that possible is mechanization, which means those people are interacting with the animals less than before.
Or, at some point the disease was going to happen and because of global travel it spreads more rapidly rather than being confined to whatever random village it hits before tapering off.
I don't think there's a great deal of mechanisation involved in catching bats or in the setup and operation of chinese wet markets. Do you? Not every form of mechanical agriculture is some John Deere tractor plowing a Soya bean field. There's such a diverse array of agricultural resources we use as a species and there's literally thousands of potential unique classes of transmission amongst them all.
And while I agree that mechanization has allowed for an increase in the overall output of agriculture, this also means more animals in tight proximity with another for long periods of time, which gives each human-animal interaction a greater opportunity of transmitting a disease, as the virus can linger in the host population's reservoir for longer and more easily spread.
In my view, if this is true, it would frankly satisfy this article's premise that this pandemic is a symptom of a planet past it's tipping point.
Not at all because it has nothing to do with the planet at a tipping point. It has to do with interconnected markets and population centers.
While I don't think overpopulation is strictly the problem, I think that it is virtually impossible to sustain all 8 billion at USA-levels of consumption. If it was, you'd think we'd be trying to make more inroads to making it so. Our lifestyles are fueled by mass environmental destruction.
Oh sure, but then we are talking about different risks. If we were talking about wildfires or hurricanes then we would make different connections. It is easier to say that there are more people in harm’s way.
To be fair, a lot of the things that make our consumption higher are also things that are actively reducing our quality of life. I don't imagine a lot of counties are keen on repeating our mistakes on things like car culture, for instance. It's certainly not care for the environment keeping them from trying to grow consumption, at least not in my opinion.
Because of the premise laid out in the article, and in my comment above. The working hypothesis being that more humans, occupying and interacting with more land, increases the statistical likelihood of an event where a virus jumps from an animal to a human.
Yes, but, I'd ask: so what? The existence of other pandemics doesn't necessarily prove or disprove this hypothesis—it just indicates that there are many contributing factors that can allow a pandemic to occur, and this article is hypothesising that overpopulation and overconsumption is one of those factors.
Because of the reasons I pointed out in my comment above, and as per the article: increasing human contact time and frequency of contact with animals may be making pandemics more likely to occur.
Correct me if I'm wrong @Loire, but I believe that GP's point was: "what makes this a tipping point?"
I've been saying for awhile now that we're going to need WWII level mobilization to have a shot of saving our civilization. It's nice to see other sources agreeing with me.
Capitalism is killing the planet. It is a system that depends on continual expansion in order to maintain profits.
We don't need profits. We need to rebuild decimated ecosystems. We need to add an additional 250,000 square miles of forest to the continental USA just to break even on current carbon emissions.
One of the best ways we can accomplish this is to fundamentally restructure our economy. Emissions dropped in the USA from COVID lockdowns over 5%. This tells me that we need to abolish as many jobs that are not producing essential goods as possible, re-allocating that labor towards re-building infrastructure in a sustainable way.
Suburban sprawl is a great example of that wasteful land usage. I live in the Philadelphia metro area. There are two counties I would like to highlight: Delaware County and Montgomery County.
Montgomery County is a much wealthier area...about $5,000 more income per-capita. It also has just slightly more than half the population density of Delaware County. If Montgomery County was re-structured such that the population density was the same as Delaware County's, that frees up a ton of land to repurpose for other uses.
I'm not saying this is an ideal way to go about this by any stretch. But there is going to need to be some serious min/maxing of efficient land use in order to maximize arable land and wilderness. And that's going to take a lot more laborers and a lot less office workers.
I think calling them "profits" misses the point of why you won't be able to get rid of capitalism that easily, certainly not by saying "this is what we should do in an ideal world, and it involves everyone radically changing everything of their own free will".
Call them "incentives" instead, and suddenly you'll not only see why your comment doesn't make sense (imo), but what an actual solution looks like:
And there it is. Of course we need incentives. We just need to direct those incentives to more productive ends. So we need to incentivize being better about our planet.
Anyway, let's talk about "wasteful land usage" since you mention it: Ever seen that nobody lives here map? This is just the fully uninhabited parts of the US. I think it's pretty easy to fall into the trap of thinking "if only nature had more room". Nature has a lot of room. You just don't see it, because you're unlikely to live close to it.
