A thread to discuss how to solve world's problems.

[JERONIMO]

Discuss world's problem. Carbon Dioxide emission, plastic littering, Call of Duty... What are the world problems? How can you solve them? Who's fault is it the most?

[steve_v]

21 minutes ago, JERONIMO said:

Discuss world's problem.

Problem: Too many people. Solution: Breed less. Every other environmental issue flows from overpopulation and overconsumption.

[cubinator]

We need to realize when judging a person that they are first and foremost a human being. Everybody is a human from the planet Earth (for now), and I feel like a lot of people skip that part to get uppity about the other things they are, which are usually less important.

Also, I take some of Yoda and the Jedi's words very seriously. Anger, aggression, hate - They are quick to flow into your brain, but you can dissipate them so that you can solve problems intelligently. If you hate your enemy, then you are no better than them.

[Bill Phil]

2 hours ago, steve_v said:

Problem: Too many people. Solution: Breed less. Every other environmental issue flows from overpopulation and overconsumption.

I don't really believe that.

Yes there are problems that are bigger than they might be if we had less people, but there's no reason to assume that a lower population will inherently be better for the environment. For example, the United States represents 15% of all CO2 emissions (according to some sources) despite only having 4.3% of the global population. China is responsible for 28% of CO2 emissions and has 18.2% of the global population. And yet in many developed countries there's more forest and other similar environments than there were a century ago. Of course that doesn't make up for CO2 emissions. But the problem is not inherently one of population. 

And even if the population was stable at a much smaller size, if the economy continued to grow and the energy use of our civilization continued to grow then we would see environmental damage over time, and eventually the damage would rival our current damage on a global scale (but on a per capita basis it would be much more damaging). 

Lowering the population size is not a solution, I'm afraid. For one, many economies require a growing or at least stable workforce - this can be dealt with but that would take resources away from addressing world problems.

I would argue that it is easier and more effective to address world problems with an expanding population than with a shrinking population. An expanding population gives the species a larger and larger pool of labor from which to draw upon. Of course it can expand too fast as well.

I would also argue that meeting human needs are of higher importance than environmental issues. This is debatable, of course, and the environment is a major factor of human needs so preserving it is important even for that goal, so we should still do it.

It turns out that humans don't live on that much of the Earth, and as the global population urbanizes more and more I suspect that most of the inhabited land will become more scarcely inhabited. So what's happening to all the land? Well, suburban sprawl is an issue that needs to be addressed, though I don't have a solution. And of course there are projects and a lot of industrial processes and other human activities on uninhabited land - so the damage caused by that needs to be minimized. I haven't read a thorough analysis so I don't even know what's affecting what, but we can find out and address those issues. Agriculture is a major issue - though advanced technology could change this tremendously. One major industry that affects the environment in major ways is the meat industry - however the damage could be reduced tremendously if cultured meat could be developed and delivered to consumers. This can also help with the rising demand for meat and has ethical benefits - no more slaughtering required to get meat. This would also free up vast amounts of land and could potentially reduce demand for Amazon Rainforest clearing, as over 60% of the cleared land is used for pastures, which would become virtually unnecessary if we adopted cultured meat. This would also free up the crops that normally go to feed animals, allowing for more food to go to human beings. More efficient agriculture could be developed - such as indoor multi-level agriculture, which could reduce the need for vast amounts of agricultural land currently used for raising crops. With isolation of the agricultural areas the need for damaging insecticide and pesticide can be reduced tremendously and highly efficient aeroponics could be employed along with optimization of the environment for the plants to massively improve yields. If fish meat can be cultured as well then the demand for fishing could be reduced, and the overfishing problem could be mitigated.

