$4 bln renewable energy project

t’s rarely mentioned, but there is one thing anybody can do in their life that changes their carbon footprint more than everything else in their life combined, by a wide margin: don’t have any kids.

And don’t have pets!

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It’s rarely mentioned, but there is one thing anybody can do in their life that changes their carbon
footprint more than everything else in their life combined, by a wide margin: don’t have any kids.

Literally suggesting throwing the baby out. I think I used Literally correctly here.

R:)

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Literally suggesting throwing the baby out. I think I used Literally correctly here.

As in, who cares what happens to the environment if there are not humans here to enjoy it. Not me, certainly.

R:

there is one thing anybody can do in their life that changes their carbon
footprint more than everything else in their life combined, by a wide margin: don’t have any kids.

you guys will upvote any nonsense.

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“you guys will upvote any nonsense.”

that is a very fair observation. You have recs

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As in, who cares what happens to the environment if there are not humans here to enjoy it. Not me, certainly.

Well, your reasoning is sound, as far as it goes. You wouldn’t enjoy it.
But it’s a bit of a straw person: there are numbers between 0% and 100%.

What happens to the environment if, after a while, there are only half as many humans to enjoy it?
Very much better environment, likely very much happier people on average.
It’s amazing how many currently destructive habits are entirely sustainable if fewer people are doing them.

My intent was not to suggest that we depopulate the earth, though a pinch of that might have its merits.
Rather, it was more to point out the absurdity of worrying about the CO2 impact of (say) flying to a global warming conference.
If it’s actual impact you care about, it matters orders of magnitudes more how many kids those delegates have, but almost nobody mentions it.
Mentioning what’s actually significant Just Isn’t Done. Trees and EVs are nice, but side shows.

Jim

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It’s rarely mentioned, but there is one thing anybody can do in their life that changes their carbon
footprint more than everything else in their life combined, by a wide margin: don’t have any kids.

===

Literally suggesting throwing the baby out. I think I used Literally correctly here.

As in, who cares what happens to the environment if there are not humans here to enjoy it. Not me, certainly.

‘Literally’, in this context, would be if someone said that we should take our babies and throw them out. I don’t believe anyone said that. But killing babies is not the same as choosing to have less children, or, as a society, reducing or eliminating incentives to have large families.

We have gone from 1.6 billion people on this little planet in 1900, to a hair less than 8 billion now. When I was a kid, and there were 3 billion of us already, I cared about the environment, even if the population was smaller than it is now, and I think we should care just as much about the environment, for future children if for nobody else, whether there are 1 billion, 3 billion, 8 billion or 9.4 billion of us (the peak world population currently projected in 2070.)

Slowing the current rise in population, or plateauing at the current level, or even slowly decreasing to somewhere in between 1 and 8 billion, over the next few centuries, seems like something we could do to live in harmony with all species, not just our own. Without needing to throw out any human babies.

dtb

don’t have any kids.

And don’t have pets!

Don’t eat cows, switch to plants. I bet that is far better than not having kids or pets assuming the kids are not cow-eaters either.

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What happens to the environment if, after a while, there are only half as many humans to enjoy it?
Very much better environment, likely very much happier people on average.

Are we still pretending that “Climate Change” is a real thing and not just a scam?

Okay.

Rather, it was more to point out the absurdity of worrying about the CO2 impact of (say) flying to a global warming conference.
Seems like the people who are now calling it “Climate Emergency” don’t actually believe it themselves. They sure don’t act like they believe it.

I just recently read the book “How Civilizations Die”.
Summary: It’s when they stop having kids.
As I summarized it to my wife, “At TFR (total fertility rate) of 1, 8 people become 4 people become 2 people becomes 1 person becomes … NOBODY.”

Succinctly, the future belongs to those who show up.

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I just recently read the book “How Civilizations Die”.
Summary: It’s when they stop having kids.
As I summarized it to my wife, “At TFR (total fertility rate) of 1, 8 people become 4 people become 2 people becomes 1 person becomes … NOBODY.”

Elon Musk believes ‘civilization will crumble’ if people don’t have more babies:

""The Tesla CEO, who has six children of his own, called the world’s rapidly declining birth rate “one of the biggest risks to civilization” at a Wall Street Journal event…

https://fortune.com/2021/12/07/elon-musk-civilation-crumble-…

Well, your reasoning is sound, as far as it goes. You wouldn’t enjoy it.
But it’s a bit of a straw person: there are numbers between 0% and 100%.

Indeed it is a straw baby. My appeal was a sort of idiotic appeal to emotion with the biggest driving piece unstated. Among the most satisfying thing to me in my life are my children. I love having a purpose which goes beyond my (now only about) 20 years of life left. I love the beauty of them, the care and passion with which they live their lives.

Even a fairly casual review of human history and social organizations will suggest strongly that I am not alone among humans in this regard and that there are strong biological reasons that humans might be like this.

