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Environmental Mega-disaster within 100 years

Argumemnon said:
There is no solution, because humans always want more, not less. The only way the solution will present itself is if we can sequester carbon from the atmosphere somehow (like planting 50 billion trees or something), or if the population of earth is dramatically reduced. I vote for the second.
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Such ideas get shunned because they're "unethical"
 
Meadmaker said:
I can't take seriously any article that talks about how human behavior will be affected by climate change.
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What about the intangibles. Are you this dense?

The world could barely agree on how to allocate the Syrian War refugees. Let's see how we handle the turmoil of ten times that amount.

The mind can break fairly easily. Some people who voted for Trump in principle weren't ready to support him, but strangely enough they did, out of desperation if nothing else. They didn't think, some you could say couldn't think about the consequences of their action; they saw how soft the status quo was towards helping their situation. Self preservation overrode everything else.

Europe's migrant crisis would become an absolute NIGHTMARE as more unstoppable immigration causes people to support further and further right wing groups who may be soft on climate change and call for a national collectivist philosophy, making it even WORSE for the climate.
 
Argumemnon said:
Well, assuming we're heading to a disaster that could kill all of us instead of most of us, would you consider the ethical issue to be more important than extinction?
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Doesn't that depend upon the means of achieving a lower population?

I don't think there are many who would disagree that a smaller human population would have less of an environmental impact, the tricky part is how to achieve that smaller population.

If the plan calls for making "me and mine" extinct in the short term so that "you and yours" can thrive in the long term, there are some pretty serious ethical considerations.
 
Distracted1 said:
Doesn't that depend upon the means of achieving a lower population?
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If the crisis were severe enough to warrant deliberately killing off billions to save the rest, the only question is whether we can do it while minimising suffering. That may not be possible.

I don't think there are many who would disagree that a smaller human population would have less of an environmental impact, the tricky part is how to achieve that smaller population.
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Ideally, by controlling birth rates, which to a large degree requires education and better economic situations, which in turn leads to greater use of technology and pollution. Otherwise you actively have to kill people.

If the plan calls for making "me and mine" extinct in the short term so that "you and yours" can thrive in the long term, there are some pretty serious ethical considerations.
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Well, yeah. My suggestion is only for an extreme scenario. Hopefully it won't get to that, but I suspect that it'll happen on its own anyway (wars, famine, etc.) But in extreme circumstances sometimes ethics have to give way to a greater principle.
 
Argumemnon said:
If the crisis were severe enough to warrant deliberately killing off billions to save the rest, the only question is whether we can do it while minimising suffering. That may not be possible.



Ideally, by controlling birth rates, which to a large degree requires education and better economic situations, which in turn leads to greater use of technology and pollution. Otherwise you actively have to kill people.



Well, yeah. My suggestion is only for an extreme scenario. Hopefully it won't get to that, but I suspect that it'll happen on its own anyway (wars, famine, etc.) But in extreme circumstances sometimes ethics have to give way to a greater principle.
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I understand, yet it seems likely that its' only a " greater principle " to the ones who aren't making the sacrifice. To the ones who are it is probably considered more of a " genocide"
 
Distracted1 said:
I understand, yet it seems likely that its' only a " greater principle " to the ones who aren't making the sacrifice. To the ones who are it is probably considered more of a " genocide"
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It's still not an argument against the principle. The fact that "most" of humanity would have to go under that scenario is a given, so obviously it's going to suck for the majority of humanity. However, given that we're talking about maybe 80% vs 100%, sucking for 80% of humanity is not as bad as sucking for all of it.
 
Argumemnon said:
It's still not an argument against the principle. The fact that "most" of humanity would have to go under that scenario is a given, so obviously it's going to suck for the majority of humanity. However, given that we're talking about maybe 80% vs 100%, sucking for 80% of humanity is not as bad as sucking for all of it.
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Perhaps you are right. Clearly the 50% whose cultures and personal lifestyles contribute the most to climate change must accept annialation to preserve those who have contributed the least.
Are you ready?
 
