Yes, I've read tons of stuff like this.

It won't work. You can absolutely trim a lot of fat from the modern lifestyle, but then you'll be left with a residual. Meanwhile the developing world will keep developing and we have no right to order them to stop.

The idea that it's not possible is bullshit too, and it's still bullshit even if you ignore nuclear power.

https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/0...

Back in the 2000s there was a ton of discourse around peak oil. As part of that, I recall reading very detailed breakdowns written by actual engineers and scientists arguing why you would never have a mass-market EV with the range of a gasoline car and you would never be able to power more than 10-20% of a modern economy with solar power. I own two EVs, one with gas-comparable range, and California currently gets almost 40% of its total electricity (averaged across day and night) from solar, and climbing. There were whole books on this. I think one was called Power Down. It was all 100% wrong.

I also recall reading detailed analyses by aerospace engineers about how you would never have a reusable rocket, that it was simply impossible or would cost so much it wouldn't be practical. First stage reusability is now routine, and second stage reusability is coming.

Detailed breakdowns of why X is impossible have an incredibly poor track record unless they reduce directly to the laws of physics. Will faster than light travel ever be possible? No, and I believe that, because if it was it would mean a huge part of modern physics (not just relativity) is wrong in very bonkers ways.

There is no first principles physics argument for the limits this guy is arguing.

Of course if you imagine infinite growth on a finite planet, that fails. That's a trivial argument. But that's not happening, probably due to birth rates declining. The question I'm addressing is: can this civilization and its near-future extrapolation be powered without fossil fuels? The answer is yes, and again even without nukes. Throw nukes in there and it just gets easier.

IMO this is 100% ideology and is an example of what I call "problemism." A "problemist" is someone who uses a problem as a stalking horse for one and only one solution that turns out to smuggle in some kind of ideological or social agenda.

I see problemism as a dishonest propaganda technique. It's a way to sell the idea without directly selling the idea, instead using concern over some other thing to smuggle it in.

So you know I'm not just picking on the left: right now there's a big freak-out on the right about birth rates. The problemists there argue that it's why we need to get back to ultra-traditional family structures and take rights away from women. They're not interested in any solution that doesn't do that, because they don't actually care about the problem. They only care about taking rights from women.

This guy and those like him only care about degrowth as part of what is probably some kind of anti-industrial political ideology. If the problem could be solved without it, that would be bad as far as they're concerned, just like how the far right doesn't care about solutions to birth rate decline issues that don't involve reactionary social agendas.

Most of these people are anti-capitalists. Thing is, I don't mind that. I don't think capitalism is the ordained perfect system. But if you want to sell me on an alternative to capitalism, argue for it directly on its merits. The test is: if climate change and fossil fuel depletion did not exist, could you still make your argument for abandoning capitalism in favor of your system? If not, then you're engaging in "problemism" to sell bullshit. Because there is no physical reason that you could not drastically cut CO2 emissions without abandoning capitalism. A simple progressive carbon tax combined with cheap renewables could do it. We just lack the political will.

> It's not poor people who stand to lose from degrowth, it's the ultra rich.

Trivially false, and I think this is the root of it. I'm lazy so I asked Claude Fable, but what it gave me is in the same ballpark as a blog post on this I saw a while back that I now can't find.

Question: "Lets say a billionaire spends 100% of their time on boards a medium sized private jet. They also own three 10,000 square foot homes, all of which are heated and cooled 24/7. How much energy do they use? What is that energy use in terms of average European households?"

I used European because Americans are notable energy pigs and can cut a lot without losing much. Europeans are closer to the reasonable baseline.

The total it comes up with for our gas-guzzling fat cat is 96-97 GWh per year. That's including three homes and a continuously operating jet aircraft. This is a totally ridiculous footprint, of course.

Claude Fable says the average European household uses about 15,000 kWh/year in electricity, heating, etc. That means our fat cat corresponds to about 6,400 average European households.

The population of Europe is around 750 million people.

There's about 3000 billionaires worldwide, and if they all lived as absurdly as my caricature they'd use 288 TWh per year.

That corresponds to around 19.2 million European households, or about 2.5% of the energy use of a middle class Europe.

The vast bulk of energy and resource use supports the middle class, and raising people out of poverty.

Inequality probably reduces energy use. If we improved equality it would mean more people with a basic middle class standard of living. A society in which almost everyone has a European middle class standard of living would consume far more energy than one in which a few fat cats live it up and everyone else is poor.

Personally I agree with the left at least a bit on this. I think we have too much inequality. If we reduce inequality, that will increase energy consumption, so we'd better build solar panels and batteries and reactors at the same time.

Last post in this thread for me...

We won't go back. That's the thing, the false option. I think you underestimate how much being poor sucks. I personally call this the "it's better to reign in hell" principle.

So if we are dumb and don't cut emissions, we will "reign in hell," and it'll look like a dark cyberpunk dystopia. There might also be some pretty nasty wars and genocides in there.

I think that's the real choice we have. If we reduce carbon emissions enough, we can blunt the effects of climate change and adapt without too much pain. If we don't, we get to LARP Bladerunner with billions taking shelter in air conditioned mega-blocks when the deadly heat waves hit.

Nature isn't happy life in harmony. Nature is suffering and death. It's an amoral Darwinian meat grinder.

Let me make it concrete. I have kids. Let's say you give me a choice.

Option 1: I go to the future where we live closer to nature, more primitively, but my daughter died of a childhood disease.

Option 2: I go to the future that looks like Bladerunner or Kowloon Walled City with killer heat waves requiring air conditioning to survive, but my child is alive because of modern medicine.

I'd pick two and so would most people, which is why we'll never go back. The infant and child mortality rates alone in "wild nature" are enough to turn people away. It's better to reign in hell.

But I don't think we have to do that. We could do things like carbon taxes, provided we stop spending the social and political capital on guilt trip tactics and back to the land bullshit that will just be ignored, which is why I'm wasting my time ranting about this.

Dude, Germany sets the tone for whole EU and then some more (aka Switzerland, they are extremely pushy also in matters which should be completely upon given country, like citizen gun laws).

They are the biggest economic force bar none (at least for now, lets see in few years when their car industry will be mostly a thing of the past). They steer 500+ million continent like a fiddle.

I have to crap on Merkel here yet again - she was horrible, utterly despicable leader. Much of the backlash in popularity of extreme right across Europe is her doing. She killed nuclear which wasn't in greatest shape, but it was well before we had actual replacements. She studied as nuclear physicist. Europe as a continent would be in much better shape politically, economically, militarily and socially if she didn't get so much power for so long. German ADF is completely her doing.

Of course when she met real power dealers like putin she caved immediately so he played her like those proverbial fiddles.

One third of global emissions is a staggering quantity we presently can't even dream of, and it would buy us a lot of time.

I'd take it.

EV only this year became comparable in prices to gasoline cars thanks to massive efforts by Chinese companies to reduce battery prices and improve drivetrain.

With that further changes can be very quick as forcing EV no longer requires reallocating money from other things.

"A third of the problem" is fucking huge