Doing Something About Climate Change

[jordan179]

Recently, chris_gerrib accused me of not taking a stand on what we should do about anthropogenic climate change, saying in one of the threads from this entry

http://chris-gerrib.livejournal.com/322157.html

9 out of 10 people use the "can't be sure" argument as an excuse to do nothing. Try harder

Comments

[baron_waste]

Ye-e-s… and I agree in principle, certainly - permanent government-imposed poverty for all save the Michael Moores and Al Gores of the New Order is NOT the answer, despite their assurances of “eco-salvation” in the new Green religion…

But what, ultimately, is all that accomplishing? If everything works perfectly, this hyper-complex and horrifyingly fragile arrangement will allow some semblance of 20th Century American standard of living for as many people as possible.

And next year there are still more people. And still more. And more.

Hyper-Simple and Wonderfully Robust Arrangements

[jordan179]

But what, ultimately, is all that accomplishing?

Expanding human power to deal with climate change, and any other problems which may present themselves.

If everything works perfectly, this hyper-complex and horrifyingly fragile arrangement ...

False assumption there. Higher-tech economies tend to be simpler for non-specialists to enjoy and tougher at dealing with damage. The reason why is that the complexity supports better service, and the fragility is only apparent because economic systems are networked

Re: Hyper-Simple and Wonderfully Robust Arrangements

[marycatelli]

Some of the tribes were completely exterminated. As indeed entire villages were in Europe by the Black Death and probably by other prehistorical virgin field epidemics.

One interesting thing in Slavery in Indian Country which I read recently is that the Indians in the neck of the woods it dealt with had a chance to recuperate and reorganize after the deaths. It helped.

Re: Hyper-Simple and Wonderfully Robust Arrangements

[jordan179]

I do not know if any one plague ever wiped out a whole American Indian tribe (rather than village) by itself, but since a single plague could kill over 90%, and there was more than one plague, it's quite likely that the wave of plagues in general often disrupted tribal organization to the point where the survivors simply dispersed, either to die or to join other tribes.

We do know of many Indian cultures which had modes of production dependent on the maintenance of agricultural systems which were reduced (almost certainly by plague) to population levels at which they could no longer maintain them: there, whole vast regions were knocked back to slash-and-burn farming. This happened in the Amazon Basin, for instance.

Baby Booms, Birth Dearths and Techno-Fixes

[jordan179]

Ultimately, unless the real problem is addressed and solved your techno-fixes will only defer the accumulating disaster.

Ok.

Guessing that by "the real problem" you mean uncontrolled population growth, it has already been "addressed and solved," by human nature. Human beings estimate their future ability to support (or be supported by) children and have children based on this estimation. As wealth and technology advance, the benefit of each additional child drops, balance swings from "be supported by" to "support," and birthrates drop.

In fact, they tend to drop to the point of "birth dearths," producing negative population growth. I would consider this a problem potentially as bad as population explosion, were it not for the fact that death rates are likely to drop even faster in the next century.

The situation in which you don't see humans adjusting their birth rates to the economic signals is one in which the signals have been muffled by government social policies. So socialism might create the danger of population

[jordan179]

Yes. The big countervailing factor will be the deployment of life extension technologies, but this will happen first in the richest parts of the world, where poplation growth is currently negative: by the time it spreads to the poorer parts of the world, their population growth may also have leveled off.

[luagha]

If you look at the data, birth rates drop when a society becomes technological and no longer has to have 10 kids to hope to have 5 survive to hope to take care of the parents in their old age.

BUT it takes about three generations after the technological point for the culture to have changed.

So the answer to your question is that it happens naturally.