I gotta hand it to Greta Thunberg – she has found herself thrust onto the big stage, and is making the best of her 15 minutes of fame.
She’s not talking to any of the people who can or will do anything. Unfortunately, the people who can or will do something did it, back in the 1980s. Now, she’s talking to the people would couldn’t, and didn’t. Guess what they’re going to do? Still: good for her for making them maybe feel a slight bit of shame. They’re good at quashing that, though, or they wouldn’t be where they are today.
contempt and disgust are appropriate
Transcribed from [youtube] @-2:14.44
My message is that “we’ll be watching you.”
This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back at school, on the other side of the ocean. Yet you come to us young people for hope!
How dare you.
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I am one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing – are we in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is the money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.
How dare you!
For more than thirty years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here, saying you are doing enough.
I would describe her earlier congressional testimony as “casting pearls before swine” except swine really aren’t anywhere near as bad as the US’ congress. She pointed out, correctly, that congress should not listen to her – they should read the IPCC report and listen to the scientists.
Thunberg put her finger right on one of the key drivers of the problem: the fairytale of eternal economic growth. Many of us mistake that problem as a problem with capitalism, but really it’s more of a malthusian dynamic than that: you simply cannot and should not assume that population and industrialization can ramp indefinitely. Usually when I say something like that, someone will swan in and declare that Malthus was wrong and that we can handle a much larger population, if we’re smart about it and use resources wisely, etc. But the problem with that is that the larger your population is, the more damaging it’s going to be when something goes wrong and breaks those assumptions. I’m speaking here from my history as a descendant of Irish migrants who fled to the US because there was too much dependence on the potato. Potatoes were what brought my Norwegian ancestors over, too. Potatoes were a miracle food at the time and allowed some parts of the planet to expand their carrying capacity. not accounting for what might happen if the carrying capacity suddenly dipped because of British greed and airbone fungus. We can grow the population much larger than it is, sure, but what are the failure modes when the feedback loops get tighter and tighter. During WWII, the Bengal Famine [wik] was not a result of a drought (as it has been whitewashed to be) but rather a supply-chain management problem where the British thought they’d do well to hedge their bets against a nazi blockade by taking Bengal’s rice crop. 2.1 million people died of hunger, probably not realizing that it was Winston Churchill who had knifed them. As the population goes up, the catastrophic results of that sort of hiccup goes up, too.
The other piece of the puzzle Thunberg did not finger was nationalism. The current nationalist system is a web of self-interest between fictional entities that makes it impossible for them to operate cooperatively. In other words, Thunberg’s issue with the august body that she was addressing is: that it exists. Capitalism and nationalism (which are tied together to form the “American Dream”) work to prevent cooperative decisions because capitalism depends on there being inequality in decisions (aka: the profit margin) and nations exist based on that profit margin, too. She’s asking those people to put themselves out of a job, which is clearly something they are incapable of doing because otherwise they never would have taken that job in the first place.
A talking point that’s really getting my goat at the minute is the one about how China’s emissions are bigger than the USA’s, so there’s no point in the USA doing anything… Which completely ignores the fact that “China” and “the USA” aren’t single entities, but large agglomerations of people, and that there are more than 4 times as many people in China as in the USA. (Then, of course, there’s the fact that when you consider total cumulative emissions to date, the US is still massively in the lead, not to mention the fact that a good proportion of those Chinese emissions result from the production of goods which will be consumed in the USA…)
Dunc@#1:
A talking point that’s really getting my goat at the minute is the one about how China’s emissions are bigger than the USA’s, so there’s no point in the USA doing anything…
Yes, that’s head-exploding stuff. The rebuttal is to inform whoever says that “the US exempts its military from its calculations of carbon footprint. If you add the military’s carbon footprint, the US is still worse than China.”
Also, there is a question whether carbon footprint is being measured per capita or in total. If you look per capita the US is hands down the worst of the worst.
Not quite – there are a few of the Gulf states that have per-capita numbers which are much worse. But do you really want to be comparing yourself to Qatar?
But doesn’t a lot of Qatar’s footprint come from the extraction and pre-processing of oil, a lot of which then goes to the US (and, to be fair, some to Europe and some to China)? If we argue that emissions related to production should be counted where the products are used, then I think Qatar would look a lot better.
A favourite quote of mine
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
Kenneth Boulding
I was trying to find the calculations behind that claim a couple of weeks back, with not much luck. The best i could find was that the current farm lands could support 10 billion people, if they are all vegan and we assume that late 20th century yields are sustainable (spoiler: they aren’t). These optimistic estimates of population all seem to assume that late 20th century activity is something that can be sustained, but when you look at things like the North Sea cod fishery, salinity in Australia, clearing of the Amazon, and use of mined phosphorus fertiliser it clearly isn’t.
Anyway, we know what happens to organisms in these sorts of situations: there will be some sort of shock (drought, disease, global warming) and the population crashes
<snicker>
I think Malthus was speaking about human nature as much as anything.
(Note also the economy is goods and services, and those services can become ever more involute. Musicians, for example, do not provide any concrete goods)
John Morales@#7:
<snicker>
What do you find so amusing about that?
dangerousbeans@#6:
I was trying to find the calculations behind that claim a couple of weeks back, with not much luck. The best i could find was that the current farm lands could support 10 billion people, if they are all vegan and we assume that late 20th century yields are sustainable (spoiler: they aren’t). These optimistic estimates of population all seem to assume that late 20th century activity is something that can be sustained, but when you look at things like the North Sea cod fishery, salinity in Australia, clearing of the Amazon, and use of mined phosphorus fertiliser it clearly isn’t.
