We need that, but for polluters — Kenosha Kid

Where the hell is the left wing QAnon for the polluters and the policymakers who subsidize and legislate for them, in exchange for their "speech"?

They might have some kooky, woo ideas, but boy would I take them.

If covid is a dress rehearsal for the climate crisis, I don't like how its turning out. How many people have to be killed and mutilated before Trump and the right wing are exposed for the frauds they are? After turning the US into a cesspit of death and disease, nonetheless the motherfucker nearly won again. Similarly, how hot does it have to get, how much death destruction and displacement does there need to be? Covid suggests, *quite* a lot indeed.

Good point, no doubt I would be posing the same question to the philosophical discussion newsletter of the day.

Still, climate change is more of a "when", as opposed to nuclear armageddon's "if".

The only people here who have underwent a large scale catastrophe of the potential magnitude of the coming crisis are people who have lived through wars and natural disasters. I suspect they are in the vast minority here. In my life the national dislocations I've undergone are 9/11, Trump, and Covid. Pretty small fry in the scheme of things. Other than that, I've only experieced personal tragedies. If I were to die now, these would be my personal "worsts". I wonder if the majority of us have the conceptual framework to properly conceive true calamity.

"Morality" isn't very well suited to decide the future of the species. — Bitter Crank

I wouldn't suggest that it is. But I think the question should be of great relevance to individuals who want to avoid the regret of seeing their progency enter maturity into a living hell.

Still, climate change is more of a "when", as opposed to nuclear armageddon's "if". — hypericin

How do you suppose that looked in 1945 and into the 1950s? Perhaps you don't remember the "duck and cover" drills that schoolkids did in anticipation of the Soviet nukes that were expected to come flying in any day.

How 'Duck-and-Cover' Drills Channeled America's Cold War Anxiety

Where the hell is the left wing QAnon for the polluters and the policymakers who subsidize and legislate for them, in exchange for their "speech"? — hypericin

:rofl: Exactly!

Then how is it ok to impose this situation on any child, let alone your own? — hypericin

Even assuming suffering negates the value of life, which I don't, the world is improving over time: https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/

Even assuming suffering negates the value of life, which I don't — Hanover

Imagine the worst depressive episode of your life. Multiply it by 10, and make it unremitting, over the course of your entire life. Such a life has no value: certainly none to the liver of that life.

Imagine the worst depressive episode of your life. Multiply it by 10, and make it unremitting, over the course of your entire life. Such a life has no value: certainly none to the liver of that life. — hypericin

I just did your thought experiment, and I disagree.

But even should I agree that there is an imaginable life not worth living, those lives are few and far between, and based upon the trajectory of things, far fewer lives will be of the miserable type you seek to describe.

I just did your thought experiment, and I disagree. — Hanover

I would suggest you are fortunate enough to have never experienced major depression. For me, if I experienced just my worst state all the time, never mind 10x, and there was no hope of relief, I would absolutely end my life.

How would the optimists respond to this:

Improving metrics of quality of life in recent history reflect increasing prosperity.
Population has increased in parallel with these metrics.
Increasing or even maintaining prosperity for the current population has required and will require putting large amounts of carbon in the air
This carbon, in the near term, is projected with our best predictive ability, to cause near-term side effects which will dramatically reduce prosperity.

Therefore, whether we stop putting carbon in the air, or continue to do so, prosperity can be expected to decline dramatically.
Therefore, improving metrics, which reflect increasing prosperity, can be expected to have no predictive power, even in the near term.

Therefore, whether we stop putting carbon in the air, or continue to do so, prosperity can be expected to decline dramatically. — hypericin

This goes a bit to another thread, but...

It doesn't have to be so.

In fact, if people are more prosperous, they will do and they can do more to fight climate change. To tackle climate change one has to make huge investments. Those investments won't happen if nobody is making them. If we insist on making people poorer and wreck our economies, those crucial investments won't be done. We will end up using the old emitting technology as then there is no other option.

