The planet will be just fine, just not in a condition that will support our species.

I am resigned to the fact that our intelligence will be the cause of our own extinction. Relatively speaking, in terms of the life of our planet, our species will be but a brief moment. Our intelligence simply proved to be an unsuccessful adaptation.

And the biosphere will be just fine too - so long as we discount the next few hundred or few thousand years.

I am sure you understand.

But we can't help it - it's the way we are. I don't expect other species to be any different than they are, so I don't harbor that unrealistic expectation for our own either. IMO mankind as a whole is not morally or intellectually perfectible in any significant sense - we just are what we are.

Weighing in for 23rd-century cockroaches?

Industrialization isn't the problem, but our casual acceptance of the dirty byproducts of industrialization.

Best of luck.

Seems tantamount to admitting your argument is bullshit.

You can claim perceived victory if you want, I'm not in this to win debating points. My message is so blindingly obvious that someone would have to work very hard to keep from getting it. Of course, people do work that hard - their deeply cherished world-view is at stake.

Have you investigated the Maximum Power Principle yet? It seems to imply that this is the only place we could have ended up, and has a message or two about why it's going to be almost impossible to change direction in the time we have left.

Whether you accept the the premise of the MPP or not, it has no direct impact on the state of the environment today.

All power is not created equally, or has equal impact. Without greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, expended energy is radiated harmlessly into space.

When you find yourself using the phrase "blindingly obvious", there should be a voice in your head telling you "now my mind is closed".

Listen to it.

My understanding of the MPP is that it implies that a system will use any source of energy it has available to maximize its power throughput. That means that, since FF are by far the largest source of energy we have available we will continue to use them. At least until some other source provides us with a better power return and we no longer need FF to increase the complexity/growth of the system.

The MPP also implies that wastes will always be externalized, because internalizing them reduces the power available from the energy source.

It would take a lot of rational brainpower to overcome urges that are so structural. My reading of evolutionary psychology says that this level of rationality is not available to us as a species, and my personal experience says that it is damned rare in individuals.

A point that we cannot reach without our level of technology and infrastructure.

Advancement that we could not have had without abundant source of energy that had high EROEI

Frankly, from being trapped into the agrarian paradigm (and withdrawn from nature), I'd posit that the wide, accepted understanding of the damage caused by fossil fuels required advancement made possible first by burning through a load of those fossil fuels. IOW, the moment we closed our eyes to feeling the system around us, we've been on an inevitable journey to destruction and the science that allows us to understand the level of destruction.

I don't see anything in the near to mid term that is going to stop or even slow the relentless march of industry across the face of the world. Nothing voluntary, at any rate.

Given that perspective, I really do wish you the best of luck in cleaning it up.

Of all the options that would of gotten so much bang for our buck in the last 150 years, oh oil, why?

There is NO other option that would have gotten us the "bang for the buck" that coal, oil and gas did. Not over the last 150 years, and not today. At least if by "bang for the buck" we mean "maximize the power output available to civilization."

If civilization is a power maximizing system, then we had no other choice.

People persist in thinking that civilization is not a power-maximizing system, that it's something else instead, like a relatively malleable set of social, economic or political arrangements. It's not. Civilization is a self-organizing complex adaptive system whose Prime Directive appears to be to maximize its power throughput in the interests of increasing its size and organization.

The mechanisms like politics and economics that we develop along the way to support that process are almost incidental. Certainly their forms are incidental - except that each of the mechanisms in place today exists because it was better at supporting the Prime Directive than any competing mechanism.

I never knew.

My mistake.

Coal is the breadwinner primarily.

But we should of used fairy power

Pretty much the same thing.

Do you mean that which accelerates the velocity of energy in the system, to fuel exponential growth at any cost?

Or that which increases the aggregate happiness of all humans without threatening our future survival?

Or....?

Sometimes its interesting that people believe we are making substantial "progress" but cannot really objectively define it or prove that it is a "good" thing as far as all humans are concerned. Its just something people "believe" in, something that will save us from ourselves, and something that will bring everyone closer to Utopia. Its a very abstract form of religion in some people (I am not suggesting you are one of those).

Of course it's abstract. There's nothing wrong with aiming for an ideal, even though you always, always miss.

Frankly, we have so many impoverished, malnourished, suffering humans right now that the average human condition may have drastically declined in the last 10K years. And most of this has occurred while various people aimed for an ideal.

Of course its abstract. I think that before we could produce a monitoring system that measured the average happiness (against misery) of all humans, we will likely destroy the ecosystem.