I agree, it’s all got to do with the assumptions. “Sustainable agriculture” is a myth, especially if we factor in the energy needed to plow and harvest or to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. Fertilizer, roughly, is made with oil or coal (the Haber/Bosch process requires heat and high pressure).
The descriptions I’ve read amount to: 12 billion people could have shitty lives if we’re careful about it. As I said, the problem is what happens if there’s a hiccup anywhere in the works? What if (for example) the cost of energy spikes and that cascades to the cost of fertilizer and crop yields falter? If you’re looking at huge populations depending on marginal results, a small change can result in a million deaths from starvation. Add climate change and it gets worse: there are going to be unpredictable fires, floods, and droughts. That means unpredictable crop failures, which just tightens up the margin for error.
Anyway, we know what happens to organisms in these sorts of situations: there will be some sort of shock (drought, disease, global warming) and the population crashes
And there are people standing by to say “that’s not a population problem! that’s a drought!” – the interpretation of cause seems to always favor natural causes and ignores that overpopulation is also a natural cause.
Marcus @9, the words and the sentiment, both.
(She’s living her dream, no?)
Oh, and the very poetic and evocative phrasing.
(Not just telegenic)
John Morales@#11:
She’s living her dream, no?
Ah.
She’s doing as she sees fit in the face of a situation that ought to be scary and dreadful to someone who expects to live to see the beginning of the worst.
Hardly funny.
Well, she did get to speak to World Leaders at the United Nations and berate them poetically, that I cannot deny. An inspiration, in our times. A sign of hope.
All good.
John Morales@#14:
I can imagine nothing more unpleasant, other than that it being necessary to do such a thing.
Now, if she’d just taken a cool-ass sailboat ride to hang out in New York and check out the Met, I might snark about what a great time she’s having. But the situation strikes me as far from amusing, and (judging from what appears to be a very sincere speech) she doesn’t, either.
I doubt she’s living her dream. Most people i’ve met like her dream of most of the world leaving them alone to make art, go sailing, ect. I get the distinct feeling she, and the others like her, are doing this because they feel compelled to, not because they want to.
Marcus,
Necessary, but certainly not easy to be in the position to do so.
(Unlike you, I would find it most pleasant to be in a position to berate them)
dangerousbeans:
Sure. Doesn’t entail they aren’t being facilitated. Or used.
@ ^ John Morales : Seriously?
That’s kind of a familar reichwing talking point – the claim that she’s been brain-washed and being exploited or directed by her parents and other, usually unspecified, groups.
Are you really denying her agency, her choice and intelligence / wishes here?
FWIW Greta Thunberg herself has responded on facebook :
Excerpt :
& another excerpt from the same long post on her page published
Plus :
If anyone’s really keen to challenge that, well, I think Greta herself may have 3 more words for them – “how dare you.”
***
Incidentally on the reichwing attacks on her see :
https://newrepublic.com/article/154879/misogyny-climate-deniers
By Martin Gelin published on 29th August 2019 – before her iconic speech but still pretty relevant here.
Plus Greta’s response to Trump’s sarcastic trolling here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-25/greta-thunberg-donald-trump-twitter-response-climate-change/11545204
See as well as what our disgusting coal-fondling shonky excuse for a PM said here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-25/scott-morrison-warns-climate-change-anxiety-young-people/11546846
Of course, claiming to not want kids to be anxious might be convincing if he actaully proved it by acting on the issue and listened to them..
I am gonna take John’s side here.
Look, Greta isn’t brainwashed, or a simple tool of anything, and I do not think that John is saying that.
What he’s saying is that, among many other things going on here, Greta is having a hell of an exciting time. She speaks *for* people who are, let us say, drowning on a Pacific Island, or starving in the midst of a drought, or whatever. But she is not herself doing any of those things. Greta is having an exciting time riding racing yachts around and living in hotels in NYC.
While I do not sense even a shred if the disingenuous in Ms. Thunberg, I find the predictable love-fest by progressives to be pretty off-putting, and I confess that I am unsure by what exact mechanism her work is supposed to create change. It’s a bit like modern protest marches. On the one hand, I approve heartily of the sentiment, and from time to time go out myself, sometimes with the kids. On the other hand, I know perfectly well that protest marches are the way the left expends its energy to very little effect.
Maybe she hates it, I dunno. I am sure she does not love every aspect of her current life, she may spend hours weeping with homesickness. But there is much that a child of her age would normally find to revel in, as well.
John Morales @#18 and StevoR @#19
Yep, that’s a familiar angle.
Back when I was 20, I wrote several articles for a local newspaper in which I defended LGBTQIA rights.
A few of my readers assumed that I must be a lesbian.
A larger portion of them assumed that some evil organization or some American billionaire (presumably Soros) is giving me money to defend LGBTQIA rights. The goal of said American billionaire was to convert all Latvians to homosexuality and thus make the entire Latvian population die out in one generation.
Some other people assumed that I’m a brainwashed victim who fell prey to {somebody} and has to be pitied.
Only a minority of my readers were willing to believe that I’m an independently thinking rational person who is publicly defending their own opinions. At that time I defended LGBTQIA rights, because I opposed discrimination as such, I hadn’t yet realized that I also belong to the LGBTQIA group. It took me a few more years until I realized that I want to live as a man.
Conclusion: It sucks being a woman. It sucks even more to be a young woman. The idea that a young woman might be thinking for herself and making her own decisions will cross people’s minds only after all the other options are exhausted and it is proven beyond any doubt that she isn’t being manipulated by somebody else. When a cis white straight man publicly does something, others start by assuming that he’s probably doing what he wants. People assume that he might be manipulated by somebody else only after seeing evidence supporting such a possibility. But no, a young woman could never get the same treatment, after all, all young women are automatically assumed to be foolish and controlled until proven competent and independent.