There's advantages to compact cities of course, they tend to be more efficient overall. But they also bring a lot of disadvantages, many of them to human health, and if anything they disconnect us even more from nature.
So what can you do, concretely? You probably don't have a billion dollars, let alone a trillion. You alone can't effect major change.
But you definitely can have a long-term impact by focusing on more local problems.
Let's say for example you're a cyclist. You can promote cycling! If you help popularize cycling in your area, you can push your city to have more cycle-friendly roads. Such infrastructure existing in effect is a permanent promotion for more cycling.
Programs that work well in your city may get picked up by other cities as well, so don't just push for something people don't want: create incentives instead.
Not a cyclist? Got a car? Using it to commute 45 mins every day? Promote remote working. Less time in office is less time on the road. Help make the remote work setup successful (even if it is probably not your job to do so). COVID has hugely boosted remote work, so there's even more tooling than before, and plenty of guides out there to help companies and employees previously unfamiliar with it. And once again, the successful things you do will get picked up by others.
Flatly, I just don't think we're going to fix the planet by saying "let's convert from capitalism to something else", especially when the "something else" is TBD, and an opportunity for every backseat populist to try out their pet idea. And even when they actually came through, these types of changes have seldom been positive, be it for the planet or for the humans.
I'd like to address the statements you made regarding land usage. I realize some of this will only be somewhat related to the topic of urban sprawl, but I promise I'll bring it around.
I don't believe the "nobody lives here map" is at all an adequate rationale for dismissing evident wasteful land usage. The short text that accompanies the map you linked actually offer a debilitating caveat, that this map in its raw value only shows uninhabited areas. Uninhabited doesn't mean undeveloped and available for wildlife.
According to the CIA World Factbook: 16.8%% of the land in America is considered arable land, this is cultivated, agricultural land that is harvested regularly; another 0.3% is agricultural land for permanent crops, including "crops like citrus, coffee, and rubber that are not replanted after each harvest", but does not include timber; lastly 27.4% of land in America is considered to be permanent pasture which is used for cattle grazing. An astounding 44.5% of land in America is used for agriculture (excluding timber), and given that subdivisions don't generally co-occupy agricultural land it's safe to say that a good segment of the green space on the "nobody lives here map" is agricultural.
Now take into consideration the environmental impacts of agriculture: excessive pesticide use, forced monocultures as part of unsustainable farming models, soil loss, and more - I could go on for hours. This is not land that nature can occupy in any sort of ecologically sound manner. Nature does not have plenty of room on this land.
Moving on to timber, according to the USDA's Major Land Uses Report, about 25% of land in the United States is unprotected forested land. This land is owned by a mix of public and private interests, with private interests almost exclusively being logging companies. The forest service reports that logging occurs on about 11 million acres of their land every year. Private interests are worse though in that they are not publicly accountable and often participate in extremely unsustainable practices such as clear cutting.
Once again, logging activities make this land that nobody lives on, land that truly nobody lives on. Logging, while arguably needed, significantly harms the environment. Habitat segmentation, watershed destruction, and an overall decrease in biological diversity are all direct results from logging activities that make these non-ideal or even completely inhospitable environments for wildlife. You ever seen a stand of trees after it was clear-cut? I have, and it made me cry to be honest.
This all relates to suburban sprawl in that sprawl requires resources, massive amounts of resources. All of those houses in all of those subdivisions require timber from unsustainably logged forests. They require roads that only serve to further segment the ecosystem we now claim as our own. These roads now imply that we drive our cars, not cycle as you posit. Sure we can incentivize cycling routes and even public transportation, but when you have suburban sprawl in excess those solutions now become nonviable because of the impractical geographic characteristics inherent to sprawl.
Sure, occupied land may be a minority compared to "empty" land, but in reality the demand for sprawl not only consumes land on its own, but causes continual destruction of environments in an unsustainable fashion. It's a double-edged sword we keep stabbing ourselves with.
The way we are living today is unsustainable, anybody who says otherwise has their head in the sand. We are not going to fix the world by cycling to work or working remotely. The reality is the reason nothing is changing is that people are profiting off of this environmental destruction. Agricultural corporations, the timber industry, auto manufacturers, mineral extraction companies, etc. all profit directly from environmental damage they cause. To imply that the average consumer can cause incremental change like this is silly. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all global emissions!
