
Scientists’ warning on affluence - colinprince
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y
======
erpellan
We already have the technology to build net zero carbon buildings. But the
building trade is both notoriously conservative and extremely effective at
lobbying to protect their profits (at least in the UK).

Superinsulated, almost airtight houses with ground and air source heat pumps
and solar PV should be mandatory, as should banning of all in home boilers in
new builds.

That’s all easily achievable even without some of the recent novel inventions
such as engineered wood:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476)

We have to stop treating the atmosphere as a free line of credit with no limit
that we can just dump all our externalities into, or we’ll find out very soon
that there is no such thing as an externality at planetary scale. We’re all in
the same hermetically sealed box, breathing each other’s farts.

Sorry for the rant. It’s hard to stop once the despair creeps in.

~~~
Retric
It’s more cost effective to use solar hot water heaters than crazy amounts of
insulation in a wide range of climates. Which is one reason regulations should
focus on outcomes not methiods.

~~~
adrianN
How do you measure the outcomes? It seems easier to me to change regulations
depending to local climate.

~~~
kilotaras
In this particular case - taxing [carbon footprint of] electricity at source
and letting the market do it's magic.

As a bonus point: taxes can be redistributed equally to citizens so it's
revenue neutral.

~~~
adrianN
I'm in favor of a carbon tax, but I believe it would need to be too high at
this point to effect change with the necessary speed. Imo a combination of
price signals and regulation is needed.

------
Barrin92
I think the article is right. Vaclav Smil has pointed out that today the share
of fossil fuels, at about 90% of global energy consumed[1] is actually higher
than in 2000, and falling at a snails pace.

There is a worrying trend emerging, fuelled by the tech industry of
performative environmentalism that seeks to promise absolution like the church
did by buying Tesla's and biodegradable cups while the real-world impact is
marginal while leaving the fundamental flaws of the system untouched. We won't
consume ourselves out of the doghouse.

Russ Ackoff in a great talk about systems thinking[2] once pointed out a few
salient things

1\. Counter to intuition one does not improve a system by merely removing
deficiencies. Doing away with what you don't want doesn't get you what you
want.

2\. Incrementalism doesn't solve fundamentally new problems, rearranging deck
chairs on the titanic is pointless, and people confuse efficiency with
effectiveness. Doing the wrong thing right is worse than doing the right thing
wrong.

3\. One must recognise that like an architect, a designer does not design
rooms independently of the house. One starts with the house, and only changes
parts as to improve the overall functioning of the system, never the parts
alone.

This is what needs to be applied to modern environmentalism. Woke green
consumerism and tech worship is useless. The entire global system needs to be
redesigned, instead of trying to fix individual parts. We need to think in
holistic terms rather than trying to remove individual problems.

[1][https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/meet-vaclav-smil-
man...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/meet-vaclav-smil-man-who-has-
quietly-shaped-how-world-thinks-about-energy)

[2][https://youtu.be/OqEeIG8aPPk](https://youtu.be/OqEeIG8aPPk)

~~~
chiph
I grew up in the 1970's when environmentalism was just getting started (I can
recall the 4th or 5th Earth Day[0] being celebrated). Back then the concern
was population growth[1] and the consumption of resources.

Fossil fuels were a major concern then as well, mostly because of automobile
exhaust. During the current pandemic, people have posted before/after photos
of their cities. But places like Los Angeles had smog so thick that the
skyline was hidden[2]. Since then, better engine controls and catalytic
converters have reduced emissions to amazingly low levels. If you're behind an
older car that has a carburetor some time, you'll definitely notice the smell
of raw gasoline. Imagine millions of cars emitting that!

There's no question that the more people, the more resources get consumed.
However what is an important question is: Is world population growth exceeding
our ability to engineer lower per-person resource usage? Right now, that curve
has positive slope, and we need to get it to a slight negative slope, without
losing the advantages of a technological civilization.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth)
[2] [https://timeline.com/la-smog-
pollution-4ca4bc0cc95d](https://timeline.com/la-smog-pollution-4ca4bc0cc95d)

~~~
TomSwirly
> However what is an important question is: Is world population growth
> exceeding our ability to engineer lower per-person resource usage?

That's a trick question. The answer is that human population increases by
about 1.1% a year; and independently, individual human consumption increases
exponentially as well.

The exact rate depends on the specific resource or commodity being consumed of
course.

Now, you're right that technology allows individual things to be manufactured
more effectively, with less waste. What you miss is that this causes people to
buy a lot more things, so it more than cancels out.