I’m long since used to seeing this shit in Christian circles. It’s saddening to see such an attitude also among atheists.
Andrew Molitor @#20
You wouldn’t be typing this kind of shit if the activist was a middle-aged white cis straight man. But no, the very fact that some activist is a young woman means that people will stop talking about the actual problem (climate change) and instead focus on how this young woman is having an exciting time and how she must be enjoying being in the center of attention. How comes it is only young women whose motivations are being questioned like this? How comes this kind of utterly irrelevant speculation about a stranger’s life and motivations does not happen when said stranger is a man?
@StevoR, Andreas Avester:
Well said! A pernicious term comes to mind here: “attention wh*re”
You are right, I would not be saying this is it were a “middle-aged white cis straight man” because, as just such a fellow, I can tell you that such an adventure would strike me (and I assume many others like me) as boring, stupid, and exhausting.
It turns out that teenagers have somewhat different standards than a “middle-aged white cis straight man,” a fact I can more or less recall from my own life.
It happens that I can talk about what an exciting time Greta is having AND think about climate change. My big brain can actually hold two thoughts, and sometimes even more. The notion that I am engaged in some sort of bait and switch campaign here is ridiculous.
My overall attitude is that as long as some activist doesn’t do anything unethical or harmful, speculating about their motivations (and whether they enjoy doing activist work) is irrelevant.
As long as there is no evidence that some person is being manipulated by {somebody}, speculating about such a possibility is inappropriate.
And when a blog post is about a serious problem like the climate change, commenters shouldn’t derail the discussion by speculating about how some activist maybe finds their life and work exciting. Firstly, we are strangers to Greta Thunberg, we cannot know whether she feels excited or nervous, happy or homesick. Secondly, even if she was excited and happy about the fame, that would be irrelevant. As long as she does nothing unethical or harmful, her personal life is irrelevant, what matters is her work.
As an aside, when Rutger Bregman laid into the shitheads at Davos, nobody suggested that he wasn’t having a good time, because he manifestly was enjoying the *shit* out of himself. I dunno if he counts as middle aged, I dunno if it’s cis, but he sure looks like a white man.
Now, it is also the case that nobody said “HE CANNOT BE SERIOUS, BECAUSE HE IS CLEARLY ENJOYING THIS” but people did remark “and yet, dude, somehow you managed to get yourself to Davos to hobnob with these guys, and I bet you’re eating some fairly decent meals” while at the *same* *time* applauding what he had to say. Because his message was awesome, even though he was clearly a privileged dude hanging out in extremely swank surroundings having a great time.
You can do both. And you should do both. If you start giving out free passes to anyone you agree with SUPER HARD there lies madness.
@#24
And this somehow justifies double standards? When dealing with a middle aged male activist, you will take his work seriously and won’t question his motivations. When dealing with a young female activist, you will discredit her work, speculate about her motivations, and treat her as a piece of shit who deserves no respect. Even if the middle aged white man and the young woman did absolutely identical activism, you will treat one of them much better than the other? That’s just discrimination. And all that based on a stupid assumption that the middle aged man is probably just like you? You know, there does exist middle aged men who are narcissists and crave fame, money, and connections. Just like there exist young people who, gasp, actually care about the planet they live on. Treating entire groups of people differently just because of superficial characteristics like age or gender is the very definition of discrimination.
“When dealing with a young female activist, you will discredit her work, speculate about her motivations, and treat her as a piece of shit who deserves no respect. ”
I did none of those things, Andreas. How dare you. Go fuck yourself, you disingenuous lying shitbag.
Andrew Molitor @#28
Thank you for the timely reminder. I just realized that it has already been a couple of days since I last visited my boyfriend. I think that today evening I will spend some quality time with my vibrator.
In the mean time, you should crawl back to your social circle consisting of bigots who won’t call you out for excusing discriminatory attitudes towards people based on their age or gender.
Speculations like these might seem harmless, but they are not. Sure, such phrases aren’t as awful as rape and death threats that most women who appear in front of TV cameras while talking about politics are bound to experience, but they are still a problem. “She’s a selfish attention whore,” “she’s being manipulated and handled by some unknown organization,” “she’s having an exciting life and enjoying herself,” “she’s young and clueless, she doesn’t know how the world functions.” I have heard it all said about me. It’s really demotivating and demoralizing. When I was 20 and I publicly defending LGBTQIA rights, I mostly ignored all the criticism I was getting from homophobes. I expected them to be hostile, and it was easy to ignore them. What upset me much more was all that shit I heard from people whom I had expected to be my allies. Incidentally, the first time I appeared in front of TV cameras, it was exciting. But the excitement soon disappeared. The last article I published was in 2016. After that, I quit. That was when I wrote about what it means to be genderqueer. By then I was no longer talking about human rights and equality in the abstract sense, instead I was talking about how I felt. The shit that people said about me got too annoying, and I quit.
The chances are that Greta Thunberg isn’t reading Freethoughblogs. But it’s perfectly possible that here are a few young women who are contemplating becoming atheist activists. Here are the messages they are getting right now:
People who ought to be my allies and support my cause will be speculating about how my parents or some organization must be behind me, how it’s impossible that a young woman might be capable of independent thought and make her own choices. People who ought to be my allies will speculate about how I’m having an exciting life and how I’m enjoying the fame and travel opportunities. People who ought to be my allies will postulate that it’s not worth listening to my words, that it’s not worth taking me seriously merely because of how my body looks like.
