Climate Change Thread

[Montmorency]

Monty, you're not getting it.

Where is over-population the worst?

It's not Africa - it's Europe and Asia. In the UK we are at about four times what might be considered a "healthy" population for the land to actually support. We are roughly thirty times what a pre-industrial economy can support (Something like 2-3 million).

The populations of Europe and Asia also drive consumption - especially of things like read meat and electronics. In Africa there is over-population but this is in large part being driven by the needs of advanced economies, strip-mining resources, over-production of cash crops...

In the event of the collapse of the global economy who starves? Europe or Africa.

If you want to get serious about "saving the planet" you need to recognise the real problem is over-population leading to over-consumption. Everything else, including climate change, comes from that. If you don't address the population issue you are just kicking the can down the road.

European scientists with a Euro-centric worldview will be the literal death of us.

So you're a primitivist? My takeaway is that you believe only a pre-modern carrying capacity (where population of settled areas hovered around an upper limit for up to millennia) is sustainable in the long-term, which is extreme even for a Malthusian. I invite ACIN to take Thanos here to task on his premises, a prospect I'm sure he relishes, but I'll also address a few points. I told you that in principle I agree it's easier to deal with fewer humans to an extent, but I think you're wildly underestimating the durable carrying capacity of our civilization (unless you're taking for granted that the very worst apocalyptic scenarios are inevitable??).

How did you determine a "healthy" population level for the UK? Are you citing some source? Are you just referring to the Victorian era as your ideal?

Why do you think developed economies can't be concertively redesigned (as a near-medium program given time pressure) to significantly lower consumption (in terms of raw inputs) as well as to neutralize positive-emissions industry (which again is the immediate source of the vast majority of emissions and pollution)? I mean this question in a more material sense than a political one.

What do you think it would take to enforce a global One Child policy, with respect to non-compliant individuals as well as to non-compliant states? What concrete persons would participate in enforcing it, and what sociological implications does it have? If this kind of derogation of liberties is possible and permissible, what other derogation would you allow for - or reject out of hand?

All the modelling that has been done assumes that once a certain income-threshold is reached and a certain level of infant mortality is achieved then people will stop having so many children and the population will stabilise.

This is rather like the fallacy ten years ago that Islam "just needed a reformation" and Muslims would stop being so zealous as they mellowed out.

Why? What's the connection? Isn't the modeling too conservative as it is given real performance? Unlimited growth in all forms is constrained, including (falling out of) socially.

European scientists with a Euro-centric worldview will be the literal death of us.

The scientists, but not the plutocrats? Hmmm...


By the way, I urge you to read my link above on African fertility rates, and the embedded reference to another look at American/European fertility vis-a-vis a "fertility gap" (women having fewer children than they desire or intend, and also lowering their intentions/expectations in line with the pressures of a modern economy). You shouldn't find much objectionable there, the articles are under a conservative, pro-family, pro-marriage think tank.

That's one angle to take, but with the huge amounts spent in Europe on non-Western immigration; you could quickly rake up vast sums money for the kind of purpose you describe here by turning the European migration policy on its head.

As a specific example, Norway had a budget of 18.9 billion NOK in 2017 (non-English source) for "integration and diversity", or roughly $2.19 billion with today's conversion rate. Five years worth of similar-sized budgets, and you are up to roughly $10 billion, and that's all from a country of 5 million inhabitants.

With agreements with African governments, all non-legal migrants into Europe could be given the offer to be sent either to their home country, or to locations in Africa (potentially newly established migrant cities). It is much cheaper to provide for migrants in Africa, the labour market there is much, much more open to people with lower education than it is in Europe, and treating almost all asylum applicants and illegal migrants the same should free up a lot of money that would otherwise be spent on handling the individual cases, appeal processes, and other general benefits that can be expected by managing things in bulk. The flow of migrants would also be reduced to those who consider themselves to be in serious danger where they come from, unless the African migrant locations turn out to be success stories, which should be a good thing.