I spent some time looking at this, and I found a few resources that had
decreased consumption. Freon is the most obvious one, but it's important to
notice that it was replaced by another safer but rather similar gas - raw
material consumption did not decrease.

Even things like biofuels - wood, dung, or other biological products that are
burned for heat. They used to be nearly all the world's energy production -
now they're a tiny part but on their own, their growth is now and has always
been exponential. It's just that fossil fuels grew much faster - we never cut
down on anything.

We need to use less of absolutely everything.

For us not to such the world dry, we individually and as a species need to
decrease our consumption by as much an order of magnitude. If we are not to
decimate our biosphere, we need both far more efficient manufacturing, but
also _a lot less_ manufacturing.

------
logicchains
It's sad to see something like this in Nature. Science can tell us what
actions will lead to what outcomes, but it can't tell us what outcomes we
should aim for. Different people have different preferences, and there's
certainly no objective measure of the value of preserving the environment vs
people's quality of life.

Trying to push a certain set of values like this risks giving science a bad
name in the public eye, and making the public less willing to accept actual
scientific facts. Because many people lack the ability to distinguish between
facts and opinions in scientific publishing, so they just end up distrusting
all science.

~~~
guerrilla
> Science can tell us what actions will lead to what outcomes

That's what this paper does.

It seems like you may have missed the part that this situation is not
sustainable, as well as the prior science that establishes that quality of
life depends on the environment, which is why many people care about phenomena
like polution and climate change.

> Recent scientists’ warnings confirm alarming trends of environmental
> degradation from human activity, leading to profound changes in essential
> life-sustaining functions of planet Earth

It's going to be hard to argue that the life-sustaining capacity of Earth is
not a universal subjective value of all life but the paper isn't arguing the
opposite anyway.

This paper simply identifies causes contributing to the unsustainablity of the
current system and makes some proposals to mitigate or eliminate it. It's
analyzing and providing options.

Make sure you understand what unsustainability means as far as consequences.
Moreover, that's hardly a subjective value judgement. It's simply a measurable
property of systems.

~~~
logicchains
>It seems like you may have missed the part that this situation is not
sustainable, as well as the prior science that establishes that quality of
life depends on the environment, which is why many people care about phenomena
like polution and climate change.

It seems you missed the fact that many people don't care about sustainability,
and are unwilling to accept even a small reduction in quality of life in the
name of the environment. Clearly their values differ from the values of the
paper's authors regarding what is "necessary societal change".

>It's going to be hard to argue that the life-sustaining capacity of Earth is
not a universal subjective value of all life but the paper isn't arguing the
opposite anyway.

If we look at sustainability from the perspective of "preserving human
existence as long as possible", then the only long-term solution is expanding
to other planets/solar systems. The more limits there are on economic growth,
the longer this will take. Similarly, life-extension technology will allow
people to extend their lives longer; the slower the economy grows, the longer
it will take to develop this. The paper didn't even consider this, or any
other downsides of limiting economic growth.

>Make sure you understand what unsustainability means as far as consequences.
Moreover, that's hardly a subjective value judgement. It's simply a measurable
property of systems.

The language and tone used in the paper is not in the format "if we want to
increase sustainability, this is what we should do", it's in the format "this
is what we should do". For example: "economic systems that exploit nature and
humans" \- that's clearly a value judgement, not science.

~~~
guerrilla
I feel like you didn't read what I wrote or the article: Life itself depends
on sustainability.

> If we look at sustainability from the perspective of "preserving human
> existence as long as possible", then the only long-term solution is
> expanding to other planets/solar systems.

Or not have a system of infinite growth at all.

> The language and tone used in the paper is not in the format "if we want to
> increase sustainability, this is what we should do"

It's literally what the paper says.

> "economic systems that exploit nature and humans"

This is also objectively measurable. They're talking about externalities. Is
economics also a bunch of value judgements now too?

~~~
logicchains
>Life itself depends on sustainability.

"Life" isn't a sentient being with values, people are. Humanity makes
decisions based on some aggregate of the preferences of living humans. If most
humans want to enjoy a good life now at the expense of the future environment,
there's no objective standard to say they're wrong. It's a classic argument:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument)
, as noted by Sextus Empiricus, the founder of empiricism. There's no way to
empirically justify a moral judgement.

>Or not have a system of infinite growth at all.

