> Fortunately, “economy is fossil fuels” is nonsense

Is it?

The economy is what we produce and consume. The economy grows when we produce and consume more, it shrinks when we produce and consume less. How do we produce stuff nowadays? With fossil fuels. There is not a single object around you that did not require fossil fuels at some point.

Economy "does well" when we have easy access to fossil fuels, it doesn't when we don't. We can observe the impact on countries where fossil fuels get harder to get. An example would be Europe, where fossil fuels have been harder and harder to get since 2007 (which corresponds to the global peak of conventional oil). Since then, Europe has been slowing down if you look at physical indicators (like which surface is built or what weight is transported by trucks). GDP is artificial, it's arbitrarily modified to "compensate" for inflation.

People in the US love to say that Europe is slowing down because of regulations and laziness and all the smart people moving to the US, but the truth is that it is slowing down because of fossil fuels.

To stop destroying the climate, we need to stop using fossil fuels, and therefore we need to redefine what we expect from "the economy", because without fossil fuels there is no way we keep producing and consuming more.

But that's not all! Even if there was a way (!), it would not resolve the problem of biodiversity loss. We are currently, measurably living in a mass extinction that is happening orders of magnitudes faster than the one of the dinosaurs. If we don't get food problems because of climate change, chances are that we will because of the mass extinction. Climate change is just one existential problem we are facing.

In Europe, we have lost 80% of insects in the last 20 years, and that has NOTHING to do with climate change. Just loss of habitat, which is a consequence of our economy growing (and humans doing what humans do, like tourism and parking lots and cutting trees and overfishing). Climate change will just make that worse, it's just starting.

> It will literally require global economic collapse, mass death and starvation and a civilisational reset.

This is a certainty if we don't do anything. Now the more we do, the more we preserve. It will still be bad, make no mistake. But there is no such thing as "it's too late to act". The less we do, the worse it gets.

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JumpCrisscross 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> There is not a single object around you that did not require fossil fuels at some point

This is sort of like saying the economy is air or the economy is sand. (What is closer to correct is the economy is, within approximation, energy.)

> the truth is that it is slowing down because of fossil fuels

American emissions per capita have been falling alongside rising GDP/capita. Europe’s malaises are broader than this.

> This is a certainty if we don't do anything

If action requires literally replacing and restarting the global economy, there is no hope. Might as well party. If, on the other hand, it’s a rewiring, it’s rational to do.

I thought we learned our lesson around hyperbolic environmental doomerism, but apparently not.

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palata 2 days ago | parent [-]

> American emissions per capita have been falling alongside rising GDP/capita

GDP is artificial. Did you ever check how they correct for inflation? GDP is worth nothing for science, it's just there for economists to do... whatever they do.

> If action requires literally replacing and restarting the global economy, there is no hope. Might as well party.

I don't know how you read that from what I say. I say, "if we don't do anything, we're completely screwed. The more we do, the better it gets". But yeah, if we keep doing what we are doing, we're doomed, that's certain.

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JumpCrisscross a day ago | parent [-]

> GDP is artificial

…all economic metrics are artificial. Society is artificial.

How are you defining an economy? Or is your original statement (“economy is fossil fuels”) just a tautology?

> don't know how you read that from what I say

There is no political system on the planet that can enact and survive economic collapse. If that’s what’s required, this is a fool’s errand.

Fortunately, again, you’re wrong. It’s not required, though I’m sure we’ll keep seeing governments who try the silly route replaced. The best we can do in the meantime is politically sideline folks who believe this stuff.

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palata a day ago | parent [-]

> How are you defining an economy?

I said it above. The economy is what we produce and consume. Because the metrics economists use (like GDP) make no sense does not mean that the economy does not exist.

There are physical metrics to measure how the economy is doing (that I mentioned above). For instance, you can look at how many tons of stuff are being moved by trucks. If many trucks move a lot of stuff, then it means that stuff is being produced and consumed.

Another one you can measure is the surface that is being constructed. When humans in a country build houses and buildings, it is a sign that "the economy" is growing.

And it is difficult to cheat with those "physical" metrics. Whereas cheating GDP is absolutely trivial. Do you know how they correct for inflation? There is no way to "measure" inflation, it's a guesstimate. But depending on how you guesstimate it, you increase or decrease the GDP.

What we see in Europe since 2007 (the peak of fossil fuels for Europe) is that trucks are moving less and less stuff, and the surface built by humans in Europe is slowing down. Those physical estimators show that Europe is slowing down, completely correlated to fossil fuels. GDP is growing, sure... but again GDP is "manipulated" (consciously or not, that's not the point) by the numbers we put in the "inflation" box.