Sure, I encourage massive European investment, but it can't come in the form of haphazard and piecemeal state aid or charity, it has to be a comprehensive program engaging the whole of Europe with the bureaucracies and civil societies of most African countries, at once. Or the process will be too diffuse and small-scale to deliver sweeping results, and a relatively large proportion will be vulnerable to fraud, waste, and corruption (especially when it's just direct money transfers sight unseen).

I've also long supported massive FDI to support refugees regionally, along with investment to ameliorate the conditions driving their refugee status. Maybe if the EU had been active in this regard it wouldn't have been subject to a refugee emergency that all the Eastern Mediterranean countries were already having to struggle under. Human groups of all kinds find acting with foresight a threshold too high.

However, the above can't be used as a pretext to keep Africans out of Europe. In transformational programs there should be extensive population rotations in both directions, including with the aim of training up African professionals and leaders en masse. Churn it up.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

So you're a primitivist? My takeaway is that you believe only a pre-modern carrying capacity (where population of settled areas hovered around an upper limit for up to millennia) is sustainable in the long-term, which is extreme even for a Malthusian. I invite ACIN to take Thanos here to task on his premises, a prospect I'm sure he relishes, but I'll also address a few points. I told you that in principle I agree it's easier to deal with fewer humans to an extent, but I think you're wildly underestimating the durable carrying capacity of our civilization (unless you're taking for granted that the very worst apocalyptic scenarios are inevitable??).

How did you determine a "healthy" population level for the UK? Are you citing some source? Are you just referring to the Victorian era as your ideal?

Why do you think developed economies can't be concertively redesigned (as a near-medium program given time pressure) to significantly lower consumption (in terms of raw inputs) as well as to neutralize positive-emissions industry (which again is the immediate source of the vast majority of emissions and pollution)? I mean this question in a more material sense than a political one.

What do you think it would take to enforce a global One Child policy, with respect to non-compliant individuals as well as to non-compliant states? What concrete persons would participate in enforcing it, and what sociological implications does it have? If this kind of derogation of liberties is possible and permissible, what other derogation would you allow for - or reject out of hand?

Why? What's the connection? Isn't the modeling too conservative as it is given real performance? Unlimited growth in all forms is constrained, including (falling out of) socially.

The scientists, but not the plutocrats? Hmmm...

By the way, I urge you to read my link above on African fertility rates, and the embedded reference to another look at American/European fertility vis-a-vis a "fertility gap" (women having fewer children than they desire or intend, and also lowering their intentions/expectations in line with the pressures of a modern economy). You shouldn't find much objectionable there, the articles are under a conservative, pro-family, pro-marriage think tank.

Sure, I encourage massive European investment, but it can't come in the form of haphazard and piecemeal state aid or charity, it has to be a comprehensive program engaging the whole of Europe with the bureaucracies and civil societies of most African countries, at once. Or the process will be too diffuse and small-scale to deliver sweeping results, and a relatively large proportion will be vulnerable to fraud, waste, and corruption (especially when it's just direct money transfers sight unseen).

I've also long supported massive FDI to support refugees regionally, along with investment to ameliorate the conditions driving their refugee status. Maybe if the EU had been active in this regard it wouldn't have been subject to a refugee emergency that all the Eastern Mediterranean countries were already having to struggle under. Human groups of all kinds find acting with foresight a threshold too high.

However, the above can't be used as a pretext to keep Africans out of Europe. In transformational programs there should be extensive population rotations in both directions, including with the aim of training up African professionals and leaders en masse. Churn it up.

Demography of the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogr...ange_over_time

I'm suggesting the population of the UK should be around 16-20 million, so well below Victorian levels (but still much higher than population density in our former "white" Dominions).

To be clear, I'm not suggesting such transformation is achievable in my lifetime, I'm simply pointing out that Europe is horribly over anything that could be considered a reasonable population. Above those sorts of levels you need to engage in mass-import of food, without which your economy and hence society collapses. This is not a new problem, the disruption of shipping between Egypt and Rome alongside reduced soil fertility due to mono-cropping and climate change caused a catastrophic population drop in Italy in the late 4th-early 5th Century, essentially hollowing out the economic and administrative heart of the Western Empire.