Energy is a major aspect of carbon dioxide emissions. Currently renewables don't seem able to keep up with demand. Generally solar has a capacity factor of nearly 25% while wind reaches 40% averages. Meanwhile coal regularly goes above 60% and nuclear's average tends to stay at or above 90%. Not only this but the shorter lifecycles of renewable energy technology leads to other issues, such as a higher replacement rate. Add on to this the low capacity factor and much more capacity has to be installed than is demanded in order to meet demand. This means that renewables have hidden costs, not to mention some fairly nasty environmental effects - solar panel waste is known to be toxic (though this can be minimized) and since they have a higher replacement rate there would be quite a lot of waste that we would need to deal with. Space based solar power could work, though in the interim I recommend nuclear power. The main disadvantage of nuclear is its immense cost, which is well known. However much of this cost can be eliminated with proper project management and a more mature nuclear power industry. With advancements in heat engine technology (mainly by using supercritical CO2) efficiencies can be increased by fairly large amounts and costs potentially reduced (when compared to steam turbines). Renewables should be used but they need better energy storage solutions - one I've come across is referred to as PowerLoop, an idea by Keith Lofstrom (of Lofstrom Loop fame). This concept involves linked iron rotors undergoing electromagnetic acceleration through a track as a form of energy storage. Another advantage is that it can be fairly efficient at delivering energy over long distances. One major advantage over flywheels is that a PowerLoop system is not limited in the same way by the strength of the material. Another advantage is that as the technology matures it could be adapted for space launch as a LaunchLoop - which could provide benefits as well. Renewables are not quite ready (yet), though they can be and I would say should be used in conjunction with energy storage. However some areas can not use renewables, or not to the necessary scale. Where I live it is simply impractical. Nuclear has to be a part of our energy production (and it is for now). As such we need to have a varied energy grid.

Transportation is another major issue. Electric vehicles show potential but they have problems as well such as the toxic materials in the batteries among other concerns. However South Korea has developed a way to charge electric vehicles while they drive on a road. This would require digging up and replacing all current paved roads to employ, but it is a potential solution. Hydrogen can be employed in aircraft but it has practical issues. Of course these can be overcome but it will be difficult to replace existing infrastructure. One fairly major aspect of shipping's environmental effect is its emissions. Some alternatives to the current propulsion systems include nuclear (though this could have issues, but may be more mature than nuclear power thanks to the US Navy), and potentially hydrogen-electric or hydrogen internal combustion. Another issue is that personal transportation is arguably too prevalent in some countries. A much wider and more effective/efficient public transportation system would be immensely useful, especially if it is all electric. 

And if that isn't enough then climate engineering may be necessary. This all almost completely theoretical, but it may be possible to engineer Earth to be better for us and the other lifeforms of this planet.

Science and technology can give us solutions to most, if not all, of the problems we face while enabling humanity to prosper as a species and save the biosphere. 

Of course this is more short term in the grand scale. I sometimes wonder if our waste heat will ever grow big enough to rival the energy the Earth gets from Sun... If that happens I wonder if dynamic orbital rings could be used to suspend radiators in space around the planet to radiate the excess heat away. Now that'd be crazy. Imagine Earth with rings like Saturn - but these would have a practical purpose.

Edited July 28, 2019 by Bill Phil

[steve_v]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

even if the population was stable at a much smaller size, if the economy continued to grow and the energy use of our civilization continued to grow then we would see environmental damage over time, and eventually the damage would rival our current damage on a global scale

Perhaps, though that's why I added overconsumption. We are currently using far more resources as a species than the planet can provide, our technology is failing make up the deficit, and a large portion of the population is living in what we in the developed world would consider poverty. It's simple arithmetic, our resources are finite and every extra mouth to feed adds to the demand placed on them - doubly so if all those people want a western consumerist lifestyle.
 

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

many economies require a growing or at least stable workforce

IMO the concept of economic growth as a measure of success is deeply flawed. The natural resources at our disposal do not grow continuously, so expecting economy, workforce and population to do so is simply illogical unless you can rely on continuous efficiency gains - gains that are clearly not cutting the mustard wrt current growth rates.

 

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

I would also argue that meeting human needs are of higher importance than environmental issues. This is debatable, of course, and the environment is a major factor of human needs so preserving it is important even for that goal, so we should still do it.

I would argue the opposite priority. At our current level of technology we are utterly dependent on nature for our survival as a species, and that nature must be protected at all costs if we are to have a future.
I'm not talking about prioritising orangutans over humans here, I'm talking about the delicate and as-yet imperfectly understood life-support network we are so rapidly destroying.
We're wiping out species we've barely even discovered for the sake of more stuff and more luxury, and who knows what effect that may have on the ecosystem as a whole.

 

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

It turns out that humans don't live on that much of the Earth, and as the global population urbanizes more and more I suspect that most of the inhabited land will become more scarcely inhabited. So what's happening to all the land? Well, suburban sprawl is an issue that needs to be addressed, though I don't have a solution. And of course there are projects and a lot of industrial processes and other human activities on uninhabited land - so the damage caused by that needs to be minimized.

To shamelessly pull from the abstract of the first reputable study I ran across: "We estimate that humans have modified >50% of Earth’s land surface." That's from 2012 BTW.
Our impact on the planet, be it from habitation, agriculture, or plain-old strip-mining, is literally on the level of sci-fi terraforming from a few decades ago. We rope the land for resources to meet ever-increasing demand, and it's the population that creates that demand.

