In 1969, the physicist Albert Bartlett gave a now famous lecture entitled Arithmetic, Population and Energy.👇
It begins with the line: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
In the context of global challenges such as #climatechange, pandemics & financial crises, the inability to understand exponential growth can lead to delayed responses, inadequate policies, and missed opportunities for intervention.
@Climatehistories In his book Overshoot, "...Catton is making a positive argument for change, rather than misanthropic framework to label our predicament"
and once our predicament is understood, we can then agree and take action.
Quite simply: As human population grows and our footprint expands, more human habitat means less habitat for endangered species. Pile on invasive species (like domestic cats) and climate change and native species don't stand a chance.
But the author almost entirely misses Section 7 in their word-fluffed up article, where critical habitat is defined as off-limit to developers. But developers rule in #hawaii
I agree.
There are some of us (me included,) who think that #overshoot already happened a long time ago. Still, we don't have a choice but to try, even against the odds.
Yes, the #overshoot theory entails that the human race has already failed.
The question is, however, in how many decades we can still achieve a climate similar to the one we have been enjoying in the past decades again?
Life is probabilities and statistics. If you are on a life boat, your chances of survival might be just 5%. You still fight.
On the other hand, one passenger on the boat might need sacrifice himself for the...
Reading this one can't help but notice how inefficient and wasteful #capitalism is at allocating resources. A global #socialism with #degrowth could easily provide for 10 billion people, all within planetary boundaries (so no more #ClimateChange ), while eradicating #poverty and #inequalities in the process.
LIVING IN THE #METACRISIS with Jonathan Rowson
"Jonathan Rowson is co-founder and Director of Perspectiva and author of the Joyous Struggle on Substack. He was previously Director of the Social Brain Centre at the RSA where he authored a range of influential research reports on behaviour change, climate change and spirituality. Jonathan is an applied philosopher with degrees from Oxford, Harvard and Bristol Universities. In a former life he was a #chess Grandmaster and British Champion and views the game as a continuing source of insight and inspiration. His book, "The Moves that Matter – A Grandmaster on the Game of Life" was published in 2019. #overshoot#ClimateChange#permaculture#infopollution Bioregion #GreatTransition#collapse#cosmolocalism#complexity#potential#consciousness https://youtu.be/IjOQB608ylQ
In regard to the #ClimateCrisis, IMO, there is no shortage of solutions for many myriad, curiously connected, problems (not to mention #overshoot#predicaments). Where we're slacking, it seems, is deployment of them (at least the scale of the Civilian Conservation Corps [1933 to '42], for example). Landscape rehabilitation, i.e. 'hands-on' application of long-practiced earth- & water-work techniques, used by humans over 1000s of years; #CheckDams / pits / channels / #acequias / #ponds; mimicking beavers, essentially. Slowing water down, spreading it out, & sinking it in, as the #permaculture aphorism goes. The gathering together of actual human beings to lay hands on and apply simple tools to generate radical regenerative shifts in the regional #watershed#ecology & #hydrology (as well as health & trade) is being modeled for the world to see, in various locales. It's one thing to watch a video. To make it happen everywhere is both necessary AND possible. Start yesterday if not sooner.https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwIZ5tgj-b_R8F_TpYQRhkoQCNvx7evTm
“A collapse is the process at the end of which basic needs (water, food, housing, clothing, energy, etc.) can no longer be provided [at a reasonable cost] to a majority of the population by services under legal supervision.”
Now then.
I've analysed the data. I've carefully considered what it's telling us.
As a result I have a hypothesis, likely to be a robust law of political economy.
"The more a politician uses the word 'growth', the less they have any idea how to fix the economic, social and environmental crisis that is engulfing the world.
Description: Our day-to-day experiences over the past decade have taught us that there must be limits to our tremendous appetite for energy, natural resources, and consumer goods. Even utility and oil companies now promote conservation in the face of demands for dwindling energy reserves. And for years some biologists have warned us of the direct correlation between scarcity and population growth. These scientists see an appalling future riding the tidal wave of a worldwide growth of population and technology.
“My emotional response is anger. With every square kilometre of deforestation, every fraction of degree of global warming, we are raising the risk of a tipping point. Yet, it is incredibly simple to just stop deforestation. It is an absolutely unique ecosystem that we really can’t afford to lose”, says PIK scientist Niklas Boers, co-author of the newly published study on the South American monsoon in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/04/south-american-monsoon-heading-towards-tipping-point-likely-to-cause-amazon-dieback
#Overshoot
We did.