So, let's get real.

We're not hitting that 1.5C target - we all stay up too late and spend too much time on the Internet for starters, and we use cars and public buses instead of walking.

In view of that you need to assume there's going to be increased climate change and a corresponding drop in food variety, nutrition etc. We're not going to starve here because we have all the ships and guns (need bigger Royal Navy btw) but our standard of living IS going to decline in an appreciable way.

Now, on top of that you have large, consumption orientated economies without enough arable land to feed their population. We should, at present, be discouraging reproduction and preparing for the consequent economic hit, as opposed to importing people from poorer countries to increase not only our young population but also our birth rate.

To be clear, I'm in favour of immigration in general but I'm against it being used to prop up fertility rates we actually need to start falling. Think about that for a second - in the developed world we have governments gearing their immigration policy in a way to offset declining fertility rates that are, in part, the result of an environment that discourages procreation.

You expect those same governments to engage in "transformative" programs to prepare us for what;s coming.



These are the guys who did 'Saturday Night Special'. Think about that.

[Montmorency]

Peeves, the only way I see your overall point is if you take for granted a scenario of severe warming (4-5+* C) as well as near-total failure of constructive cooperation among the international community in that scenario and in the progression into that scenario. So - it's quite possible that things transpire the way you fear, but why moan about a duty of states to proactively cull the herd? As long as we're aiming at something implausible why not aim at producing an actual good result? "I can only offer blood, sweat, tears, and toil" is one thing to say to the public, but "I have a vision of the future for you: a jackboot stamping on a human face, forever, or at least until we all die..." why would anyone even humor that as a veneer of wisdom? They might as well just violently revolt.

Demography of the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogr...ange_over_time

I'm suggesting the population of the UK should be around 16-20 million, so well below Victorian levels (but still much higher than population density in our former "white" Dominions).

I figured excluding Ireland, but it appears your peg does indeed hark back to the time of Malthus himself.

But why "should" it be around 16-20 million? What do you base this range on? Obviously agricultural practices have changed, and will continue to change. The baseline carrying capacity is much higher - again, unless you think industrial-scale agriculture as we practice it will somehow not be possible because even the major states themselves will have dissolved and can no longer guarantee the conditions necessary for it on a "national" scale. As long as this doesn't happen the state will certainly act to mobilize its resources and reorganize agricultural production and distribution in a more suitable way, as well as introduce new techniques and methods that were not previously economical under the crowding effect of entrenched capitalist industry.

In the former case of state failure, I suppose we can envision a world like a technobarbarian cyberdystopia - fortunately well-represented in contemporary speculative fiction - marked by a constellation of more or less militarized city states with variable holdings of hinterland. The wealthy and powerful ones will have the best infrastructure, a concentrated skilled workforce to maintain it and develop new technology, and some variant of efficient high-yield hypercapitalized agriculture like in the Netherlands, allowing them produce a surplus toward a limited trade of comparable sophistication to existing networks and to hold down the slums and country peasants from which they draw members of the security forces.

...

But it hardly has to be that way. While we draw breath we should fight for a more optimistic (read: not totally pessimistic) vision of the world. And it's still unclear where your range comes from, if it's based on a projection of future conditional carrying capacity or a subjective opinion for what constitutes an "ideal" population size. Whichever it is, why not 10 million, 5 million in Neo-London and the rest distributed across the island? As far as I can tell you're giving an arbitrary number.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting such transformation is achievable in my lifetime, I'm simply pointing out that Europe is horribly over anything that could be considered a reasonable population. Above those sorts of levels you need to engage in mass-import of food, without which your economy and hence society collapses. This is not a new problem, the disruption of shipping between Egypt and Rome alongside reduced soil fertility due to mono-cropping and climate change caused a catastrophic population drop in Italy in the late 4th-early 5th Century, essentially hollowing out the economic and administrative heart of the Western Empire.

