How will it end?

[AqD]

Since the virus began, it's clear now that even a short, limited reduction in consumption worldwide would seriously harm the economics and destroy livelihoods: shops closed, factories bankrupted, and lots of people were laid off across various industries.

The virus situation will soon end. Then we'll once again be back on the path of ever-increasing consumption and population growth to keep economics from dying and eventually lead to exhaustion of land and natural resources. If you think the environment in China is bad now, imagine when the whole South Asia and Africa have the same: massive urbanization, deforestation, toxic mining waste or pollution from manufacturing. Or having average South Americans consuming as much as average US person and making as much garbage.

There is no sustainable path. The virus showed us that. We can't slow down and can't bar poor countries from getting rich either, not because we pretend to be nice but the demands must keep growing for the market not to crash. I guess the only easy solution would be to wipe out 90% of humans instantly before they react and then the remaining 10% can continue their life happily ever after, until next time.

That's unlikely to happen of course. So what to do? revert to middle age? The future is very grim.

Having said that, we should have as much steak as possible from now on and start travelling around the world, before it's all gone

[alhoon]

To be fair, the situation now is better than in the past. Up to the Green revolution, the population was two bad harvests away from starvation. That's one of the main reasons of the French Revolution.

Also, give some credit to those Africans, South Americans and Asians: They can also see that this path is not sustainable. I am not saying it will be a magic wand, but it will be more of a "4 years of crisis, 2 years of recovery, 5 years of crisis, 3 years of recovery" as the system adjusts.

And then, there's new technologies to recycle more efficiently, mine better and produce cleaner.

And then, there are the new fields that are non-polluting like software etc.

It is not all bad.

[Love Mountain]

The environment has significantly improved in many ways, since 1970. In particular air quality and sanitation in urban areas is eons ahead of 1970s, not to mention the Gilded Age when most of the world lacked safety codes and almost any type of environmental regulations. Moreover, within United States, household energy consumption is actually going down. You can see the data, and the explanation for this phenomena on theis Energy Information Administration page. The TL;DR is that energy efficiency has improved significantly. This is from mundane things like, LED lightbulbs vs traditional incandescent ones, as well as government investments into more efficient power grids, better air conditioning systems, and consumer adoption of renewable energy.

Sure, many parts of the world are getting destroyed, due to rapid industrialization, but this is an unavoidable cycle. Even before the 21st century, the Clean Air Act significantly cleaned up pollution in urban areas in United States. So as developing countries industrialize, they will also likely clamp down on pollution. For all the grief countries like China get, they have made significant strides in reducing pollution.

As for critics of consumerism, well, I never thought I'd find a tree hugger on this forum. Surely you're not a neo-Malthusian who thinks that we are doomed to consume our way to destruction? Such naysayers have been proven wrong almost every time. Even recycling technology is rapidly advancing from infancy into the 21st century. Digitalization and automation is hitting almost every single sector of the economy, and these advances will trickle down into poor countries much sooner than they hit developed countries. You can see this type of "leap-frogging" in China, where for example, the Chinese bypassed plastic credit cards almost entirely in favor of mobile payments.

Technology always held the answers to all of our woes. The biggest issue has always been investing into solutions, rather than their scarcity.

[phylosopher stoned]

The "elites" probably fear the widespread distribution of new high level technologies ie. nanotech, spyware (hard and soft), gene tech, other stuff that would and/or could fundamentally change the power of balance of their hold on power. The fact that we are not prepared morally and/or ethically, nor is the global geopolitical situation conducive to the unimaginable changes that the public use of such tech would have on the world and humanity at large, could possibly be a factor, as well. On top of that, frankly we don't have enough food. This leads me to believe that this "breakout virus" is the first of many along with widespead drought, famine, and floods. This will allow them the opportunity to roll back the civilizational software to a somewhat prior iteration, possibly a neo-fuedal techno-agrarian system or something while they monopolize the tech and develop it themselves and rule us as techno-gods. It would explain why all our politicians are selling out their people, they were told "hey, if you manage the destruction of your societies well enough, you can come and be a techno-god too. Something straight out of a dystopian sci-fi- horror flick.