Quote

Anthropocene

/ˈanθrəpəˌsiːn/

 

adjective: Anthropocene

1. 1.

   relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.

   "we've become a major force of nature in this new Anthropocene epoch"

 

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

advanced technology could change this tremendously.

The advanced technology you mention is al still fairly pie-in-the-sky as far as I am concerned. Wake me up when cultured meat can be produced cheaply and efficiently enough to replace farming, and when energy production and storage is not reliant on yet more finite and damaging to extract natural resources.

 

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

One fairly major aspect of shipping's environmental effect is its emissions.

True, but I'd argue that the primary aspect of shipping's environmental effect is the sheer wasteful scale of it. Sea, land, air, whatever, a huge proportion of the shipping we do is simply unnecessary.
Why is having asparagus out-of-season worth screwing up the climate again? How about burning HFO to ship waste to landfills in another country? It's madness.

Over here we burn large quantities of coal to dehydrate milk, road-freight it to the other end of the country, rehydrate it (coal powered again), package it in plastic and then road-freight it back again. The very definition of insanity if you ask me.
This company has recently pledged to phase-out coal by 2030, awesome right? Care to guess what they're replacing it with?
If you said oil and gas, you'd be right on the money, and money is apparently all that matters here. Oh, and of course the pointless diesel powered road freight remains completely unaddressed.

20 years ago we got our milk fresh, local and un-reconstituded, in reusable glass bottles. Progress huh? Yay for science.

 

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

Nuclear has to be a part of our energy production (and it is for now). As such we need to have a varied energy grid.

Indeed it does, but please count for me the nuclear plants under construction and compare to new coal, gas, and oil fired generation. The numbers are sobering to say the least.
Why you ask? Because coal is cheaper, and because short-term greed trumps long-term planning every time.

 

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

Science and technology can give us solutions to most, if not all, of the problems we face while enabling humanity to prosper as a species and save the biosphere.

In theory yes. In practice I'm not convinced, as there is minimal incentive to do so until the situation is immediately catastrophic. In the case of climate-change and fresh-water depletion, we're getting mighty close to "too little, too late" already.

On the whole I don't disagree with your proposed solutions. I just think that consuming less is as valid an approach as any, and it's something we can do anytime we find the will to tackle the elephant in the room - namely too much demand on a finite planet.
This of course goes against some fairly well-embedded human attitudes and perceptions - such thinking only as far ahead as one's own lifespan and a tendency to relate only to small groups of peers, wildly underestimating the impact of civilisation as a whole - but frankly I think that since it's humans that are causing the problems it's humans that should change.

This beautiful blue marble is not ours, we just happened to evolve here. If we want to continue to enjoy it's bounty, we need to restrain our growth and our greed to a sustainable level.

Edited July 28, 2019 by steve_v

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

And even if the population was stable at a much smaller size, if the economy continued to grow and the energy use of our civilization continued to grow then we would see environmental damage over time, and eventually the damage would rival our current damage on a global scale (but on a per capita basis it would be much more damaging). 

Carbon doxide is just a rich men's problem. Water and plowland is others' one.
Biggest rivers are already used, and hot climate likes to turn any ground not covered with jungles into a desert.

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

For one, many economies require a growing or at least stable workforce

And this is a positive loopback trap. Also they need somebody growing to buy their production.

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

An expanding population gives the species a larger and larger pool of labor from which to draw upon.

While plowland and water resources stay same or shrinking, and mineral deposites are getting depleted.

So, when a peasant family owns a plowland to feed one peasant family, its juniors ancest no plowland and become either farmhands, or beggars, or monks, or bandits/mercenaires.
When a noble family owns a village to support one knight, its juniors ancest no manor and become either monks, or bandits/mercenaires.

So, in dark old times the overpopulation problem was being solved by wars, epidemies, and monasteries.

When states became big and rich, the wars became too expensive for everybody to use them daily, but the overpoplation gave a steel-coal-textile industry.
So, in European countries most of peasants were just forcibly evicted from the villages and utilized in that primitive industry as workers, with numerous casualties.
In England earlier (XVIII-XIX), in USA later (XIX-XX), in in Russia even later (XX cent.), but the process was same everywhere, a forced urbanization, just body count rate differs, and local colors.

This postponed the problem, as there was a lot of metal, coal, and oil, much more than plowland.
Then in early XX Haber invented how to produce ammonia from water, air, and coal.
The humanity started producing synthetic fertilizers instead of natural humus, which was absolutely not enough.