But I don't think its far-fetched to suggest that even those iPhone toting, anti-depressant takers in the most well off nations aren't super-duper happy enough to justify 1) everyone else's misery and 2) the destruction of the ecosystem in pursuit of a notion of "progress" that isn't materializing for everyone.

If only we stepped back for a moment to think about "progress" could we maybe accomplish some (and that might include getting rid of some of what we have come up with, and maybe keeping some other stuff)

It's doubled in the last 150 years, and what a coinky-dink! That coincides exactly with the Industrial Revolution.

That's progress.

Suffering longer doesn't mean we have better lives.

Though, I would imagine it should have some part in a composite view.

Here is an interesting thought....what if the technology and infrastructure to prolong lifespans could only be establish and maintained as long as everyone worked longer, harder hours? Well, thats a trade-off. What if the temporary enhancement in lifespans takes so much energy and production that it ensures a bottleneck event that will kill billions? That is certainly worth consideration.

Now, I don't think living to a ripe ol age of a 25 year old headhunter is preferable for everyone. But hell, maybe some people. Speaking of headhunters, I recently watched a movie that "romanticized" the culture (quite well). Certainly was an interesting take I'd never thought of before.

the two are correlated, not only physiologically but psychologically. There is absolutely no question that overall, we're living longer, happier, healthier lives because of technology and "industrialization".

We've bumped rather suddenly against limits we never knew existed 50 years ago, but it's also worthwhile to note that the percentage of people in the world who qualify as "undernourished" has been halved in that same amount of time. That's a tremendous accomplishment, and one that should give us hope that climate targets are within reach.

Should.

If I was, I couldn't question the concept of "progress" in the first place. While longevity may be a component to the "happiness question", we must consider if its cost brings more suffering (IOW, quality vs quantity).

BTW, from my experience, I've meant few people in first world nations that are exceptionally "happy" despite what many would call incredible "well-being".

There is absolutely no question that overall, we're living longer, happier, healthier lives because of technology and "industrialization".

Even those in the Congo? Everywhere? Everyone? Healthier than 10K years ago (before famine, epidemics, and affluent malnutrition)? Happier? Despite the prevalence of mental health issues in the first world and misery in the third world? Really? Are you sure your culture isn't selling you a "story" that reinforces itself, which may not have any bearing on those suffering in other parts of the world?

Do you really feel that aboriginal people are more miserable than today's average human because of our progress? How do you know this view isn't derived from ethnocentrism. Are the Bushpeople "unhappy"? Are the Hadza "unhappy"?

the percentage of people in the world who qualify as "undernourished" has been halved in that same amount of time

What percentage are you using? As far as I've read in multiple studies, 4 billion suffer a chronic deficiency in at least one required nutrient and 850 million are starving to death. In addition, over a billion people do not even have access to fresh water? Are you suggesting it used to be twice this amount?

And further, presuming this is all true what you say, are we not to consider this "progress" against billions of deaths that ecological disaster will bring because of it (assuming its dependent upon production and this production causes climate change)?

"The UN report notes that the percentage of the world's population who qualify as "undernourished" has fallen by more than half, from 33 percent to about 16 percent, since Ehrlich published The Population Bomb."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb

Yes, even in the Congo - though they're bad now, things were much worse fifty years ago. If you want to discuss the "billions of deaths that ecological disaster will bring" you're on thin ice, because it's not only entirely speculative, but it's based on erroneous assumptions (the resources dedicated to the smallpox vaccine were negligible compared to the numbers of lives it saved).

Production doesn't cause climate change; atmospheric carbon dioxide causes climate change. Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station produces the annual CO2 of 5 round trip flights from New York to London, but the fossil fuel energy it replaces - 10TWH - is equivalent to taking 80 million cars off the road.

You're gradually narrowing your criteria for well-being to a personal definition that's impossible to prove. What's the point?

Last edited Tue Jan 15, 2013, 02:11 AM - Edit history (1)

things were much worse fifty years ago

Fifty years after the dark ages, things were probably "much better" than during. Were they better at that point than any time previously in human history?

So, considering all "progress", are we happier now than before agrarian society (to such a point to justify our ecological breakdown)? I've asked that a few times.

If we look at groups that anthropologists say live like we did 10K years ago (like the Hadza), are we on average happier than them?

Production doesn't cause climate change; atmospheric carbon dioxide causes climate change.

Yep, and are you trying to say production doesn't generate atmospheric carbon?

a personal definition that's impossible to prove

This entire line of thought is "impossible to prove". It doesn't mean it isn't worth discussing. Apparently, no one wants to discuss it. Shouldn't we discuss if we are moving toward more happiness (whatever that means?)? Shouldn't we define happiness? Or are we just calling it "well-being" and figuring in things like GDP per capita?