Were we “happier” when there were a few 10s of millions of humans on the planet and we hunted and gathered? Probably, but not certainly yes. Can we genetically learn to be happy with 100 billion of us on a planet which requires great technical expertise and coordination to operate? Probably yes.

I would personally never want to go back to hunter gatherers. From my point of view that would be analagous to a 35 year old reasonably successful adult longing to be 3 years old again. I am totally enamored of understanding the world, a project humans have really taken on seriously in the last few hundred years. I am fascinated by what we can build, how we can change the world to support us (and other life) and how we can enhance ourselves and our understanding both with great tools like VR, TV, computers and the internet, and by enhancing ourselves through the use of these tools and ultimately by modifying ourselves.

But that’s just my personal preference. Nothing stops someone else from being enamored of a noble savage life, perhaps 10 million of us living a world curated by AIs who prevent us from overpopulating and keep us happy in a zoo-like curated world. Or whatever else.

One of the advantages of loving the future that I love is that it is probably what we are going to do anyway, so you might as well enjoy it. There is no trivial path to changing the trajectory of the species away from 9 billion members in the next few decades. Given these numbers, the only alternative to a complex technical infrastructure achieved through vast understanding of the world and vast technical projects to support the billions is a collapse and and path to lower population through starvation, and what Diamond’s Collapse suggests would be a lot of violence and cruelty as the population killed itself down to sustainable levels.

Further supporting my own view of a beautiful future are conclusions such as those reached by Bjorn Lomborg. That if you want to improve life for the actual humans who are essentially inevitably going to be on the planet in the next few 100 years, reducing carbon emissions is super low on the list of cost effective things that could be done. The human misery expected from inexpensively fixable health issues is massive compared to the prospect of some people having to move a few miles inland while others build sea-level-rise defenses practically Dutch in their beauty and elegance. The thing that’s false about climate change is not that it is happening and that it is manmade, but that an even vaguely good thing to do about it is to halt the enrichment of the human race by cutting off carbon emissions.

And here we bring it back to Buffett and Berkshire, for those of you that have a fetish for posts on this board being related to these things. Buffett said long ago that the world would be way better off in the future if he spent his whole life ignoring charity and building wealth, which he then handed off to people who were, compared to him, not as good at building wealth but pretty good at spending it to make people better off. The Lomborgian observation can be interpreted in a similar way. The human race is better off getting bigger and much richer, and THEN addressing climate change with its vast expertise, human resources, and wealth, then it would be folding its tent before it has even funded its retirement, as it were, and shivering in the cold in a low-carbon-footprint way.

So yes, Mungo, we could follow the latest fashions and try to shrink western civilization even faster than it seems to want to shrink itself, ignoring the fact that we will be replaced by peoples who aren’t at all interested in shrinking, due to the nature of compound interest applied to different populations’ growth rates. Or we could attempt to remove all sense of guilt or limits from those of us who actually participate in the wealth of western civilization, and continue the trend of expertise and human power that we have followed for the past few 100 years, and which has lead us to unprecedented health, wealth, and dare I say it, opportunities to find meaning, purpose, and happiness in the world. I personally like this second approach, and find more than enough evidence in history and current study to suggest it has a very high chance of succeeding.

Ehrlich is still going to lose all the bets he makes with Simon. Buffett is still going to get rich betting on the economic growth of the planet. Some humans are still going to run around like Chicken Little, and they are still going to be wrong. The rest of us are still going to have a few children who we will love and will love to see learn how to live in the changing world quite successfully, for the most part.

R:)

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Slowing the current rise in population, or plateauing at the current level, or even slowly decreasing to somewhere in between 1 and 8 billion, over the next few centuries, seems like something we could do to live in harmony with all species, not just our own. Without needing to throw out any human babies.

I don’t know if anybody has really figured out how it scales, but I am concerned that if we had 1/10 the population on the planet, it would take way more than 10X as long between new iPhone generations. The alternative view to the “we should shrink back to where we were when we were poorer and stupider” is “lots of smart people living relatively free lives produce progress at rates that rise more than linearly with the population.”

Also, I don’t think there is a way to stop population growth short of massive authoritarian takeovers that collapse the world economy and starve us down in population in misery and incompetence. So even if a rosy future with lots of people is not an inevitable outcome, it may be the most morally compelling thing to work towards.

R:

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Slowing the current rise in population, or plateauing at the current level, or even slowly decreasing to somewhere in between 1 and 8 billion, over the next few centuries, seems like something we could do to live in harmony with all species, not just our own. Without needing to throw out any human babies.

Agree with Ralph 100%.

Not having babies, while not quite a modest Swiftian proposal, is not a solution to global warming either; any more than starving yourself is a solution to global hunger.

The Earth can comfortably sustain at least a 100 billion humans IF the humans live sustainably. US will be as crowded as India (roughly 12x density). No big deal.

As some old bald guy allegedly said, the world has enough of everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.