Argumemnon said:
It's still not an argument against the principle. The fact that "most" of humanity would have to go under that scenario is a given, so obviously it's going to suck for the majority of humanity. However, given that we're talking about maybe 80% vs 100%, sucking for 80% of humanity is not as bad as sucking for all of it.
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Population of Asian continent: 4.44 billion.

Population of African continent: 1.22 billion

Total 5.66 billion if we kill everyone on these two continents. There's your 80%.

Or we could kill everyone in the northern hemisphere, which would be about 90%. As long as I'm on the team that gets to decide, you can count me in.

But ya, we solve this problem ourselves or mother nature solves it for us.
 
Distracted1 said:
Perhaps you are right. Clearly the 50% whose cultures and personal lifestyles contribute the most to climate change must accept annialation to preserve those who have contributed the least.
Are you ready?
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Do you really think that your appeal to emotion amounts to some sort of argument? You've repeated exactly this argument at least three times now. This is odd, since we are discussing a situation where humanity would have to make a cold, calculating decision. It's almost as if you don't understand the argument, which is again odd since you otherwise seem to understand it.

It doesn't matter if it would hypothetically suck for me or whoever's dead in the end: we are discussing a sort of emergency solution that would be inevitable and necessary.
 
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Distracted1 said:
Perhaps you are right. Clearly the 50% whose cultures and personal lifestyles contribute the most to climate change must accept annialation to preserve those who have contributed the least.
Are you ready?
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No because those cultures who haven't already contributed will be the next to do so. We have already been there so we can move on now and solve the problem. :thumbsup::D They don't even have the technology yet to screw it all up, so we can't depend on them to fix it!

Ya right. Our best bet is to bomb ourselves back into the stone age.
 
Argumemnon said:
Do you really think that your appeal to emotion amounts to some sort of argument? You've repeated exactly this argument at least three times now. This is odd, since we are discussing a situation where humanity would have to make a cold, calculating decision. It's almost as if you don't understand the argument, which is again odd since you otherwise seem to understand it.

It doesn't matter if it would hypothetically suck for me or whoever's dead in the end: we are discussing a sort of emergency solution that would be inevitable and necessary.
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What we are talking about is a scenario in which one group says to another " your group needs to die so that mine does not " how does couching it in terms of "greater good" make sense to the group on the receiving end of that action?

The only ethical way to deal with that is to expect those that assert massive population reduction as a necessity to commit suicide.
Its not an appeal to emotion, just one to basic sense.
 
Distracted1 said:
What we are talking about is a scenario in which one group says to another " your group needs to die so that mine does not "
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Who said anything about "groups"?

how does couching it in terms of "greater good" make sense to the group on the receiving end of that action?
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Perhaps you missed the two times I've already explained to you that this appeal to emotion is irrelevant.

The only ethical way to deal with that is to expect those that assert massive population reduction as a necessity to commit suicide.
Its not an appeal to emotion, just one to basic sense.
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"Basic sense"? Is that like common sense? You can't make an appeal to emotion suddenly something else just by rebranding it. Since you can't expect people to commit suicide -- they won't -- what's your other solution?
 
Argumemnon said:
Who said anything about "groups"?



Perhaps you missed the two times I've already explained to you that this appeal to emotion is irrelevant.



"Basic sense"? Is that like common sense? You can't make an appeal to emotion suddenly something else just by rebranding it. Since you can't expect people to commit suicide -- they won't -- what's your other solution?
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Not murdering people.
If you argue that. "one of us has to die, or both of us will" and follow up that argument by killing me because you are unwilling to commit suicide, you have not protected a principle- or participated in a coldly logical act for a greater good, you have simply committed murder.

I use the term " groups " because on a large scale such things would likely require multiple agents to implement.

ETA this discussion is veering far from the thread topic. I will allow you the last word on the subject, then say no more about it.
 
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