As I'm repeatedly emphasizing, the course of our history very much could go this way - hence my determination that neoliberal capitalism is totally inadequate, if not opposite, to the task of saving the world - but it doesn't have to be. We have huge advantages of skilled and educated manpower, a generative common weltgeist, and an enormously complex world economy and world society undergirded by our acknowledged and constantly-expanding technological prowess. Complexity in the past has meant "the bigger they are, the harder they fall", but perhaps with even a modicum of adjustment in the modern day this becomes a system of redundant failsafes. Though it's a terrible prospect and one we should strive to avert, much of the modern order could arguably remain intact under even a billion refugees and tens of millions of deaths if you believe transnational solidarity (or even naked self-interested multilateralism as with the WW2 Allies) is a reasonable expectation.

Since it's somewhat analogous, how do you engage with zombie fiction? Are you the kind of guy who expects society to rapidly come undone due to the flagrant mistakes, negligence, and selfishness of the elites, followed by the dumb fear and blind panic of the masses - or is it more of a tragic and costly emergency that is ultimately overcome once the stakeholder blockades are battered aside and a collective sense of responsibility is empowered?

In view of that you need to assume there's going to be increased climate change and a corresponding drop in food variety, nutrition etc. We're not going to starve here because we have all the ships and guns (need bigger Royal Navy btw) but our standard of living IS going to decline in an appreciable way.

Lol your military at its peak potential would not be in a state to overcome countless thousands of desperate civilians+, let alone imperialize them as a tributary food source. But it's a moot point because if the UK - or enough of the rest of the world - can't maintain enough agricultural production for subsistence and trade, you certainly aren't going to be able to maintain the supply chains to maintain and operate any kind of modern military. No bullets, no bombs, no fuel, no replacing equipment (outfit the infantry with fresh Sten guns perhaps?), forget about it - would you even have a national state left to employ the manpower? Are provisional militias going to airlift raiders to Norway and Normandy to loot as much as the troops can load? Never mind, I imagine you like the sound of that.

Since it's relevant to the general topic, I should note that I'm aware Norway has a contingency doctrine of being able to sustain almost the entire population on an adequate diet even if it were to lose access to food imports. (Unfortunately, I can't find a link on short notice! @Viking) Governments think about these things. I believe we can commit more resources and coherence behind thinking.

Now, on top of that you have large, consumption orientated economies without enough arable land to feed their population.

Self-sufficiency is often bunk. Agrarian societies have always relied on trade to fill the gaps in, or even replace, domestic production. (First thing that comes to mind is classical Athens, their wheat preferences, and the human cost of being finicky about local produce during wartime.) We know it doesn't have to be fatal because we know how to adapt, if we would take adaptation seriously. Speaking of ancient Athens, while ancient societies were characterized by collapse they were also characterized by continuity and resilience. Polities like Athens could endure breathtaking apocalyptic losses of life as a proportion of population and still not lose their fundamental integrity. Same thing held for the various major epidemics across Eurasia, up to and including the Black Death. Even the periodic titanic tumbles of the Chinese empires - with concomitant population declines measured in tens of millions - rebounded almost immediately, even if into competition between smaller fragments.

Though I remind you a country like America absolutely has the arable land to sustain its population and more, if the country can hold itself together. And how often do I have to harp on "cooperation?" As new arable land becomes available for development its fruits can be shared as necessary.

Think about that for a second - in the developed world we have governments gearing their immigration policy in a way to offset declining fertility rates that are, in part, the result of an environment that discourages procreation.

The logical conclusion as I see it would be freedom of movement within a world state, but you don't even need a single jurisdiction to facilitate mutual population transfers as merited.

These are the guys who did 'Saturday Night Special'. Think about that.

I don't know what this means.

[Viking]

Since it's relevant to the general topic, I should note that I'm aware Norway has a contingency doctrine of being able to sustain almost the entire population on an adequate diet even if it were to lose access to food imports. (Unfortunately, I can't find a link on short notice! @Viking) Governments think about these things. I believe we can commit more resources and coherence behind thinking.