Also, I don’t think there is a way to stop population growth short of massive authoritarian takeovers that collapse the world economy and starve us down in population in misery and incompetence.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read up on this subject. So what follows are just my recollections, not necessarily accurate.

First, I recall that growth to circa 9 billion is already baked into current population size and birth/death rates. I guess a more dangerous virus could reverse that, but our science seems to have progressed enough to combat that. Ditto food shortages can be overcome, probably at the expense of the environment. Nuclear war?

Conflicts among humans and environmental damage along the way are almost certain.

But there also seems to be a self-correcting aspect. As standards of living rise, birth rates decline. Already Western Europe, Japan, and China are below replacement rates. I think immigration is what is keeping population growth up in the US. Canada the same? So, again only my recall, we sorta level off at the 9 billion level, and perhaps slowly decline from that. To do so, we’re going to have to help raise standards of living for less developed countries. It’s in our long range best interests.

All well beyond my life expectancy, and probably that of my grandkids. But population growth doesn’t result in human extinction.

And having a child and grandkids has been the most rewarding part of my life - as Ralph says.

Our technical ability to combat climate change with population movements, Dutch type defenses to the oceans, etc. as Ralph also suggests will help mitigate higher temperatures. I think one mistake we’re making now is not having enough focus and resources directed to defending against the probable effects we’re going to see from climate change.

Just some random thought triggered by one of Ralph’s best offerings to this board from my viewpoint.

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Am often saddened by the number of good healthy trees that are periodically cut down along the US interstate highway system. Seems like a waste of trees, labor, fuel etc, just so a huge swath of what was woods and needed zero maintanance can now be mowed, over and over again.

:frowning:

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Seems like a waste of trees, labor, fuel etc, just so a huge swath of what was woods and needed zero maintanance can now be mowed, over and over again.

As someone who regularly travels the same US interstate highway system at unnaturally fast speeds for my fragile fleshy body, I’m glad for the lack of trees falling onto the highway. I can deal with an errant blade of grass striking my windshield, but when the trees get too close- they have to go.

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lol… 3 meters wide should be enough grass.

lol… value,

Each state does the tree reduction differently.

Have driven a lot of the US Interstate system and wonder where you see trees that are so close to the pavement that they could fall and hit a car? Maybe in the Rockies?

I guess that we travel in different highways?

Are you backing up the truck, or keeping your powder dry?

Sincerely,

jan

:^)

I don’t know if anybody has really figured out how it scales, but I am concerned that if we had 1/10 the population on the planet, it would take way more than 10X as long between new iPhone generations. The alternative view to the “we should shrink back to where we were when we were poorer and stupider” is “lots of smart people living relatively free lives produce progress at rates that rise more than linearly with the population.”

Also, I don’t think there is a way to stop population growth short of massive authoritarian takeovers that collapse the world economy and starve us down in population in misery and incompetence. So even if a rosy future with lots of people is not an inevitable outcome, it may be the most morally compelling thing to work towards.

The two alternatives are not just keeping increasing our population indefinitely vs going back to the stone age with several million humans and long waits between iPhone generations.

How about just slowing down the increase, or slightly decreasing the population, taking it back from 8 billion to somewhere between 3 billion and 6 billion (the number we had when I was born and when I got married, respectively?) I think we could do that without authoritarian measures and without adding too much wait time before we get a better phone.

For instance, in many countries, we actually have incentives to have more kids. Of course we want to provide good services to the children that people do end up having, and I certainly agree with you that having children and grandchildren can be and has been for me one of the great joys in life. But we should not push people into having more kids by giving them baby bonuses, for instance, and we should help people who want to have less children achieve their goals by making birth control readily available. You don’t need a lot of authoritarian government or mass starvation to achieve a more modest objective, and in fact, a smaller population might mean we need less government meddling in how much carbon we produce.

dtb

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How about just slowing down the increase, or slightly decreasing the population, taking it back from 8 billion to somewhere between 3 billion and 6 billion (the number we had when I was born and when I got married, respectively?) I think we could do that without authoritarian measures and without adding too much wait time before we get a better phone.

This is already happening. The world population will peak at around 10-12 billion by the end of the century and then start to enter a phase of exponential decay. The only regions of the world that are still growing their population are Oceana and Africa. We need to start thinking about supporting family formation before we hit the point of exponential decay. China is currently dealing with an impending population collapse because of their one child policy and rapid urbanization. They are expected to peak at ~1.5 billion in the next five years and then lose 400-500 million people by the end of the century.

https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

Since 1960 global GDP has grown around 3% per annum on average. The world population growth since 1960 has averaged around 1.5%. It’s actually fallen from 2% in 1963 to around 1% today. You can imagine the impact this declining population growth rate will have on economic growth in the coming decades.

We tend to drive with the rearview mirror when it comes to questions of population growth. Despite the fact that the world population is still growing, the real problem approaching us is population collapse.

PP

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