This betrays a misunderstanding of what growth means in an economic context.
If your barber learns how to cut your hair twice as fast, that's economic
growth. If the paperboy adopts a more efficient paper route to deliver papers
faster, that's economic growth. If enough paperboys adopt more efficient
routes, that shows up in GDP growth.

>This is also objectively measurable. They're talking about externalities. Is
economics also a bunch of value judgements now too?

Yes of course it is. It's based on utilitarianism
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism)),
basically the philosophy that there is some quantitative form of value that we
should aim to maximise. That's why there are different schools of economics:
they disagree on the foundations.

~~~
guerrilla
> This betrays a misunderstanding of what growth means in an economic context.

Nope, you're just ignoring the limits of optimization.

~~~
logicchains
We're so far away from those limits for them to be irrelevant to any practical
considerations. Compared e.g. the performance per unit energy of the human
brain to that of the best current CPU designs.

------
ThePhysicist
I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between affluence and
environmental impact recently. It seems that in general, the richer you
become, the more garbage and pollution you tend to produce. I am far from
being rich myself but compared to people from less affluent countries I have a
lot of free income, and while I try to reduce my environmental impact I have
to say it’s worrying how much trash I have produced and how many resources I
have used over the years: Electronics, furniture, clothes, travel, food, ....
If I was more affluent this would only become worse I suppose.

I think the problem is that a rational person (in our current definition) is
incentivized to spend most of the available income/wealth during his/her
lifetime, so as peoples income grows they find new ways to spend it: Get a new
car every two years, buy a weekend house, go on expensive travels, buy lots of
expensive clothes or furniture, always have the newest tech gadgets, etc.. All
this incurs more pollution and resource usage. I don’t see how we can break
this cycle without fundamentally changing our economic system, as right now
almost everything is optimized to continuously increase output and create more
consumption.

~~~
tokamak-teapot
Also as humans get richer, they almost never consider themselves ‘rich’. If
you’re born into affluence, it’s almost impossible to comprehend this.

I’ve watched people living in a rich western democracy, who are rich by the
standards of their host country, travel to India and see the grinding poverty
of so many people’s lives. Their assessment was not that they themselves are
rich, but that those people are poor.

It’s also incredibly difficult for those living higher up on Maslow’s
hierarchy to see that it’s their entire level of society that is - in
aggregate - a force for negative environmental impact. Individuals won’t admit
to this, and will instead say it’s fine because they sort their recycling and
only have one car and... but the macro scale is ignored because the self-
defense mechanism won’t allow it to be fully understood or admitted to.

Those who manage to admit and realise this is a problem may try to help - or
at least not contribute - by doing their best, but usually this means keeping
as clean as they can personally, while still taking advantage of most of the
trappings of their bubble. Il not saying they’re bad people or they shouldn’t
make an effort, but ten people picking up litter versus ten million dropping
it is never going to work out.

~~~
logicchains
>It’s also incredibly difficult for those living higher up on Maslow’s
hierarchy to see that it’s their entire level of society that is - in
aggregate - a force for negative environmental impact. Individuals won’t admit
to this

Or maybe they just don't care? It's not exactly a stretch to imagine people
value their wellbeing in the present over some impact to the environment. Most
people don't even care about other people enough to give to charity, let alone
care about the environment.

~~~
tokamak-teapot
I’m sure if they were able to understand their own position - and had enough
confidence that it was possible for them to contribute to realistic change for
the better - that they would show that they do actually care.

Until there is understanding and some route to channeling the will of the
larger populations of affluent societies, however, I think we are stuck in a
downward spiral.

The only realistic scenario I can conceive of is that eventually enough damage
will reflect back on the affluent to effect a change in mindset. I regretfully
believe that the poor all over the world will suffer a great deal before this
begins to occur.

------
jojo2000
Model around consumption should get deeply revised if we want to leave the
world in a good state for our children.

Refurbish rather than build new buildings

Build sturdy hardware with replaceable parts

Build from natural materials as much as possible, and invent a new concrete

Stop polluting by sprinkling deadly stuff to grow crops and make things

Develop recycling aggressively (98%)

Stop using oil derivates everywhere

Stop using nuclear fission as a power source

...

Problem is that it is antipodal with current economical growth models