These kinds of messages are real obstacles that severely reduce the number of young women who choose to become activists. And afterwards misogynistic assholes will speculate about how there are so few female activists, because women simply aren’t ambitious. Never mind that every single ambitious woman who attempts to appear in front of TV cameras gets treated like shit. Of course, the same hurdles wouldn’t exist for a wannabe activist, who’s a white, straight, cis man. People won’t speculate that he’s a selfish attention whore until there’s actual evidence supporting such a possibility. People won’t talk about how he must be enjoying the exciting lifestyle. People won’t speculate that he’s just a mouth piece for somebody else until there’s evidence for it. People will treat him seriously until he actually does something stupid. For a young woman it’s the exact opposite—people will question her motivations, imagine reasons why she shouldn’t be taken seriously, and automatically assume that she must be clueless and incapable of independent thought. It sucks having to fight against these kinds of a priori assumptions held by strangers who haven’t even heard about you and who ought to be on your side due to sharing the same goal. If you are born with a female body, getting taken seriously in an uphill struggle.
29 & 29: I’m going to score that exchange as a point for Andreas, for creativity on the come-back. Remember that, here, we do not restrict the use of invective but if you’ve got to do it, do it well.
Andreas Avester@#30:
Speculations like these might seem harmless, but they are not.
I agree; that’s why I poked at John Morales’ snark. Minimizing someone’s effort to do good, by implying that they are self-serving implies that they are insincere and devalues their attempt to contribute.
There is a Nihilism 101 argument, proffered by Nietzsche and others, that there is no altruism because all actions are self-serving even if all they do is ratify a person’s self-image as being decent and well-meaning. That’s basically the axis of Morales’ initial position: “she’s having the time of her life.” The same argument can be made that a fire-fighter who rescues a cat is self-serving because they are pursuing their sense of purpose and are therefore selfish. The rejoinder to that argument is basic existentialism: it really does not matter what the individual’s intent is so much as their effect on others. Thunberg may be tired, seasick, angry, or happy – we should not value or dismiss her efforts except as how they affect us and others.
Sorry I’m late to the conversation but the money aspect jumped out at me while reading this and some of the earlier comments.
TL;DR: The rich will make bank off of climate change and have little motivation to intervene. Everyone else is poised to get screwed.
Climate change is disruptive. I think we can almost all agree on that. When everything is changing around you, what you’re describing is the opposite of stability. Economic markets on the other hand, thrive on stability. When things are unstable everyone wants their pay-off to be immediate because there’s far less certainty that a later pay-off will do you any good in an uncertain future.
Historically we have had some unusual periods where change brought about increased wealth but these are tied to changes that resulted in vastly increased productivity. Climate change by contrast is already resulting in notably decreased productivity and that situation will only continue to get worse. Even if you find some area where productivity is increased, it’s either not in an area where existing structures are poised to take advantage of it or it’s not in a form that is easy for us to use.
Put that all together and you can predict significant economic issues incoming. So, who makes out during market shake-ups? Rich people. If you’re concerned about feeding yourself or putting a roof over your head, you are ripe to be taken advantage of during upheavals because you need those things no matter what. So do the vast majority of people who are sorta like you. If you have a vast savings and can afford to invest while other people are stuck selling however, well then! You are ready to buy up far more of the world than you had before the shake-up. You don’t have to give what used to be a fair price for it all because the people who are selling are far more likely to be desperate to make a deal. Demand is lower, supply is higher so the price plummets. A simple application of basic economics.
So to return to Greta, the idea that there’s a lot of money backing her? That’s preposterous. The money is firmly on the other side in this issue and alway has been, from making bank on the energy sector to profiting off of the misery climate change introduces. There’s no end to the money as long as you’re rich and ruthless.
Caveat: I am not an economist. This is just so basic even I get it and I think everyone else should too.
Let me note in passing that the rhetorical sleight of hand, to the effect that if I fail to hew precisely to one position (“yours”) that I must necessarily be a partisan of some radical, odious, opposing position is not only wrong-headed, it is precisely the trick Israel uses to squelch opposition to itself. I will have no truck with such nonsense.
Look, I get that “Eh, she’s just performing” could be used as a take-down of Greta. The correct response, though, even in a relatively private conversation like this one, is not to insist that she she in fact not performing. The correct answer is “Well, sure, one does not stand up in front of the U.N. and ‘wing it’. What is your point?” Marketing, and this is maybe the most important marketing campaign in human history make no mistake, is judo, not boxing.
There is a middle path here. Of course she practiced her speech, wouldn’t you? I mean, I don’t *know* she did, but it’s a solid guess, right? It’s the friggin’ U.N.
So what?
She speaks not merely for Greta, she speaks for a billion young people like her. She is bringing their fears to us, and revealing them, in, yes, various actions that have an element of performance to them. I *want* her to practice, this is a heavy burden. One does not merely ‘wing it’ when communicating the hopes and fears of a billion+ people.
I suppose Greta has joy in her life. I suppose she is having fun in NYC. None of these have any bearing on her message, but they are true. Denial of obvious truths weakens the message. I would not bother to bring it up, myself, because it’s not on point, but neither do I shout down one who does.
I say instead, “Yep. I hope she is having fun, she’s working hard here and deserves it.”
Judo, not boxing.
John chose to bring it up, and was roundly, and unproductively, shouted down. You might imagine that you strengthen Greta’s case, but you do not. You weaken it, by denying obvious, albeit off-point, truths.
@Andrew Molitar: You seem to have an entirely different take-away from the other comments than I did. What I got out of it was simple: their point is exactly what you stated, that these details are off-topic.