And there are many options we can do.

Let's take the example of France: It has the 7th largest GDP in the world. It's overall carbon emissions is 19th. Hence many countries with far smaller industrial output have far more carbon emissions. Why?

France has opted for nuclear power, just to give one reason. It hasn't been cowed by the Fukushima accident (or earlier by the Chernobyl accident) to drop all it's nuclear power plants. It has let other countries to decide the energy policy on the ignorant whims of the voters. For example Sweden opted by a referendum to banish all nuclear power at a certain year and go for alternative energy production. When the year came Sweden was actually putting out more nuclear energy than it did during the referendum.

So just for starters, what if all countries would mimick the French?

I would suggest you are fortunate enough to have never experienced major depression. For me, if I experienced just my worst state all the time, never mind 10x, and there was no hope of relief, I would absolutely end my life. — hypericin

I'm sorry to hear of your struggles, I truly am, but what you describe isn't evidence of a deteriorating world that would dissuade me from having children, but is evidence of a subjective response disproportionate to the external stresses. What you experience is not the result of the world worsening because, as I've stated, the world is not worsening. If the question is now whether it is moral to have children knowing that a certain percentage will suffer from a variety of illnesses and pain, I'd still answer that it is, mainly for two reasons: First, the level of pain you describe is aberrational, and second, I place an inherent value on life, despite the suffering it might entail. Even if you reject the second part of this, you are left with the fact that most do not suffer to the level you describe so much so that morality would dictate that we never risk having children for fear they'll overly suffer.

Therefore, whether we stop putting carbon in the air, or continue to do so, prosperity can be expected to decline dramatically.
Therefore, improving metrics, which reflect increasing prosperity, can be expected to have no predictive power, even in the near term. — hypericin

None of us are prophets, and all we predict could be incorrect, but the data shows steady and clear signs of worldly improvement over long periods of time. Whether this trend could be disrupted for whatever reason is speculative and there's no reason not to take a optimistic approach instead of a pessimistic one, considering we have seen that over time that unpredicted ingenuity often finds resolutions to problems.

In fact, if people are more prosperous, they will do and they can do more to fight climate change — ssu

Trickle down climate remediation? People are already far more prosperous than the planet can sustain, and they ain't doing shit.

what if all countries would mimick the French? — ssu

What if? What if? I thought you just couldn't understand why i was ignoring our blissful match into tomorrow. Even suggesting it was just fashionable virtue signaling or something. Now we're already down to what ifs .

There is a lot we can do. The problem is, we aren't. People are oblivious, indifferent, or depressed: outside of that triangle, there is precious little. Worse, Governments are captured by interests that are perfectly happy profiting their way to extinction.

BTW, Nuclear is not the answer, primarily because there just isn't enough uranium. But that is for another thread.

I'm sorry to hear of your struggles, I truly am, but what you describe isn't evidence of a deteriorating world that would dissuade me from having children, but is evidence of a subjective response disproportionate to the external stresses. — Hanover

You lost the thread of the argument. I wasn't suggesting it was. I was pointing out that there is very much such thing as a life not
worth living.

First, the level of pain you describe is aberrational, — Hanover

Abberrational where? Syria? Yemen? I'm glad for you the concept of misery is so alien it strikes you as an abberration.

you are left with the fact that most do not suffer to the level you describe — Hanover

Again, we are not talking about modern Sweden. We're taking about the Sweden of today's babies maturity, when climate triggered systemic collapse may really take off.

None of us are prophets, and all we predict could be incorrect, but the data shows steady and clear signs of worldly improvement over long periods of time. — Hanover

You say we aren't prophets, but then prophesize with data. I say other data much more convincingly paints a very different picture.

unpredicted ingenuity often finds resolutions to problems. — Hanover

All the ingenuity of the US couldn't even save it from COVID, a problem that is about 10^23 times more tractable.