In many ways, its meant to be a personal question. We all have different views of it. Can we all absolutely state that on average humans are happier than before civilization or any other time in human civilization? If we cannot, can we all absolutely state we are making "progress" according to a standard that is relevant to mankind?

Ultimately, a great question is: is climate change worth all our "progress". In 50 years, will our answer be the same?

If you choose a definition to which others don't subscribe, don't be surprised if they don't find a lot of value in what you have to say.

Say I were to apply for an engineering job at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and inform them during the interview that I'll be using my own unit of length - a "koala" (8.7 inches). I'll be eliminated during the first round of consideration. They won't even be interested in discussing it, and the impression they get of me will be someone who was indulged during childhood, and who will be a pain in the ass.

Kids like that grow up to be existentialists, and I will admit I don't hold existentialism in high regard. It was largely a closeted movement until after WWII when in the wake of six years of extreme purpose, feeling purposeless was inevitable. Most of the existentialist writing of the time is an embarrassment of navel-gazing and it's not discussed much anymore except in historical context.

Turns out, purpose is easy to find if you look. Have you ever been to a poor country (I mean a really poor country, central-Africa poor)? I have, and purpose is everywhere. Happiness is as simple as holding a bowl of grain in your hand, or sharing that bowl. Have you ever done charity work? I don't mean to be insulting or engage in a pissing match about social work - certainly others have done far more than I have - but your tone, challenging basic notions of progress and happiness, sounds like someone who's never had much contact with deprivation.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Or are you just not going to try this one and insist we keep "progressing" toward more unprovable "happiness"?

And no, defining happiness is not whatsoever like defining a unit of measuring length.

Quick thought....let's say you take a tiger, put it in a zoo behind bars, double its lifespan, give it medicine when sick, give it something comfortable to lay on, etc, can you guarantee that your caged tiger is happier than your wild tigers? Or does caging and tending to the needs of a tiger not make them "happier" because they are a wild animal and it is against their nature to live like that? Is it according to man's nature to live like this? Are we maximizing happiness by prolonging lives in an artificial world of consumer products that may not improve our happiness measurably? If we are even improving it (impossible to prove), is it worth the ecological destruction we have wrought?

Have you ever been to a poor country

I haven't been to Africa. I've done some work in Mexico slums a bit, which is pretty bad in certain areas.

sounds like someone who's never had much contact with deprivation

Oy, hows that? The person arguing that humans have promoted misery is the one without contact to deprivation? Normally its the opposite IMO.

It makes no sense to be absolutist about it, and the idea your walnut/apple farm is sustainable for 6 billion people is equally mythic.

It's very easy to prove happiness - just ask people. If you were to poll most people in the world whether technology has improved their lives, whether they're happier now than before, it won't even be close. That's because most people in the world are just starting to get the things you've had from birth (read Paul Krugman about outsourcing box stores to third world countries, and how absurd it is for rich Americans to be protesting the imposition of this aspect of American culture on people who desperately want it).

BTW, you have your tiger analogy backwards. It's people with technology who are free, and those without who are caged.

Right? Its all worth it. And since "happiness" is related to technology, lets just focus on technology. In fact, that seems like the status quo. Perfect.

If you were to poll most people in the world whether technology has improved their lives, whether they're happier now than before

Most people have never experienced a tangible "before". But that is an interesting view. I don't think an appeal to popularity is necessarily valid.

It's people with technology who are free, and those without who are caged.

You know, I think that this is akin to religious belief. People with it must work perpetually to support the infrastructure. Foragers do not work 40-60 hours a week; they practice leisure & establish community with other group members.

I find these views that highly regard technology as something that frees us a bit disturbing. Frees us from what? Being free? Being human? Enjoying nature? How is work freedom? How is depression happiness?

Sometimes I feel like I have woke up in the middle of a sci-fi dystopia.

of having have to throw in the towel on climate change to promote happiness, do I?

And of course you don't think an "appeal to popularity" for happiness is necessarily valid - any definition except one shrouded in some personal, undefinable angst is a loser.

I've already called you out on the Community of Sublime Forager nonsense, but I will happily concede the point if you can go to a Mexican slum and make it work. : )

Last edited Tue Jan 15, 2013, 04:03 PM - Edit history (1)

If the "happiness" our progress is bringing us is worth climate change, then why care about climate change? Since technology frees us and we cannot be sufficiently happy without it, it is worth arguing that any other existence (viable or otherwise) is not preferable.