[Love Mountain]

The "elites" probably fear the widespread distribution of new high level technologies ie. nanotech, spyware (hard and soft), gene tech, other stuff that would and/or could fundamentally change the power of balance of their hold on power. The fact that we are not prepared morally and/or ethically, nor is the global geopolitical situation conducive to the unimaginable changes that the public use of such tech would have on the world and humanity at large, could possibly be a factor, as well. On top of that, frankly we don't have enough food. This leads me to believe that this "breakout virus" is the first of many along with widespead drought, famine, and floods. This will allow them the opportunity to roll back the civilizational software to a somewhat prior iteration, possibly a neo-fuedal techno-agrarian system or something while they monopolize the tech and develop it themselves and rule us as techno-gods. It would explain why all our politicians are selling out their people, they were told "hey, if you manage the destruction of your societies well enough, you can come and be a techno-god too. Something straight out of a dystopian sci-fi- horror flick.

The "Elites" aren't a monolithic group.

It was the "Elites" and their multinational corporations who made a fortune selling high-yield grain seed, fertilizer, machinery, and the know-how to save the world from starvation. Ask any hardcore environmentalist Ph.D. who knows about this stuff, and they can rail on about the evils of Monsanto and the white-washing of the Green Revolution for hours. At the end of the day, the world did not starve and Monsanto made their cash.
Who popularized electric vehicles in the last decade? An "Elite" named Elon Musk and his little-known company, Tesla.
Who revolutionized ecommerce in United States and continue to push the boundaries of innovation? The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos.

There are countless world problems, and many reasons for their existence. If you're looking for a single source, or a simple answer... you'll be disappointed far too often.

[antaeus]

I feel like this one of those cold heat death at the end of entropy type of questions.

The universe doesn't care about Jeff Bezos or climate change or any of your conspiracy theories.

Either way. There will be no 'return to the middle ages'. Technology goes forward. And we already have all the technology we need to secure a sustainable future. Whether the technology is able to save is all depends on the personal experiences of the low EQ people who lead this world and the low EQ people who support them. Low EQ being the problem. These people have to experience things personally in order to understand.

Until then, all we have is moving the status quo. If enough soccer moms want organic free range carbon neutral chicken at KFC then KFC will sell organic free range carbon neutral chicken. Whether they're eating their organic free range carbon neutral chicken in a flooded cesspit made by greed and sociopathy is a different matter.

Until then, I suggest paying for facebook adverts that make soccer moms think that the world will be better if they switch to organic free range carbon neutral chicken. That should do it.

[AqD]

The environment has significantly improved in many ways, since 1970. In particular air quality and sanitation in urban areas is eons ahead of 1970s, not to mention the Gilded Age when most of the world lacked safety codes and almost any type of environmental regulations. Moreover, within United States, household energy consumption is actually going down. You can see the data, and the explanation for this phenomena on theis Energy Information Administration page. The TL;DR is that energy efficiency has improved significantly. This is from mundane things like, LED lightbulbs vs traditional incandescent ones, as well as government investments into more efficient power grids, better air conditioning systems, and consumer adoption of renewable energy.

Sure, many parts of the world are getting destroyed, due to rapid industrialization, but this is an unavoidable cycle. Even before the 21st century, the Clean Air Act significantly cleaned up pollution in urban areas in United States. So as developing countries industrialize, they will also likely clamp down on pollution. For all the grief countries like China get, they have made significant strides in reducing pollution.

Energy is hardly a problem compared to land, clean land specifically.

A better example would be like cell phone: global sales by year, which has been slowing down, but there are also new kinds of devices. For developing countries there ought to be tons of sales for new cars, TVs, small appliances.

How many parts in those are recyclable? How much of toxic parts end up in landfill? What technologies do we have to solve this? As far as I know the current magic is just exporting all of them to other countries which is not a permanent solution - they would eventually get richer (and we absolutely need them get richer to buy our stuff), produce as much toxic waste themselves and stop importing. Renewable energy produces tons of waste too since the equipment don't last forever.

That plus space for cows, pigs and suitable water for seafood. A century ago a chinaman only ate pork once a year, but soon we should need more space for livestock than humans? or the next generation could eat fake meat - hopefully I'll die before that happens. @antaeus free range chickens would use a lot more resource BTW.

I'm not against consumerism here - without it life would have been hell and not worth living, but I haven't seen any good news besides some fungus dissolving plastic.


A few figures:

- 17 million car sales in US (population 300 mil). Convert that to 10 billion humans and you get 500 mil new cars a year.
- And about 15 billion chickens, 3 billion cows and similar number of pigs. Not including any vegetables.

Technology always held the answers to all of our woes. The biggest issue has always been investing into solutions, rather than their scarcity.

Except we don't have the answers now? And what could possibly prevent an economic collapse without constant growth?