BF2S Forums DAST Chat

This is why we should invest more in renewable energy and cut back on our overall energy consumption.

we can hardly convince people to cycle to work or swap out plastic for paper straws. good luck telling them to keep their seed to themselves.

not sure anyone is going to disagree with you that the population explosion is the main driver of all sorts of shortage and climate change. the point is that your solution and scaremongering is about as dated as your phrenology and racial hierarchies — it’s the malthusian alarm that’s about as useful now as it was then.

were you born in 1865 dilbert? it’s really like you came to intellectual maturity and then stopped developing with the victorians. eugenics, population control, the natural right of the white man to take and act as he pleases... there’s a very vast and complicated world-system out there that i’m afraid cannot be solved by your ‘daily mail comment section’ perorations.

we can hardly agree on global economic or legal frameworks, on supranational taxation ... how are we going to get together to enforce global population control? especially with the asymmetries in power and wealth between northern and southern hemispheres, occident and orient?

Last edited by uziq (2019-09-23 03:03:33)

greta is not proposing that she doesn't want any more younger siblings; she's not talking about people having reproductive rights taken away. the climate change protests are generally focussing on, you know, fossil fuels, the petro-economy, plastics, waste, the whole non-renewable gamut. how are you looking at a bunch of fucking SCHOOLCHILDREN protesting and concluding that their message is 'no more children!'.

well done for mentioning that celebrities still charter private jets though. i guess that settles it. green light the alberta pipeline, boys! we've caught the hypocrites in a hot fix. meanwhile the child-less man-child who spends all his money on subaru's or whatever is encouraging mass infertility and arguing against reducing his own emissions. how perfectly fucking quaint

Last edited by uziq (2019-09-23 04:15:13)

why are people worried about it if it's not malthusian? i'd say it's pretty idiosyncratic for you to jump from a series of short-term, solvable technological solutions which can mitigate the issue to 'we need 3 generations of 1 child per family, globally'. ah yes, let's not protest the use of fossil fuels or encourage lifestyle changes. we need a global government imposing fertility treatment on everyone for a century! very feasible.

i'm equally as pessimistic as you are but i think starting out by replacing non-renewables and fossil fuel with cleaner alternatives is a deliverable target. pointing out that people are essentially selfish, short-sighted and inconsiderate is not exactly a revelation. i don't expect people to stop flying to bali for instagram holidays, just like i don't think celebrities or G20 leaders taking private jets everywhere is an 'aha! gotcha!' moment. structural change to our energy and economy is deliverable by law and politics – they are the big questions that law and politics are there to address – whereas telling someone how many kids to have or how many holidays to take is a harder proposition.

we've declared low-emission zones in inner cities. we've taxed wasteful diesel vehicles out of affordable existence for consumers. these are concrete steps that can be extended to shape human behaviour on a wide scale. implementing fertility treatment and global population controls, not so much.

china is the world's biggest market for solar panels. i don't necessarily buy your argument that the developing world can only develop through 50 years of incredibly messy, wasteful, coal-fired infrastructure, as if it's still the 1800s and asia is due for a period of 'dark satanic mills'. though i agree that, politically at least, places like brazil and india right now are hard on the right-wing nationalist train and have little interest in global-ecological issues. the amazon being chopped down for short-term economic gain and india having zero regulations on, well, anything, is a depressing situation. those are things that require a wider paradigm shift away from rapacious capitalism and market competition. still, easier to prescribe marx than to prescribe infertility pills.

if only we could have free universities and the freedom to spend our lives without children, eh? it's almost like all that socialistic, state-democratic stuff of the 1970s and 80s was a good idea, eh dilbert? sure you know a lot about it.

solar cells are in their relative infancy. i publish a lot of papers about PVs. a lot of great work is being done with graphene and perovskite that rivals carbon efficiencies. i don't really get your naysaying: is it better to just not bother and continue burning fossil fuels? and what about wind and tidal? hydroelectric schemes? i am yet to read a really convincing rebuttal of renewable energy. except, of course, that our entire global economy is based on oil, and all the biggest corporations and vested interests in the world are reliant on it. it's a political question, not a technological one: the entire global order and the way power rests is based around oil and nations' control/access to it.

fortunately it seems even saudi princes are now pouring tonnes of money into solar and wind schemes. when people as short-sighted and oil-reliant as them are planning contingencies, it's cause for some small hope.

Last edited by uziq (2019-09-23 04:55:47)

Dilbert_X wrote:

Whatever technological solutions the west adopts - and it won't - will be more than swallowed by India, Africa and most of Asia lifting themselves out of poverty.

For once I kind of agree with Dilbert. While I do hold the opinion that pushing for emission reduction and cleaner forms of energy production in the west are achievable goals, on the whole we're not going to stop global warming.

China may be the world's biggest market for solar panels but it also accounts for about 25% of global pollution (just referencing co2 numbers here). In the west renewables can succeed because of subsidies, taxation and a cultural shift, but is the same true for the rest of the world? Among the general public in many developing countries global warming is either an unknown or just regarded as a western political issue. Or worse, a western ploy against the economic development of poorer countries by pressuring them to abandon cheap means of energy production (Ive heard this argument...).

And strip away legal requirements, taxation & subsidies and diesel powered engines & coal plants are extremely cost effective.

Last edited by Larssen (2019-09-23 05:22:54)

Such an angry child. This is child abuse. Her parents should not have forced such negativity into her life.

Because old white boomers have done so well for us all.
We should stop funding their end of life care and let them die.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2019-09-23 17:23:41)

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Such an angry child. This is child abuse. Her parents should not have forced such negativity into her life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMrtLsQbaok

it is sad that we’re thrusting a child forward as some symbol for a cause. children should be left alone to be children, not become symbols for our mass pieties - whether it’s climate change or being shot in the head by the taliban.

this will have the same distorting effect on her personality as famous child-actors in hollywood. it’s not healthy.

with that said, seeing someone taking the issue very seriously, without smiles or bonhomie or the usual cracking of jokes that happens at these big self-congratulatory ‘summits’, is refreshing. she is bringing a new tone to the debate and calling out official hypocrisy and ineffectuality for what it is.

people who hate her really puzzle me. why? she is a child, one with asperger’s, at that. they’re allowed to be loud and opinionated and possibly outspoken about things. the adults need to do the growing up in this situation.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Jay wrote:

She really is an idiot. This whole worshipping of children's opinions as if they are some founts of Truth is disgusting. The parade of kids on tv telling adults how to live their lives after every tragedy makes me want to shoot the activists using them.

Why is she 'an idiot'?
The adults seem to be doing fuck all, in other times we've had 12 year olds sitting on thrones and she's 16 so barely a 'child'.
And bear in mind Scandinavians are better educated and more mature than your average American kid. What were you doing when you were 16?

Adults thrust forward children when the child's idealism can be used as a tool. Children don't understand consequences. They lack wisdom. Activists take this lack of wisdom as a sign of purity in Truth and as an antidote to the realists that tut tut them when they make wild claims and express their fantasies. It is the inverse of rationalism.