The remaining question for me is how quickly we can make the northern parts of South America and of Africa, as well as the Middle East etc. inhabitable again for unborn? generations.
The #ClimateBreakdown is still picking up speed*, tipping points will be like using the "turbo boost" on KIT in Knight Rider.
And even if not, 300 mn. to 2 bn. #ClimateRefugees will mean the breakdown of civilization as we know it.
#CapitalismIsKillingUs: If the world’s highest emitting countries only focus on technological climate solutions (like switching to renewable energy) and not #systemic behavioral ones (like buying less stuff and using less energy), the authors argue, #climatechange may be slowed. But #ecological#overshoot—which includes symptoms like #biodiversity loss, #ecosystem collapse, and #oceanacidification—will worsen. And as overshoot worsens, the authors argue, “the likelihood of societal breakdown increases.”
"""
It can be very easy to live our lives and only occasionally glimpse the reality. (...) But when we zoom out and look at the sum total of our impacts, the story is clear. Put bluntly, we are eating away at our own life support systems. And this has happened extraordinarily recently. If we keep going, we risk triggering a dramatic and potentially irreversible change in living conditions.
"""
@Saupreiss@SheDrivesMobility
(2/2)
...es ist/wäre einfacher, etwas grundsätzlich zu ändern, was sich nicht durch Lobbyismus, der in vielen Ländern, nicht nur den USA, viel mächtiger ist, als man gemeinhin denkt, wieder zurückdrehen lässt, mit mehr Basisdemokratie.
In Deutschland gehört das Grundgesetz geändert.
Aber das steht bei keiner der Parteien im Bundestag im Wahlprogramm, soweit ich weiß.
Auch deshalb: #overshoot
Für diese und mindestens die nächste Generation kommt vieles zu spät.
//
Wofür sind eigentlich diese Warntage, wenn die eh nicht gut funktionieren?
Äußerdem wovor sollen wir genau gewarnt werden und was dann?
Ich meine wenn Kim Jong Un und Putin durchdrehen und uns so ein Ding dann trifft (oder vielleicht auch nicht ich bin noch nicht überzeugt von der Qualität Nordkoreanischer Waffen) ist es dann nicht einfach zu spät?
Ich halte es da ganz mit dem Ökonom John Meynard Keynes:
In the long run, we're all dead.
Ausserdem bin ich zwischenzeitlich von #Overshoot überzeugt und 1-2 Mrd. Klimaflüchtlinge wird unsere globalen Gesellschaft nicht ohne Totalkollaps überleben.
Wie Buddha sagte:
"Verweile nicht in der Vergangenheit, träume nicht von der Zukunft. Konzentriere dich auf den gegenwärtigen Moment."
Right now, could you prepare a slice of toast with zero embodied carbon emissions?
Since at least the 2000s, big polluters have tried to frame carbon emissions as an issue to be solved through the purchasing choices of individual consumers.
Yet, right now, millions of people couldn't prepare a slice of toast without causing carbon emissions, even if they wanted to.
In many low-density single-use-zoned suburbs, the only realistic option for getting to the store to get a loaf of bread is to drive. The power coming out of the mains includes energy from coal or gas.
But.
Even if they invested in solar panels, and an inverter, and a battery system, and only used an electric toaster, and baked the loaf themselves in an electric oven, and walked/cycled/drove an EV to the store to get flour and yeast, there are still embodied carbon emissions in that loaf of bread.
Just think about the diesel powered trucks used to transport the grains and packaging to the flour factory, the energy used to power the milling equipment, and the diesel fuel used to transport that flour to the store.
Basically, unless you go completely off grid and grow your own organic wheat, your zero emissions toast just ain't happening.
And that's for the most basic of food products!
Unless we get the infrastructure in place to move to a 100% renewables and storage grid, and use it to power fully electric freight rail and zero emissions passenger transport, pretty much all of our decarbonisation efforts are non-starters.
This is fundamentally an infrastructure and public policy problem, not a problem of individual consumer choice.
Even if absolute decoupling is possible, we can no longer view it as a reasonable strategy. If we started in the 60's, sure, maybe we could have maintained a slow-growing economy while staying within Earth's biophysical constraints.
But we didn't.
We are now so far outside safe bounds (#overshoot) that the theoretical possibility of absolute decoupleing seems moot, at best. And perhaps a dangerous distraction.
Immer wieder lesen wir in den Social-Media-Kommentaren, dass Deutschland kaum Einfluss auf die Erderwärmung habe. Das ist falsch. Weitere Fakten, mit denen Sie Mythen zum #Klimawandel entgegentreten können: http://bpaq.de/faktencheck_klimawandel