When holding a serious, important discussion it is not productive to have a lot of talk going around about off-topic ideas. The fillibuster for example is one form of doing this. It is an argument tactic specifically designed to detract from the conversation or even keep it from happening at all. It is possible to do this without intending to but doubling down after you’ve been called out on it is no longer an innocent mistake. At best it’s defensive and shows you care more about whether you appear right than the issue at the heart of the conversation. At worst it’s a deliberate tactic with a goal in mind and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
To be honest, lanir, I am not sure how to read Andreas’ accusation that I ” … treat her [Greta] as a piece of shit who deserves no respect” in that particularly neutral way.
Sure, side-topics can become ratholes. I submit to you that slinging unfounded and vile accusations at people who bring them up is maybe not the best way to prevent them becoming ratholes. Indeed, it seems to lead almost inevitably to a complete train wreck.
@#36
If I were making a public speech about what I consider an important political problem, and you responded with, “Look, Andreas must be having fun, he must be excited to receive all this attention,” then I would get seriously annoyed. These kind of off-topic comments are disrespectful, they signal that you aren’t taking the activist seriously. The activist isn’t on stage to talk about their personal emotional states, they are trying to make a difference in how people live.
Never mind that “the activist must be enjoying all this attention, she must feel excited right now,” is a standard claim that gets routinely used for the purpose of discrediting some activist’s work. Maybe you made this claim without any malicious intentions, but you cannot even imagine how many times homophobes used exactly the same statement for the purpose of discrediting my own activism and my arguments in favor of legalizing gay marriage in Latvia.
More importantly, you yourself admitted that you wouldn’t say the same things if a middle-aged, white, cis, straight male activist had delivered the exact same public speech. Treating one person worse merely because of the visual appearance of her body is discrimination. Getting discriminated means being treated like a piece of shit.
Interesting interpretations, since I didn’t (and don’t) doubt Greta is entirely genuine.
(It was not about her, it was about the circumstances)
To OP
I don’t know many people who say that Malthus is wrong in the sense that unrestrained exponential population growth is sustainable, or desirable. I myself say that Malthus is wrong for another reason. Malthus said something like ‘if you give poor people more food and a better life, then they have more kids, and that leads to an initial exponential population growth, and therefore we should let them starve for our own benefit, the benefit of the elite white Western European class”. This is wrong because if you raise poor people out of poverty, they tend to have less kids, to such an extent that the birth rate per woman in most Western countries is already below breakeven. If you try to keep people poor, they will have many more kids, and people of all kinds tend to be quite tenacious on living, and so letting them starve doesn’t work so well, in addition to be morally horrific, selfish, racist, and colonialist.
The ecomodernists that I know, e.g. Michael Shellenberger, Norman Borlaug, etc., are all quite clear that we need to address the overpopulation problem at the same time as addressing climate change and pressing environmental conditions. They simply disagree with the traditional neo-Malthusian environmentalists, aka the Greens, in the causes and therefore the solutions. The neo-Malthusians think that the solution is to keep poor people poor, and to make everyone else poor, and to make people “live in harmony with nature”, which is and always has been a romantic pipe dream, see the “Noble Savage” myth, which is horribly racist and offensive. The ecomodernists recognize that the only effective and only moral way to reduce population growth to even or negative values is to raise poor people out of poverty, and humans have never “lived in harmony with nature” and therefore the solution is to remove humans from direct contact with nature and put them into cities, and all of this requires a higher-energy lifestyle. Even material shortages can often be addressed by recycling, which frequently requires more energy than mining new material. Everything is about energy. The fundamental divide between an ecomodernist like myself, and the traditional Green environmentalists, is that ecomodernists believe that the way forward is clean, cheap, abundant energy, and the Greens believe that clean, cheap, abundant energy is the foremost enemy. This is the major reason why the Greens are on the wrong side of nuclear power and also on the wrong side of inorganic fertilizer.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/01/forgotten-benefactor-of-humanity/306101/https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/11/if-nuclear-power-is-so-safe-why-are-we-so-afraid-of-it/https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/14/the-real-reason-they-hate-nuclear-is-because-it-means-we-dont-need-renewables/https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/10/09/anti-nuclear-bias-of-u-n-ipcc-is-rooted-in-cold-war-fears-of-atomic-and-population-bombs/http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/1/11/jerry-browns-secret-war-on-clean-energyPS no heroes.
Gerrard, it took me like two seconds to secure the actual quotation:
“That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,
That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,
That the superior power of population is repressed by moral restraint, vice and misery.”
Those are observations, not prognostications.
(I do like your persistence, if not your technique)
(The mathy bit you don’t dispute: “If the subsistence for man that the earth affords was to be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what the whole world at present produces, this would allow the power of production in the earth to be absolutely unlimited, and its ratio of increase much greater than we can conceive that any possible exertions of mankind could make it … yet still the power of population being a power of a superior order, the increase of the human species can only be kept commensurate to the increase of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity acting as a check upon the greater power.”)
This particular thing is not an observation. It’s an armchair asspull. Real observations show that this claim is completely false. Real observations show that when the means of subsistence is increased beyond a certain critical level (in conjunction with other factors), then birth rates per woman become less than breakeven, and populations would decrease in size. Again, that is Malthus’s critical error – an error that is repeated by many Greens today.
https://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table/by-year
(Next, you’ll pick a wealthy country with population decrease, and I’ll note the second condition (the increase) and so forth. Predictable)
To John Morales
God damn. I don’t mind someone who is wrong and ignorant, but you’re aggressively wrong and ignorant. You could find out that you’re wrong with just a modicum of research. The proper thing to do when you haven’t done the research is to admit “I don’t know”. But no, gotta be the fool. Spoiler: Ever hear of this thing called “immigration”?