Furthermore, while I share your concern about sudden changes causing power vacuums and give the potential for unintended results, there are alternatives. This isn't some to be determined result, a planned economy along the lines of embedded neoliberalism seen during the post World War II years is not out of reach and would not have to be brought about by a Marxist coup. I personally would prefer to completely abandon neoliberalism all together, but we've slid so far down the Overton Window that any sort of non-capitalist system is a spec on the horizon.
Yeah didn't mean to imply that. To be clear, concrete action on climate change involves moving billions or trillions of dollars around.
The problem of course is that this is a very hopeless thing to think about if you don't have immense power or cash reserves. But there are ways for individuals to have their impact amplified, and the examples I gave are ways that can easily be amplified.
Cycling is a powerful one because individual action can lead to city-wide changes. Do it enough times and the changes start to have enough momentum to lead to country wide rectification.
The bottom line is we no longer have the time to piecemeal grassroots change together in any meaningful way to cause enough substantive change to resolve the current crises we face.
"...moving billions or trillions of dollars around." is a very vague term and doesn't really lend to any realistic solution. I don't know if you imply any particular plan you had in mind, but saying things like this only foster more apathy which you actually describe as part of the problem.
This conversation has veered away a bit much from the original topic, so I'll keep this brief. I posit that substantial, effective environmental regulations enacted on a national and international scale will rein in uncontrolled polluters. Progressive tax reforms like carbon taxes, other taxes on negative externalities such as excess resource usage and other pollutant emissions, capital gains and taxes on the wealthy will encourage more efficient resource usage and level economic playing fields which contribute to inequitable distribution of the impacts of climate change. Lastly but not in totality, land reforms, specifically in the areas of agriculture and suburban development will foster sustainable land use and farming, minimizing the carbon and land footprint of our society.
These are all very realistic solutions, that can be implemented in the current capitalistic economic framework we have today. To bring these about, we must challenge the political barriers. Methods such as common goal collectivism against destructive capital holders and their politicians, unionization, socio-political efforts via community groups to mend partisan divides, and other more bureaucratic efforts like protests, civil disobedience, civic duty and so on.
I know that your cycling example is just that, an example, but it points to a significant characteristic of the current corporatocracy that has been founded. My issue is not that actions are being taken, it is what actions are being taken. We must take our actions to the root of the problem, not the symptoms or the victims.
Again, I'm not saying you're going to prevent climate change by cycling. What I'm trying to get to is ways that most people can have to amplify their voices and actions.
Getting cycling roads in your city might not fix the planet but it will have a positive impact on your city. This isn't just about climate change.
You're mistaking my attitude for one of "the system is fine if only the common people would act". It's my fault for not being clearer. But that isn't what this is. I agree with you that action needs to be taken at the root, that is why I prefaced with: real change will only come from those who are able to move huge amounts of money around. But then what's the point to have this discussion if we're just outright dismissing anyone's ability to improve on the status quo?
Incremental permanent improvements (regardless of how much they impact the climate specifically) are always worth it, because they carry a permanent influence on their surroundings. So it's not just a QOL improvement for those that live / work there, but it also becomes a new point of reference for everyone else. Sort of like when Google started working on Google Fiber, this became a reference point for other cities, and some of them started to compete.
This is a mechanic you, as an individual, can make use of. If you maximize its potential, you can turn it into a "race to the top".
A few minor thoughts:
Arable land is fantastic. Lots of suburbia sits on former agricultural land that got subdivided in the post-WW2 boom. Recovering that land is beneficial for a few reasons. By having more agricultural land, we can return to more sustainable farming, that while it has lower yields, doesn't poison the earth. If not that, it's the easiest land to re-forest.
An additional thought is that logging periodically from natural forests is quite beneficial long term. Wood that is harvested into construction materials is carbon that isn't getting released into the atmosphere, and provides the opportunity to re-grow, as removing the largest trees provides more room for younger trees to grow.
The problem comes when the logging out-paces the forest growth.
Regarding the 'nobody lives here' map: That vast unpopulated region is like that for a reason. It's not exactly conducive to society.
Profit is hardly any incentive for the vast majority of the population. 42% of the USA makes less than $15 an hour. Hell, I'm cracking the top 20% of earners and it's still just a daily grind to keep my head above debt. Here is the incentive instead of profit:
If we don't do these things, we all will die. If not us, certainly our children.