The only thing that springs to mind is the Svalbard doomsday seed vault, which is something rather different. Maybe you are thinking about a different country.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Honestly, what self-respecting American doesn't know classic Lynard Skynard?

"Saturday Night Special" is a song from... 1976 I think. It's all about the pointlessness of handguns, especially cheap "Saturday night Specials" and how we should dump them all £to the bottom of the sea". Fast forward 35 years and the same band are singing about how you have to lock your door at night and put your faith in your "peacemaker".

Basically, this is the degeneration of American society as demonstrated through music.

You're leaning on "increased carrying capacity" and technology to allow for continued population expansion in developed societies without considering the full implications. This increased carry capacity is achieved through the use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers spread over vast fields, often separated by electric fences as opposed to hedges to achieve high yields of the same crop year after year.

The pesticides lower biodiversity whilst the fast-growing crops and chemical fertilisers leach nutrients from the soil and starve bacteria that allows it to regenerate. Runoff from the fields pollutes rivers, killing fish and small mammals, the lack of hedges further harms insect and bird populations whilst mono-cropping ultimately destroys the topsoil.

This phenomenon is what causes dust bowls in the US and mass "colony collapse" among bees, among other ecological disasters.

This is not just a problem in the US, of course, but also in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/environm...s-michael-gove

https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/art...l-degradation/

So, no, we cannot keep increasing "carrying capacity", we are vastly over capacity and are essentially leaching from the land to sustain ourselves. Modern farms are doing the same damage to the environment as Roman Latifundia two millennia ago.

As regards a Zombie apocalypse - I think this discussion demonstrates that people would spend far too long pretending we could "fix" the problem before confronting it. For example, we would insist on trying to develop a vaccine or even a cure instead of shooting all infected at the moment of infection and burning all corpses.

[a completely inoffensive name]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/24/uk-30-40-years-away-eradication-soil-fertility-warns-michael-gove[/URL]

https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/art...l-degradation/

So, no, we cannot keep increasing "carrying capacity", we are vastly over capacity and are essentially leaching from the land to sustain ourselves. Modern farms are doing the same damage to the environment as Roman Latifundia two millennia ago.

The blind spot in your argument PVC is that our economic model and our government policies incentives tend towards the reduction of cost, not sustainability.
Key example here, Americans share of budget towards food has dropped since the 1960s: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-produc...?chartId=76967
In particular the drop occurred in the 1970s when we implemented policies to heavily subsidize farmers who overproduced crops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricu...d_States#1970s
IF we direct policies towards rewarding sustainable practices, we have the technology to produce products and processes that achieve the same purposes but there will be an added cost associated with it. However, it is a cost we can bear since we have bared (sp?) it before.

Next time you go shopping, take a trip to the expensive grocery store that all the upper middle class families go to. Look for the plant derived cleaners, the oat/almond milk, these are marketed for a richer clientele because right now it costs more to produce those products than the standard heavily petro-chemical based products. But if you look into why it costs more it has nothing to do with the key ingredients/inputs.

For example, oat milk takes less space, less water, less energy than dairy: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042
Is there any reason why it shouldn't be cheaper other than policy?

Also keep in mind some things we do are more sustainable than in the Roman times. Crop rotation is understood to a better degree to minimize the effects of mono-cultures. Our genetic engineering has produces plants which are physically more sustainable than their ancient counterparts. GPS allows farmers to plant crops closer together and minimize land use.

Your main concern comes from industrially produced fertilizers and pesticides. And this is a concern, but again it is a process that is not inherently wasteful. If we wanted to accommodate the cost of it, we could do anyway with pesticides altogether for a lot of rooted crops by growing them inside buildings in hydroponic baths, with UV lights from LED's. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_tvJtUHnmU

God gave us free will for a reason...if there is an apocalypse coming it won't be because of His will, but our own...

