Comment by ch4s3
9 hours ago
These arguments all fell like they're warning that we'll all be drowning in horse manure and running out of guano in 5 years. Likening economic growth to the growth of organisms in a petri dish is the wrong model entirely. We are all the time finding new uses for things and moving on from old ways of powering society. It on;y looks static if you're quite myopic.
Meanwhile we observe a 75% collapse of wildlife world wide since 1970, but yeah sure we are constantly finding new "things"! Amazing!
Most of this is in developing nations where people are expanding agriculture into wild areas rather than implementing innovations in more intensive agriculture. Developed nations are currently increasing forest cover and wild land. You're demonstrating the EXACT myopia I'm referring to.
Ah, we're holding it wrong I guess. It starts to sound a lot like the very strong "we never really actually tried real communism" argument.
3 replies →
> We are all the time finding new uses for things and moving on from old ways of powering society.
Can you provide some examples? With the "all the time" phrasing, something recent would be preferred. All I see for a couple decades is new schemes to further enrich those with money at the expense of those without money.
Sure, we're rapidly expanding battery technology alongside solar and wind which changes the calculus with respect to the externalities of power generation. Many industrial processes have moved from coal to LNG which is safer/cleaner to produce and creates less air pollution and emits less CO2 when burned.
As I mentioned in another comment, agriculture has become incredibly efficient in the broader west and China. We grow far more on far less land and this has involved all sort of innovations. New biotech promises even more gains. We're on the cusp of cereal crops being engineered to fix nitrogen which would dramatically reduce fertilizer use.
Mass timber is another cool example.