Ex:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/22/17376536/fertility-rate-united-states-births-women
You can find plenty of other sources that all say the same thing. This fact is not in contention by practically anyone. You’re the first that I’ve ever found which has been so aggressively assertive in spite of their total ignorance of this topic. It’s impressive.
You are not as smart as you think you are.
PS: IIRC, increased life expectancies is also a large part of the story.
Yeah, it increases population. Go figure.
Heh. I shall spare everyone yet another link to demographic realities.
And, guess what? Increased life expectancy also increases population.
(You are fun!)
[I do like it how I link to actual numbers, you refer to factors to dispute that]
You say:
I draw your attention to the bit I quoted directly in-line:
“the total fertility rate […] 1.76 in the US.”
“By 2018, it declined […] to 1.72”
Those look a lot like numbers to me. And relevant numbers for this dispute, and numbers which are more relevant to the dispute than yours too.
Seriously. Do you have a reading disability? Is there something I can do to help you understand what I write? Or are you just trolling again?
Sorry, I realize I have to spell it out.
Malthus says that more material wealth, food, etc., causes people to have more kids. That is what he means when he says “That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase”. He is not referring to increases in population from immigration or from increasing life spans. He is specifically referring to increased birth rates per woman (which depends in part on decreased childhood mortality and other factors).
I said that claim of Malthus is false.
You cited the US as a counter-example, and cited total population numbers of the US year over year.
I cited the actual birth rates per woman, and I explained how your numbers seem to disagree, and that’s because your numbers include population increases from immigration and increasing life expectancy.
I should carry the day.
You are a fucking obtuse, arrogant troll.
O Gerrard, I adduce population figures, whereas you adduce fertility rates.
More goodies, more population, said Malthus. USA has more goodies, and has… what?
Heh. Again? I never started.
Gerrard,
<snicker>
(Such obtuseness!)
But then, I cited population, which has yet to decrease, but hasn’t failed to increase.
(As per Malthus, incidentally)
[truism: go-getters go where the getting is good]
@John Morales
People don’t just magically pop into existence upon crossing the USA border. One more citizen for the USA means one less citizen for the country where they were born. As long as the average birth rate remains below 2.1 children per woman, the overall number of humans on this planet will decrease. Sure, rising life expectancy means that it will take an extra decade or two for the old people to die, which is why it will be a while until the overall number of people in some country starts rapidly declining, but once the average birth rate for the entire planet falls below 2.1, there will be no other magical way for extra human beings to pop into existence, and thus the overall number of people will go down.
Incidentally, in 2018 in Latvia the fertility rate was 1.61. That’s way below 2.1. When Latvia joined the EU, a lot of people emigrated to the UK and Ireland. Wealthier EU countries might be having a stable population right now, but that’s only because simultaneously in the Eastern Europe there’s a quick population decline due to all the emigration. By the way, here’s a graph of the population age structure in Latvia — https://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/latvia-population-pyramid-2016.gif Where do you think it will go from here? Right now the population decline is very quick due to emigration. After a few decades the population decline will become even faster thanks to all the older people dying.
Moreover, it is proven beyond any doubt that once people have food security, education for girls and women, as well as access to contraceptives, birth rates decline below 2.1 children per women. Once they have other options, most women decide that being constantly pregnant sucks.
Andreas:
“That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase”.
So, did the means of subsistence increase in Latvia, then?
Things looking up? More of everything for everyone, there?
Latvia, eh? What about global population, then?
(Heh. You appealed to that other country, because it was not to you I addressed my prognostication, thus changing the outcome)
And culture has nothing to do with that, right.
(BTW, ever heard of Quiverfull?)
I don’t particularly know or care about Malthus et al, so this will necessarily be a bit to the side of current remarks,
I am concerned that “free, clean, energy” will cause people to, collectively, consume more within the same (untenable) carbon footprint, rather than consume the same amount (or a smaller amount) within a smaller footprint. People who buy Priuises, for instance, apparently start to drive more. It is well-known that widening a highway simply results on more traffic and the same congestion as before the widening, and so on. It appears to be human nature to consume as much as is permitted. Permitted legally, socially, and I suppose by physics.
There needs to be an adjustment in attitudes, at least, to go along with any efforts to technology our way out of this mess, and as a consumer of energy and materials, I am acutely aware of how difficult it is. It is possible that rationing enforced with guns might be the only way to prevent people from consuming the world, I don’t know.
I do know that my family, despite being acutely conscious of the effects of it, simply cannot seem to stop riding in airplanes. There is always a justification. We try to avoid it, but… *this* trip is necessary and unavoidable because… And we can afford it, and nobody is stopping us, and it’s socially normal, so there’s no back-pressure except our own will which is not up to the task.
This is where people like Greta can usefully apply leverage. They can adjust social norms, so people frown at you and purse their lips disapprovingly when you talk about flying out east to see so and so, rather than simply nodding and wishing you a safe trip. At least, one can hope.
To Andrew
Yes. It’s not all roses. I think that proper targeted regulation might be necessary. For example, put a hefty tax on cell phones and other “disposable” electronics, and/or require cell phones and other “disposable” electronics to last much longer, e.g. not be disposable. And/or require good recycling of it (can all of the parts be recycled if you have enough energy to blow?). I don’t have all the answers, but I am pretty well convinced that the only way out of this is forward, forward to a better standard of living for most of the poor people on the planet, living better lives. Sure the top 0.1% will have to cut back, but that’s entirely possible, politically. I just fear that the neo-Malthusian, regressive, hippie “live in harmony with nature” romantic bullshit is too ingrained and cannot be removed in time to save the environment and human civilization. And god damn, I want to be a hippie, and I used to respect hippies, but this strain of thought is the most dangerous sentiment for the continuation of human civilization.