~~~
rplst8
You had me until "stop using nuclear fission..."

~~~
jojo2000
If everyone agreed on everything, the world would be less fun ! My main
problem with nuclear fission is that we generate a lot of waste that is almost
impossible to dispose of and very dangerous. We don't even know, in case of a
civilization breakdown, how people would manage the situation if knowledge was
lost. [0]

edit : ray of hope here [1b]

Currently there has been many accidents with nuclear power, and we don't know
how to manage those. Fukushima is still releasing lots of radioactivity in the
sea. Yet radio activity about this is close to zero. [1]

And new ways to tap into fission power (pressurized reactors) are dangerous
and hard to build.

Yet, I shall agree with you, that there is no definite solution to the energy
problem, consuming less would be a good start.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_\(film\))

[1]
[http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13228942](http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13228942)

[1b] [https://futurism.com/the-byte/nobel-prize-lasers-destroy-
nuc...](https://futurism.com/the-byte/nobel-prize-lasers-destroy-nuclear-
waste)

------
andrewtbham
"Any transition towards sustainability can only be effective if far-reaching
lifestyle changes complement technological advancements."

How can they possibly know this for sure? My intuition is that sustainable
energy, over the long term, will lead to more consumption and improved
lifestyles.

------
buboard
This is not a good article and it has a very patronizing/inflammatory title.
There is only 1 figure and that one is , if anything , hopeful. It shows that
GDP growth has bent the curve of CO2 since the 2010s. They seem to be arguing
about what was happening in the 20th century without taking into account
current trends?

This is supposed to be a review, but it doesn't really review much, they make
various statements with references, but they often do not state the facts
which they are referring to. There are also grammatical errors

An example: > The positional consumption behaviour of the super-affluent thus
drives consumption norms across the population, for instance through their
excessive air travel, as documented by Gössling73.

That Gosling73 study is a 2017 study of 10 celebrities including Meg whitman,
emma watson, felix von derleden and Karl lagerfeld (are these people
considered influential?) Celebrities and the "affluent" are different things.
Plus i believe most air travel in the past 10 years was "influenced" by
middle-to-low income influencers on youtube/instagram/etc. Importantly, that
paper presents conjectures but no data that people are actually following the
flight patterns of celebrities.

> Whilst a number of countries in the global North have recently managed to
> reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while still growing their economies30, it is
> highly unlikely that such decoupling will occur more widely in the near
> future, rapidly enough at global scale and for other environmental impacts

Why not? Every technology that the west built was quickly adopted by the rest
of the world. What kind of inane/ahistorical statement is that ?

~~~
ovi256
>Why not? Every technology that the west built was quickly adopted by the rest
of the world. What kind of inane/ahistorical statement is that ?

Those countries pay high costs for their energy because their alternative
energy sources are in no way cost competitive yet. They can afford those high
costs. Less rich countries will never adopt fancy, expensive technologies if
they're not cost effective.

India and most of Asia are building coal plants as we speak, because they're
cost effective (to them). They've also, at most COP meetings, pushed back any
initiative to tax carbon emissions, as they see that (probably justly) only as
a brake on their development. Their social stability would fall apart quickly
if they can't deliver the economic development.

For these reasons, the majority of future carbon emissions are projected to
occur in Asia and Africa. There's very little Western countries can do, except
some novel form of imposing their will on other countries, which would quickly
and justly be denounced as neo-colonialist.

------
23throwaway23
To highlight some important elements of their work:

A group of researchers, led by a UNSW sustainability scientist, have reviewed
existing academic discussions on the link between wealth, economy and
associated impacts, reaching a clear conclusion: technology will only get us
so far when working towards sustainability—we need far-reaching lifestyle
changes and different economic paradigms.

In their review, published today in Nature Communications and entitled
Scientists' Warning on Affluence, the researchers have summarized the
available evidence, identifying possible solution approaches.

"Recent scientists' warnings have done a great job at describing the many
perils our natural world is facing through crises in climate, biodiversity and
food systems, to name but a few," says lead author Professor Tommy Wiedmann
from UNSW Engineering.

"However, none of these warnings has explicitly considered the role of growth-
oriented economies and the pursuit of affluence. In our scientists' warning,
we identify the underlying forces of overconsumption and spell out the
measures that are needed to tackle the overwhelming 'power' of consumption and
the economic growth paradigm—that's the gap we fill.

"The key conclusion from our review is that we cannot rely on technology alone
to solve existential environmental problems—like climate change, biodiversity
loss and pollution—but that we also have to change our affluent lifestyles and
reduce overconsumption, in combination with structural change."

~~~
asaegyn
So there's a big question here (beyond the obvious, existential one) for the
VC and startup community. What role do we play in all of this? Can we play a
constructive role? What might that look like?

~~~
TomSwirly
The picture isn't really so good for a lot of these startups, no.

You know it in your heart.

