ponyfleisch

> One of the problems is production of throwaway goods of dubious quality (leading to enormous pollution), a problem which technically could not exist before we had an abundance of quasi-free energy.

Yes, but my entire point is not only is this solvable without throwing the energy baby out with the dubious quality goods bathwater, it's easier to solve with more and cheaper energy.

If the consumption of abundant energy has negative externalities, then those need to be appropriately priced. At that point, buying pollution causing junk will become more expensive than buying clean junk, but we'll still be able to afford the clean junk we want.

> Yet now we have, to my knowledge, no indicator of things getting better, but all indicators going way worse than we thought.

Several forms of pollution are now much better than they were decades ago. Chlorofluorocarbons, lead in gasoline, rivers and lakes around the world, catalytic converters, slash-and-burn agriculture etc. etc.

Electricity generation is also headed the right way.

The solution is usually better technology and political action, not abstinence. We still have fridges, just not with CFCs.

I'm not saying we'll fix climate change in time, by the way. That is uncertain. But if we do fix it, it won't be with degrowth.

> Yes it is. It's about mindful production of useful products and services. Which is very much the same as reducing economic activity and energy consumption.

Why do you think that wanting less cheap temu junk means overall economic activity will decrease? Why can't that economic activity be redirected to a sustainable future with abundance instead? I still want to eat food grown elsewhere in the world, just not sold in plastic packaging and transported with fossil fuels.

There is a possible future where none of these things are a problem and yet energy consumption is greater than it is currently. I think it's actually the most likely future. The ship may have sailed on climate change, but plastic pollution is not solved by consuming less, it's solved by consuming differently.

I get being critical of mindless consumerism, but degrowth doesn't seem to be about "order less junk on amazon/temu", but fundamentally reducing economic activity and energy consumption, which is civilisational suicide.

I think to most people, environmentalism is mostly about climate change and pollution. You're free to widen the definition of course, but note that even that Wikipedia article basically calls it a fringe ideology (in different words).

Can you name specific issues caused directly by energy consumption as opposed to specific energy sources or downstream effects like pollution, which is avoidable?

> If you're an ecologist, it's a bad investment because it takes us in the wrong direction (more energy consumption) instead of going the way of degrowth.

Why would an ecologist have to be against more energy consumption? For climate change, what matters is energy from the sun hitting the earth vs. energy being radiated back into space. More energy consumption also doesn't necessarily cause more pollution of any kind.

What I want to say is: atmospheric carbon capture is not the deus ex machina that one might be tempted to believe it is after seeing news of startups like Climeworks doing it.

I responded to a comment implying that if there is a philantropist like Bill Gates camping out in the desert sucking CO2 out of the air, we won’t need a massive collective effort.

Maybe this will be a somewhat effective solution one day for areas where fuel energy density is important (e.g. flight), but that’s about it. Carbon neutrality will still need a distributed effort as point source capture is massively more economical where feasible.

I think your perception of the ease of/effort required for atmospheric carbon capture is off by a few orders of magnitude.

And iOS Safari shows it as a mostly green mess. After tapping the image to get to the real .j2, in the page itself it’s a png.

> Does paper cash printed by government make more sense?

Than energy wasting cash computed by chinese miners and (in the early days) a select group of early adopters? Yes, it makes more sense.

Would you mind linking the law you're talking about?

I think it's really just more of the ruthless pragmatism that makes this place so efficient and a consequence of land scarcity. Housing is limited and leaving it up to the free market would exacerbate wealth inequality. Therefore the government steps in with subsidized housing, which almost by definition will have more demand than supply. Prioritizing young families makes sense as the birth rate is below replacement.

> Also criticizing the government is a crime and saying the wrong thing on facebook can land you in prison.

Would you mind linking the specific law(s) you talk about here?