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JumpCrisscross a day ago | parent [-]

> For instance, you can look at how many tons of stuff are being moved by trucks

Gross tonnage is a good input into "what we produce and consume." It's incomplete, however. Grossly. It excludes all services, for example. It's why we abandoned it as a measure after like the early industrial revolution.

(A better one is electricity production, which you can estimate remotely from fuel levels and thermals. It’s also woefully incomplete—the nutters trying to forecast based solely on it are influencers, not fund managers or policymakers, for good reason.)

> Do you know how they correct for inflation?

Yes.

> There is no way to "measure" inflation

This is nonsense. It must be estimated. But so must e.g. "the surface that is being constructed" depending on how one defines surface construction.

There are various measures of inflation of various utility. Some are used to deflate GDP.

Mankiw's Principles of Economics might be a good start if you're serious about your questions. Because by your metrics, decarbonistion is a folly—the measures are probably made up anyway!

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palata a day ago | parent [-]

> Because by your metrics, decarbonistion is a folly—the measures are probably made up anyway!

Not sure if you're consciously being manipulative or not.

Sure, you are more eloquent than I am. But do you understand my point about estimating inflation being a lot more random than other metrics? Making me say that "any kind of metrics is always folly" is just manipulative, I'm sure you understand that it is not what I mean.

> It excludes all services, for example. It's why we abandoned it as a measure after like the early industrial revolution.

Which I'm sure is important for economists doing economy stuff. But I am convinced that there is value in seeing that after 2007, indicators like gross tonnage have been slowing down, and that is correlated with the evolution of fossil fuels.

We cannot eat services, or use them to heat our apartments, can we? Services are a luxury for when everything below works. The risk with the end of fossil fuels is that it will disrupt everything on top of which services are built. I don't think GDP is bringing much in those discussions.

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JumpCrisscross 14 hours ago | parent [-]

> do you understand my point about estimating inflation being a lot more random than other metrics?

Yes. I’d argue inflation metrics are about as easy to fuck with as any emissions math I’ve seen. That doesn’t make either fundamentally wrong. But if one is irredeemably wrong, so is the other.

(In any case, you can deflate your own GDP. Nominal GDP contains zero deflation. There is no similar easy fix for emissions calculations, which I read with much wider error bars than any OECD inflation print.)

> Which I'm sure is important for economists doing economy stuff

Not the billions of people employed in services?

> indicators like gross tonnage have been slowing down, and that is correlated with the evolution of fossil fuels

Global gross tonnage is growing [1]. On the sea, your correlation works because that fleet runs on fossil fuels. If you were trying to measure Chinese economic activity using fossil-fuel metrics, on the other hand, you’d fail.

(Again, your instinct isn’t wrong. Energy is, more or less, the economy. That’s why we can decarbonise without lowering living standards. We can keep energy constant or even growing while reducing fossil-fuel use.)

[1] https://unctadstat.unctad.org/insights/theme/107

	▲	palata 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Global gross tonnage is growing [1] In Europe?

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adrianN 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Fossil fuels can be replaced for every use case by electricity from carbon-free sources and some chemistry. The price point for replacement of course varies by application. There is no reason to assume that we can't have the same kind of economy we have today without fossil fuels. Some things will naturally become more expensive, but other things might also became cheaper.

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palata 2 days ago | parent [-]

> There is no reason to assume that we can't have the same kind of economy

Has there been, in history, the same kind of economy we have today without fossil fuels? No. That's a first reason.

Are there practical replacements for every use case of fossil fuels? Most definitely not! I don't know where you get that. For those replacements we know, it has never been done at scale, so we don't know if it's possible or not. And for those we don't know... well we don't know. Just have a look at what petrochemicals are used for. And how do you make fertilisers without fossil fuels, at today's scale?

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adrianN a day ago | parent [-]

You seem to believe that proof of feasibility is impossible before actually finishing the task. I disagree. And for the record, profit oriented market economies are extremely old. Much older than any large scale use of fossil fuels.

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palata a day ago | parent [-]

> And for the record, profit oriented market economies are extremely old.

Of course it works if you take the part that is convenient to your argument. What about globalised economies?

	▲	adrianN a day ago \| parent [-]
		Trade routes spanned Eurasia before we invented writing. Faster transportation and communication only expanded economic ties. Transportation is something that is fairly easy to do without fossil fuels.