[Montmorency]

Honestly, what self-respecting American doesn't know classic Lynard Skynard?

You're leaning on "increased carrying capacity" and technology to allow for continued population expansion in developed societies without considering the full implications. This increased carry capacity is achieved through the use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers spread over vast fields, often separated by electric fences as opposed to hedges to achieve high yields of the same crop year after year.

The pesticides lower biodiversity whilst the fast-growing crops and chemical fertilisers leach nutrients from the soil and starve bacteria that allows it to regenerate. Runoff from the fields pollutes rivers, killing fish and small mammals, the lack of hedges further harms insect and bird populations whilst mono-cropping ultimately destroys the topsoil.

This phenomenon is what causes dust bowls in the US and mass "colony collapse" among bees, among other ecological disasters.

This is not just a problem in the US, of course, but also in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/environm...s-michael-gove

https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/art...l-degradation/

So, no, we cannot keep increasing "carrying capacity", we are vastly over capacity and are essentially leaching from the land to sustain ourselves. Modern farms are doing the same damage to the environment as Roman Latifundia two millennia ago.

I'm not intimately familiar with their discography. There are literally thousands of famous songs, and famous films, and ouvres. I can't be intimately familiar with all of them (though I thank the Internet for allowing me so much osmotic consciousness). Here's some more carefully-curated (for the lyrics) songs to set the mood:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

When you say "technology", you should understand I'm referring to existing technology, not some figurative wonder weapon down the pike. I'm far from an expert on agronomy, but I've read articles about people confronting the very issues you raise and discussing techniques that could resolve them, including some that are in action or could be put into widespread action today without appreciably affecting food diversity or calorie load available to consumers. And if it comes to it there's always government management and rationing. So no, we are not doomed to a plummeting carrying capacity in this regard. Societies adapt. Ancient societies had no stock of institutional measures to draw from in response to sudden profound shocks other than to let a lot of people die and hope* the survivors pick up the pieces; we do.

*They probably weren't many who could think in grand strategic scope, so they probably didn't conceive hopes for future generations, h/t to Hong Kong thread.

You could have brought up "microbial antibiotic resistance", which if permitted to continue accelerating could easily precipitate global collapse by pandemic in conjunction with climate and political crises within a generation. However, scientists can always identify new biochemical targets if given the opportunity (hint: our private pharmaceuticals don't incentivize this), and humans are good about meeting collective hazards once they're immediately urgent. If bacteria become resistant to protein-synthesis targeting, we'll just target lipids.

All I'm saying, if the Soviet Union could mobilize to defeat the Nazis, we can mobilize to survive climate change. Even if it's very costly.

As regards a Zombie apocalypse - I think this discussion demonstrates that people would spend far too long pretending we could "fix" the problem before confronting it. For example, we would insist on trying to develop a vaccine or even a cure instead of shooting all infected at the moment of infection and burning all corpses.

Is this a cheeky pass at Seamus?

The only thing that springs to mind is the Svalbard doomsday seed vault, which is something rather different. Maybe you are thinking about a different country.

Here is an essay on the Norwegian doctrines of self-sufficiency and food security, notably:

In 1992, the Government stated that the degree of food self-sufficiency was not a good enough measure of food security (Ministry of Agriculture, 1992). Self-sufficiency does not include the possibility of readjustments in a crisis situation. Readjustments are possible, both at the supply and demand side, through the use of a crisis menu, storage of food and inputs etc. The preferred concept - ‘ability to be self-sufficient’ encompassed possibilities of readjustments. The concept is measured (in energy content) as: Access to food by adjusting human consumption and food production and utilising stocks of food and agricultural inputs in a crisis divided by total food consumption in a crisis.

While the essay is a little old and doesn't more than list climate change as a potential cause of crisis, I'm certain I've read something a couple years ago detailing the Norwegian government's food security contingency planning with respect to climate crisis scenarios specifically. At any rate, governments absolutely do do contingency planning, such as we see with British rationing plans for the event of a hard Brexit.