And of course you don't think an "appeal to popularity" for happiness is necessarily valid

Appeal to popularity is never valid. Most people do not know enough about how they would feel if they experienced another way of life, so judging a hypothetical happiness is without merit. When you appeal to popularity, you appeal to ignorance. A better approach is to compare and contrast lifestyles of existing foragers vs different types of existing industrial citizens.

I've already called you out on the Community of Sublime Forager nonsense

Which is a strawman. Life could suck being more "primitive". I understand that. Life already sucks. Life will suck worse due to climate change. Im not sure my children or future grandchildren will not die of climate change induce famine. I personally do not feel that the trappings of technology & consumerism justify where we are heading in terms of happiness. But most won't understand that until we are well into it.

Almost all production has an ecological impact. Along some timespan, this production has led to a series of even worse disasters (which while almost all individually avoidable, are an assumed inherently part of production when looking at the whole).

But if all such impacts are during mankind's creation of the best of all possible worlds, then everything we do is therefore justified to get to tomorrow's better world. If tomorrow's better world is inclusive of a world of both the technology that was produced---along with the ecological devastation--and it is better, then that devastation worth it (and if predictable via the process of production, perhaps necessary).

I really believe you have completely defeated the entire environmentalist movement.

But climate change does.

Measuring happiness, and then getting the measures to apply both within and between nations, is a very tricky business. It's not as simple as "just ask people".

The fact that happiness and level of technology are not correlated is indicated in the table presented in the Wiki article on the Satisfaction With Life Index.

The top 20 include countries such as the Bahamas, Bhutan. Costa Rica and Malta - none of them known for being technological hotbeds.

The bottom 20 include Bulgaria, Russia, Georgia, Belarus, Armenia, and Ukraine: all relatively advanced when it comes to technology.

As you yourself said in an earlier post, "Have you ever been to a poor country (I mean a really poor country, central-Africa poor)? I have, and purpose is everywhere. Happiness is as simple as holding a bowl of grain in your hand, or sharing that bowl." There's not much advanced technology in that picture.

As far as I can tell, what people need to be happy is straight-forward: enough food and shelter so as not to be hungry or cold; a degree of autonomy and opportunity for self-direction in life; family and community connections, social stability and a sense of safety. None of these are automatically conferred by technology. Material wealth, on the other hand, does not correlate well with happiness. And material wealth is the primary product of technological progress.

Technological progress and the accumulation of material wealth (tangible assets) does require CO2 emissions. Given the current mix of energy sources (87% fossil fuel), the lack of any global motivation to change that situation, and the exigencies of the Maximum Power Principle when applied to national societies, this situation is unlikely to change in the near or mid term.

One last point is that energy efficiency is unlikely to reduce our global emissions of CO2, as argued by Dr. Tim Garrett in this interview: (and no, he doesn't mention Jevons even once ) Instead he argues just the oopposite: that improving our energy efficiency ovber the years and decades is what got us to this point...

I guess my takeaway is that people will always manage to find some modicum of happiness in even the most dire circumstances. And the species will continue to be "successful" (in biological terms, anyway) even in the most dire circumstances. I find that comforting, because all the indicators point to dire circumstances coming soon to a neighbourhood near us.

I'm not sure what to make of it. I agree with your overall statement (though 'finding' glimmerings of happiness with effort in tough times isn't maximizing our condition by any degree).

But, well, our ability to keep on keeping on sometimes detracts from our ability to recognize what we are keeping on into. People can say our direction is irrelevant, because we will get by. Maybe our ability to find happiness in dire circumstances blinds us to how dire those circumstances are, and why they should be avoided, and what possible alternatives could be.

I do agree with you that technology does not correlate to happiness, and it certainly doesn't "free" man. Above I was just playing with the general premise to see where it brings us.

We're really good at reacting to a snapping twig behind the next tree. We're not so good at reacting to a distant rumble somewhere out over the horizon.

People keep thinking that we as a species should be good at reacting to calculated future risks, and that our failure to react constitutes a moral shortcoming. It ain't so. Our brains didn't evolve to do that, so if there is any shortcoming it's in the mechanism that Mother Nature gave us to process reality. Some individuals react very emotionally to abstract future threats, but we're in the distinct minority.

Even among environmentalists and ecologists there are those who simply can't get excited about potential existential threats, and consequently minimize the warnings of those of us who do. There's nothing "wrong" with them, either - their brain function is just a little closer to the mean than ours in this regard.

Regarding happiness, I just meant to say that I don't see a crash of civilization as erasing all future chances for human happiness, as though happiness only came packaged with televisions and iPads.