In XX the shallow wave of industrialization in the ocean of rural society reached the coastline and turned into a tsunami of two world wars.
A rural, just industrializing, society based on expansive models, got a weapon of future industrial society, and used it to solve the expansion problems.
This caused mass casualties and destructions, and eliminated the remains of rural society, and forced the total rebuilt of economics, now totally industrial and urbanistic.

So, after WWII the population of European countries stopped growing, no expansion was required anymore, except economical and cultural (to unify the global market).
The European wars almost finished, the colonialism got obsolete, too.

***

So, in XIX-XX the humanity totally got out of plowland and started spending plants growing 300 mln years ago.
These deposits are limited by definition. The liquid and gaseous ones are nearly over, the solid ones (coal) probably are enough for ~300 years more, not so much.

So, at some point there anyway will be a dead end, when available resources should be being infinitely reused, because all of them will already be in use.

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

It turns out that humans don't live on that much of the Earth

They live everywhere where they have water for plowland. and it's not -40°C.
Not so much such places on the Earth. Mostly river valleys and ocean coastlines.

The Europe became a Europe not because it's a Europe, but because:
1) It's the nicest place for agriculture. Zone of warm and relatively dry deciduous forests. Where you cut trees, they grow again. Where you herd pigs (the fastest growing meat), they don't turn an oasis into a dry dirty spot in a desert. With no significant disasters like tornadoes. Wooden structures don't rot in a year, and there is a lot of wood around.
2) A lot of mountains next to the plowland. Minerals, metals. Industry.
3) A lot of rivers and sea everywhere. Fishing, transport.
4) No less developed but more numerous aggressive neighbors around, because it's a peninsula.
So, it was the finest place for production and development, so once it had gotten really populated, it got big. Just ideal conditions to prepare a system upgrade.

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

suburban sprawl is an issue that needs to be addressed, though I don't have a solution.

The solution is absolutely easy and inevitable, but unpleasant.
Surface tension, that's the best description.

Suburbans are a rudiment of rural epoch, nothing more.

Once the manufacturing gets totally automated (soon) → salaries fall, unemployment grows → suburban bills stay unpaid → less reasons to support the suburbans, who can't pay, with electricity, water, gas, transport → prices grow in solvent areas, life support stops in others → poor suburbanians migrate to multistorey buildings (which are much cheaper to support because of many times shorter distances and many times less materials) → rich suburban become fortresses at the city edge, poor suburbans get burnt to prevent making criminal lairs → megalopolis with a small local beverly-hills aside and a lot of empty land around used for storing, industrial farming, and parks, plus several small (500 k) satellite urbanistic cities around.

The same with all villages, towns, and small cities. Like drops of mercury, their population will be sucked into the megalopolis, while the ground structures will be mostly scrapped.

 

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Energy is a major aspect of carbon dioxide emissions. Currently renewables don't seem able to keep up with demand.

Because the industry is based on expansive model of rural society, when population grows and needs an expansion. Either territorial, or economical.

In developed countries the population stops (in most of them already has stopped) growing, and needs no expansion.
But it consumes a lot and produces a lot of wastes to be neutralized.
So, the next step is to stick the output pipe into the input hole and make the process cyclic. I.e. to recycle the wastes.
Then no mining is required at all, the waste plant is the resource mine of your megalopolis.

Also the current society is post-rural, spreaded around the land in thin layer, distances are enormous, transport taxes are high.
Once the population gets compacted into a megalopolis, thousands kilometers become several kilometers along and fifty floors  up.
So, by orders of magnitude less energy is needed when you extract checmicals and metals from the waste can, and don't move goods thousand kilometers ago.

In this perspective the domestic "waste segregation" looks absolutely pathetic.
A huge metropolitan waste plant should extract any metal from the heap, burn everything other, then recycle all this back to carbon and nitrogen compounds.

A thermonuclear plant is what's very nice for this, it can just heat the wastes and separate it.
If it can work on deuterium, or produce the fusion fuel from it, it's a jackpot.

The overconsumption problem is easily and inevitably solved by low salaries and virtual reality.
Warm floors and bare walls with nice screensavers.

Then the natural urbanization process will get finished, no expansion needed, people will become free of things, but stay happy because everything is still available.

So, the future humanity will look literally like this:

Spoiler

A residential multistorey area next to a fusion fire burning rubbish and frying synthetic sausages.
Just washed better.

Edited July 28, 2019 by kerbiloid