At this point, it's not good enough to throw our hands in the air and say 'the market will provide.' Everyone complains how we can't expect radical change, but frankly, that's what's needed. These tactics you're suggesting might have worked well if we started circa 1971. But right now, we gotta collectively get our priorities in order, and fast.
We need a planned economy, like was done in WW2. We need to see our current inputs and outputs, ration the outputs, lower the inputs, and drag 'the economy' down to it's bare minimum.
The only way to lose weight is to reduce your caloric intake. The only way we're going to reduce carbon emissions is by reducing consumption, and that's going to require rationing.
Rationing is by far the fairest way to distribute a limited resource, such that they don't automatically and by default be given to the wealthiest.
A problem with the WWII analogy is that It’s hard to say whether the US would have entered WWII without Pearl Harbor, and there doesn’t seem anything equivalently motivating on the horizon.
Based on the US response to the pandemic, you need to drastically lower your expectations of what the average US citizen is willing to sacrifice even in a clear emergency. Our state capacity for doing anything other than our normal way of life seems really low.
Not even state governors are willing to do what it takes and set a good example. Look at airline traffic.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't think what's needed is gonna happen short of a literal war. It's more of a thought experiment than anything.
We had our hands in the war well before Pearl Harbor, just not formally.
This is by design. Notice how one of the main complaints from the top about the $600/week unemployment bonus was that it was more than a lot of people were making before COVID. When you're tied down with debt and worrying more about how to feed and house your family, it's hard to think past next week, let alone the next 5 years. Can't give people too much time to think about how different their lives could be, lest they start demanding it.
Yes, I think UBI would go a long way towards fixing a lot of things, precisely because it reduces the pressure to do things solely for the money, especially for the people under the most pressure. Incentives can be stupid, so sometimes reducing their power allows people room to give other considerations more weight.
It would help, but only so much. People will still be idiots. The pandemic has made it clear, if it wasn’t already. UBI wouldn’t do anything about the danger of misinformation and might make it worse, because with increased freedom there is less incentive to cooperate, and we are low on cooperation already. I will still advocate in favor of increased financial freedom, but it’s a risk, somewhat of a leap of faith.
For example, I don’t think financial incentives have much to do with our capacity to do something different than usual for Thanksgiving. Some of us have changed our plans, but we are still seeing a lot of Lemmings-like behavior, people doing things the same way as before because of traditions. (I like some traditions, but I think you should always question them to make sure they make sense, and be willing to change them when needed.)
I don’t blame the airline workers for working or for the airports being busy. I blame the people deciding to travel despite everything. They are paying money to do this. Spending, for non-necessities anyway, is an exercise of power, and people’s judgements about how to spend matter. These judgements, collectively, are what make the economy the way it is.
It’s just, what is the alternative to people spending their own money? Someone else making decisions for them. I’m willing to entertain ideas but they would need to be fleshed out more than they usually are.
I do like the idea of both a UBI and a jobs gareuntee. Especially paired with a hard rent cap so that landlording becomes less desirable.
I think part of the reason community has fallen by the wayside is burnout and lack of time. I'd love to spend more time volunteering for my community, but I just don't have the time/energy. Right now I mostly just remove glass and trash from the local creek bank when playing there with my kid.
There's something to be said about eliminating financial incentive, especially for non-critical work: It frees people to work on things they desire and not what they need to do to make ends meet.
I'd like to drop my IT job and get certified as an electrician, and spend my days working at a leisurely pace fixing up and building houses.
I think that would be a lot more useful, but I certainly can't afford a financial hit to transition.
You're confusing me saying "Don't try to fight capitalism" with "capitalism will fix it".
Fair enough. But there's plenty of folks out there who think Elon Musk and company are gonna save us with some new brilliant invention to fix all our problems.
So, no one can say, for instance, that "hurricane 11 happened because of Global Warming", or that "hurricane 8 was Cat 4 but would have been Cat 3 w/o Global Warming" ... but they can absolutely say that hurricanes and the hurricane season are/is getting more extreme.
I think this is the same. Yeah, 8 billion people are too many (at least, with our lifestyles and consumption habits) ... but trying to pin any specific calamity on it is a fool's errand.
Makes for good story-telling, though.