Missed this.
Yes, and that is why the future relies on nuclear energy with its near zero CO2 emissions.
Energy is not like other raw materials. With enough energy, I think we can recycle other materials. You can deal with resource scarcity as long as you have the energy. It all depends on clean, cheap, abundant, greenhouse gas free electricity, and we are so lucky that nuclear is that.
@ John Morales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate
Are you even aware of the statistics?
For example, in Germany the fertility rate is 1.6. Are you seriously suggesting that Germans refuse to have more kids, because they cannot afford to buy a sufficient amount of food to feed them? Hell, even in the USA, the Christian nation where sex education is considered evil and abstinence is the only God-approved method of contraception, the fertility rate is only 1.8 kids per woman, that’s also below 2.1. If not for immigrants, the USA would be experiencing a depopulation. When women are actually given a choice, it turns out that they don’t even want to breed that much.
More statistics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
Declining birth rates is a worldwide phenomenon. In 1950 the average fertility rate in the entire world was 5 kids per woman. Nowadays it has dropped to 2.5. When life quality and income increases, people stop breeding as much. It’s happening everywhere in the world.
Gerrand@59: If I have this right, the thesis is that if we apply technology really really hard, then we will reach a kind of breakeven point, we’ll pass some threshold, and then our footprint (bootprint?) on the planet’s various systems becomes abruptly much lighter?
I have even less experience with planetary scale engineering projects than some people, but this makes me very uncomfortable.
In the first place, having built a lot of stuff, I can testify that it’s basically always harder than it looks. In the second place, this feels a little like a gigantic rocket launch. It feels like the conceit is that we double-down on what we’re doing, in the hopes that it eventually busts us free of that which holds us back. No, I have no specifics to point to, this is a hand-wavy analogy.
The penalty for failure here sounds pretty bad. What if we do whatever we perceive as necessary to create this notional hermetically sealed energy-intensive life, separate from the Earth in some useful senses, a sort of terrestrial space station if you will, and it doesn’t work in the end? Whatever we burned in the attempt remains burnt, and we didn’t even achieve escape velocity?
This is very much me approaching the project as a systems guy, kind of on day one in that initial meeting, if you will. So, I am simply throwing my experience up there, and seeing if it makes sense. It may not. Perhaps I have it all wrong, and the plan is thoroughly low-impact/incremental? I dunno, but I’m interested and I’m listening.
.
Andrew @#57
I’ll apply some pressure. I haven’t flown anywhere since 1989. Trips to Europe from the UK have been by ferry and train, cycling when we arrived at our destination, later once the Channel Tunnel was open all the way by train. I don’t feel I have been deprived by this decision, far from it I have avoided a lot of discomfort. Within the UK I do drive on long trips, my excuse being that my rescue dogs would not be suited to train journeys, but I the further I go for a holiday the longer I stay, not really adequate, but there we are. Yes it means I don’t see some of my friends and family very often, but again there we are.
Thanks, Jazzlet. You’re not going to get me off airplanes alone, but every little bit helps. Cultures change with a slow, steady, drip. Keep it up.
To Andrew Molitor
You’re right. It’s dangerous. It’s uncertain. I don’t see any other way out. Poor people are going to industrialize at least a little bit, and they’re going to do it with coal unless we give them something else in the same neighborhood of cost. It’s an insurmountable political fiat problem.
So, everyone calmed down, yet?
Greta is an admirable young lady who is resolute, genuine and well-spoken, not just telegenic. And she offers a very simple message. Admirable for some.
Thing is, I don’t think just those aspects suffice for the spectacle at hand.
The visits with world leaders, the awards… all that stuff.
(How dare I? ;) )
Andreas @60, bit bored, so needlessly:
Moreso than you, I reckon.
For (I think) the fourth time: Why the world population won’t exceed 11 billion | Hans Rosling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI
(I can adduce other sources, if you doubt me.
But yes, I am referring to the human aspect of Malthus’ contentions, not the mathy ones)
John Morales@#65:
So, everyone calmed down, yet?
I will note that that rhetorical strategy is basically the same one that the alt-right is currently favoring: “triggering the libs” etc. Implication of other people being upset is that what they are saying is less valuable, and that your pose of being cool calm and rational implies your opinions are more valuable.
I don’t know when it was you and I first started swapping comments back on Pharyngula, but let me assure you that you have never moved the needle of my emotions with a comment or an idea. That is neither a good nor a bad thing, but if you’re imaginging that you’re upsetting people you are probably overrating yourself.
Yes, same goes for me. It takes a lot to evoke emotions in me, and online comments simply cannot do that.
It goes way beyond that if the speaker is female.
In public speaking lessons a person is generally taught to sound like they are passionate about the topic they are talking about. After all, nobody wants to listen to a speech delivered in a robotic monotone voice where it sounds like even the speaker considers the topic boring.
When a woman delivering a public speech sounds passionate, people will say, “She’s too emotional, she’s not thinking clearly, therefore she’s not worth listening to.” A few will even say that, “She must be having PMS right now.”
When a woman sounds calm and stoic, people will either claim that she’s boring to listen to or they will criticize her for being cold and loveless, which makes her a bad person, which implies that she’s not worth listening to.
Some critics will even invent some bullshit regardless of what the woman actually does. For example, Greta sounds passionate about preventing the climate change, but some climate skeptics will still claim that, “She’s doing all this, because it’s exciting for a 16 years old person to travel and be in the center of attention, therefore she is not worth listening to.”