Freedom is a state of mind, not an externally bestowed quality. I suspect Nelson Mandela during his incarceration was a freer man than many on this board who are held prisoner by jobs, social expectations and small dreams.

You're going to tell someone who says they're happy that they're not "really" happy, because of some outlier study from the English Midlands (they ought to at least get a chuckle out of that)?

There's a lot of technology behind that bowl of grain - as I mentioned earlier, the percent of undernourished people in the world has been cut in half by technology. 2/3 of the world's food supply is the direct result of Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixing.

I know, I know. All of those happy, well-fed people are actually miserable, and would gladly give their lives so that existentialist posters on DU might post another day...

I'd much rather ask them.

There isn't necessarily a lot of technology behind that bowl of grain. A lot of grain can be grown without the intervention of Mssrs. Haber und Bosch. It might even have been organic.

And no, I don't think one brand of technocratic Progress For All™ is what it takes to make the world happy. It may not be making all of us unhappy, but I've noticed a distinct rise in the level of alienation over the last 50 years in the parts of the world I've traveled in. I don't think that would happen if people go happier and happier from faster internet connections and iPhones.

Both make our future unlivable. Technology has helped stretch the existence a couple of centuries, but sustainability passed, with retrospective vision, 1900 or so, give or take a few decades.

The consumption of the 'first world', ... duh ... are you typing on a computer and driving to the market, ... is ridiculous; if we chose to allow the second and third worlds, to reproduce as they did. If you need a tongue and cheek 'smily', stop reading now.

The fact the reproduction 1950 - 1990 was allowed to happen after we knew better, then exercising the audacity of 'two cars in every garage', (Eisenhower), only to be upstaged by two family earners to ensure more consumption (Reagan), then globalization to ensure the low cost per item of consumption, (Clinton), then the relaxation of credit rules to allow the middle and lower classes mountains of debt, to consume more, (Bush 2) !!! Excuse me, but we knew enough to stop the charade long before just a generation in the past.

Our scientists have known the problems we face for many decades. In the 1950's warning of the CO2 blanket were surprisingly accurate. Population as a problem, has been noted in our best Universities since the 50's - 60's, MIT and others. Scientific studies could not impress the politics of consumption and profit. Say what you will, say what you may, ... we knew. It was profitable to ignore and the silent acquiesce derived from the middle class aphrodisiac of the comfort of consumption, trumped the science and our collective common sense; delivering us to rewarding greed while nurturing ignorance.

If your are typing on a computer and drive a car, blame your parents, then yourself, then your refusal to capitulate, here and now, to what is needed; no more fossil fuels, no more cars, no more computers, ... no lights after dark.

We are all guilty, of snuffing out our future, it is in our genetics; demonstrated by our instincts, our social learning, our desires, and our actions; even after we know the consequences, of the next sentence we type.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120327094056.htm

I'm not ready to argue this article yet, but my sniffer thinks there's something interesting in it that is tangentially supportive.

What I know for now is that I'd rather not see this merely 400 generation experiment in civilization be left metaphorically hanging out with precambrian cyanobacteria. I like Shakespeare and would rather not see that effort discarded at the curb next to a McDi's wrapper, all for a burger eaten with the engine running.

Humans have enough stuff for the moment. There are enough buildings to get in out of the cold and rain. There is enough food for the moment. I suspect there's even enough clothing. Gawd knows there are enough roads. I'd rather not give up the hypodermic needle and the ambulance right now. It's not that I need them, but you never know.

Based only on my own life, I'd guess the industrial shutdown should be closer to 70%. If it was up to me, only coffee growers and Tuscan vintners would flourish. We can't ask any economists for a number though because they are all busy calculating 6th order derivatives for the debt market. They would be among the first to be re-employed for better purpose, as debt-driven growth must end.

But before anyone, anyone, will make the leap or the migration they need some reassurance that they won't be left behind. That means guaranteed employment, education, or maintenance, guaranteed healthcare, guaranteed housing. In means guaranteed participation for all. Otherwise the secondary human feedback kicks in with the resultant warfare and race for the last drop. Injustice is as carbon intensive as consumerism. For that reason, the support structures need to be set up as sectors are shutdown and eliminated or redesigned right down to the last atom and erg.

If that looks like a hard left turn, that's because it is. I loathe ideology, dogma, and boosterism and I'm advocating none of those. A healthy human ecosystem simply means building a mixed economy where multiple forms of exchange are open, but social support is the base. Note, I said support, as differentiated from consumption. IpodNext would be a while. First comes learning to live on a budget.