Environmentalists are deeply divided on how best to respond to our various environmental problems and on whether technology and economic growth are the solution to our problems or the source of them.
Great post. I agree that a combination of cornucopian and limitarian views is likely necessary to address climate change, and the point you raise that developed nations are fine with degrowth while developing nations are strongly the other way is something that I don't think a lot of policy people, activists, and commentators have grappled with yet.
The one thing I would ask is whether the cornucopian view can still work given the fact that we are entering a mass extinction event. Certainly plenty of people, including Elizabeth Kolbert (on your podcast and elsewhere) seem to think we've already locked in our extinction from this. In your opinion, is there any evidence that this is not in fact the case, and humans will survive the mass extinction?
While I'm worried about extinctions, I don't think a mass extinction (10s of % of all species gone) is inevitable. It obviously depends on how climate change and our other impacts develop over the coming centuries, but I'm hopeful we can rein climate change in before it reaches mass-extinction level, even in the absence of SRM. Harder to know what fishing and land-use will look like in 2100, 2200, etc., but with populations projected to peak and then start declining later this century there's a decent chance to rein these impacts in too.
That's fair enough, and I appreciate the response. If I can press a little though, if we hypothetically *did* tip into a mass extinction, do you think humans as a species (not necessarily our existing civilization, which will have to and will inevitably change in the coming decades anyway) would survive?
Great post. I agree that a combination of cornucopian and limitarian views is likely necessary to address climate change, and the point you raise that developed nations are fine with degrowth while developing nations are strongly the other way is something that I don't think a lot of policy people, activists, and commentators have grappled with yet.
The one thing I would ask is whether the cornucopian view can still work given the fact that we are entering a mass extinction event. Certainly plenty of people, including Elizabeth Kolbert (on your podcast and elsewhere) seem to think we've already locked in our extinction from this. In your opinion, is there any evidence that this is not in fact the case, and humans will survive the mass extinction?
While I'm worried about extinctions, I don't think a mass extinction (10s of % of all species gone) is inevitable. It obviously depends on how climate change and our other impacts develop over the coming centuries, but I'm hopeful we can rein climate change in before it reaches mass-extinction level, even in the absence of SRM. Harder to know what fishing and land-use will look like in 2100, 2200, etc., but with populations projected to peak and then start declining later this century there's a decent chance to rein these impacts in too.
That's fair enough, and I appreciate the response. If I can press a little though, if we hypothetically *did* tip into a mass extinction, do you think humans as a species (not necessarily our existing civilization, which will have to and will inevitably change in the coming decades anyway) would survive?
No idea, I'm afraid.