If you are a young woman who wants to be taken seriously, it doesn’t matter what you do, you are still screwed. The society will make it clear in no ambiguous terms that a woman should go back to the kitchen.
Speaking of “triggering the libs” in specific, I have seen plenty of occasions where the conservative person who was doing the “triggering” seemed pretty emotional about it, while the supposedly triggered audience showed hardly any emotions at all. “I am calm and rational while you are swayed by emotions and incapable of clear though, (therefore I’m right and you are wrong)” is merely a proclamation and often there is no factual basis at all in it. Never mind the obvious fact that being upset or angry doesn’t imply that therefore somebody’s opinion is less valuable.
To John
I don’t know what your goal is in this conversation, besides the apparent conclusion that you’re purposefully trolling your audience. I say that Malthus was wrong in his conclusion that “more food availability and better quality of life, etc. leads to increasing birth rates per woman”. You say I’m wrong and defend Malthus’s conclusion. Then, you post a video that supports my position and contradicts Malthus. If you’re not trolling, then I have to ask: Do you actually know what Malthus wrote? Is that the point of the disagreement? Again, the core claim that Malthus wrote that I’m claiming is wrong is “more food availability and better quality of life, etc. leads to increasing birth rates per woman”. Now, it seems that you agree with me, and so I’m left completely lost as to what the fuck you were talking about in the first place, and what was going on through your head for the entire conversation. I am left none-the-wiser, and I am in the exact position where I started: 1- Malthus was fundamentally wrong because of a critical error that came from his ass instead of from observation, and 2- You’re a troll.
Gerrard, I know you don’t get me.
“If the subsistence for man that the earth affords was to be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what the whole world at present produces, this would allow the power of production in the earth to be absolutely unlimited, and its ratio of increase much greater than we can conceive that any possible exertions of mankind could make it … yet still the power of population being a power of a superior order, the increase of the human species can only be kept commensurate to the increase of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity acting as a check upon the greater power.
— Malthus T. R. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Chapter 2, p. 8”
Human proclivities are not fixed, but the difference between exponential and geometric growth is.
Because Andreas ventured to attempt to educate me about demographics in a manner that I perceived as condescending. As I intimated, I’ve posted that video several times (different blogs, admittedly) recently, since it’s a good summary of the current situation and expectations. Population pyramids, birthrates, longevity, that sort of thing. Which is to say, birthrates alone don’t tell the whole story.
1. His was an equally cogent summary of the then-current situation and expectations, and should be understood in that manner.
2. Your acumen is duly noted.
PS
To converse.
… or you could look at Malthus as offering a warning rather than a prognostication, much as Orwell. But that’s a subtler perspective.
In the spirit of contribution, an antecedent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn_Cullis-Suzuki
Marcus,
Actually, I am pretty emotional.
Well, I started commenting on Pharyngula in November 2005, before it moved to SB. When did you start?
(A long time to keep a pose, no?)
John. Look. This is what you wrote:
This line: “That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase” is wrong. It’s simply wrong. It is a prognostication, e.g. a prediction, and it is wrong. Your own video argues strenuously that it is wrong. Your video argues well that population size will cap around 10 or 11 billion in spite of increasing subsistence, material wealth, and material consumption. In other words, your video shows that population size will not continue to increase, and that it will not continue to increase for reasons other than lack of food, material wealth, material comfort, level of material consumption, etc.
I don’t understand how you can post that video, and yet still defend your original quote of Malthus that I reproduced here. They flatly contradict each other.
And fundamentally, it is all about birth rates per woman. Increasing life expectancy can temporarily lead to population growth in spite of a fertility rate below breakeven over a short time period, but life expectancy is not increasing anywhere near enough to continue population growth in the long term when fertility rates are so far below 2.
PS:
Well, the condescension would be well deserved. Your behavior here and for the entire time that I’ve known is a combination of trolling plus supreme narcissism similar to Trump where you can never be wrong, and you’re so smart, and you just feel so witty by saying the right thing but unclearly, and waiting for the other people to decipher your opaque posts and see how smart you are. It’s self-serving bullshit. It’s masturbation. You are not as smart and witty as you think you are. You’re just an asshole.
PPS:
I’m still also supremely pissed at you for being so full of yourself that you never bother to fully read what I write. I swear that you have strawmanned me more than anyone else that I’ve ever known, often in context where I’ve explicitly said the exact opposite a few posts away. This is why I tell you to go fuck yourself.
Gerrard,
Other than to adduce it, it is not my own video.
I already told acknowledged I accept you do not understand me.
No need to repeat yourself.
Exceeding the replacement rate, actually. But fine, the population base, longevity, and other factors are utterly inconsequential, for you.
I do have help from my interlocutors, ofttimes.
Hard not to feel smart, those times.
—
Regarding your feelings of irritation and frustration, remember that Marcus told me that “if you’re imaginging that you’re upsetting people you are probably overrating yourself.”
So, whom do I believe? You, or Marcus?
(Relax, I tend to believe you)
John, are you like 12 years old or something? Jesus.
Thanks, Gerrard. ‘Tis good to know that, though I think of myself as a crusty old cynic, others think of me as young at heart.
In the news:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-12/greta-thunberg-continues-her-work-after-nobel-prize-loss/11596876
Paradoxical, no?
(If striking is her work, then not striking would be the actual striking, instead of being back at work)
This is more like it: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/greta-thunberg-declines-award-climate-crisis
In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/29/greta-thunberg-files-application-to-trademark-her-name