It's very unclear how an ethical person is supposed to be behave. If we
believe that this huge machine is destroying the planet, surely we should stop
participating in it - and yet if we do that, we become unable to support
ourselves.

I compensate by trying to consume as little in my personal life, and trying to
get jobs that aren't unethical.

------
dade_
Other than the minor detail that only the affluent think about these problems,
have the resources to solve them, and the spare time to do anything about
them.

~~~
0d9eooo
I've increasingly become convinced the environmental problem is really a
socioeconomic problem. This is in some ways the point of the paper, but in
other ways the paper misses the point completely, by focusing on affluent
lifestyles rather than how to meet human needs in a sustainable way.

------
lcall
I don't think we are competent to solve this when we can't generally trust
each other to keep our word, and especially when we have rejected the specific
advice of the planet's Creator. I realize many will think that is silly, but I
have put reasons I think this, and why I believe this, in depth, at my simple
site (no JS etc):
[http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html)
\-- for what it's worth. And why we can really be OK.

Edit: I think expecting honesty, penalizing the lack of it, (and probably the
Golden Rule) are prerequisites to solving many things. Etc.

------
bJGVygG7MQVF8c
No mention of reducing population growth. There never seem to be anymore.

The trajectory we're on is either toward ecological catastrophe or, if we
manage to avoid that, a bimodal distribution of quality of life between an
affluent few and the immiserated (if distracted) masses.

~~~
Apocryphon
We're set to hit below replacement birthrates for most of the world, and those
parts of the world, being the most developed, are the places that consume the
most fossil fuels, among other resources.

------
tim333
>It is clear that prevailing capitalist, growth-driven economic systems have
not only increased affluence since World War II, but have led to enormous
increases in inequality, financial instability...

Globally it's not at all clear there have been increases in inequality. When I
was a kid in the 60s '3rd world nations' were impoverished going on starving,
now they are mostly prosperous, have 4G, plenty of food etc. China especially
was getting by on maybe $300/yr GDP and now has western style prosperity. The
US may be more unequal but there is 90%+ of the world that is not the US.

It may seem nitpicking but it's basically an essay on economics and it makes
me disregard the rest a bit when they get basic facts wrong. Also in terms of
stability things have been fairly stable given the pandemic, fingers crossed.

Re affluence and the environment probably what we need is pricing for
externalities in things like fossil fuels - people can be rich in non damaging
ways - make artworks and sell them to each other for $1m+, build eco
buildings, gardens etc - it doesn't have to be SUVs.

~~~
0d9eooo
It's important to keep that in mind re: improvements in inequality, but at the
same time, for example, there is a refugee crisis that's been steadily
increasing over time worldwide in recent times. GDP per capita is not the only
metric of inequality, nor is China the only exception to the US.

I basically agree with everything you're saying, I just think something is
going on that's not nearly captured by a lot of traditional metrics.

------
lazyjones
Sorry, but this is a purely political piece of garbage.

It's full of claims unsupported by their data. For example, all their data
shows population growth is a central issue but they focus on "affluence" and
then they cherry-pick the (already affluent, saturated in consumption) first
world to attack and suggest improvements for when the elephant in the room is
the third world with its not exactly "affluent" but at least no longer
starving population that is beginning to do what they suggest we stop doing.
Then the typical radical left / eco-socialist "solutions" appear out of
nowhere. It's disappointing that such political pieces are now in mainstream
science publications (presumably because it's en vogue to kneel to the radical
left...).

~~~
mynameishere
The same group of people were _obsessed_ with population growth decades ago,
when the wrong kind of people were the ones having babies. That problem is
solved, and so they have moved on to the next one, which is the
pastoralization of the West. It's crazy, but the left has won every single
battle it has fought. So, get ready...

------
k33n
The radical environmentalists (really, they’re just marxists) finally starting
to admit what they want to take from us.

------
novalis78
Here is a lifestyle change for you: ‘A step farther out’ by Jerry Pournell.
Anti-humanism on nature.com rubs me the wrong way.

------
asaegyn
So there's a big question here (beyond the obvious, existential one) for the
VC and startup community. What role do we play in all of this? Can we play a
constructive role? What might that look like?

~~~
brabel
The current Silicon Valley model of pursuing hyper-growth and aiming at making
a few people (founders and investors) very rich is part of the problem, not
the solution. However, a more balanced startup culture that focuses on people
well-being and environment sustainability as their ultimate goals could be
part of the solution if they manage to find a working model within the current
capitalist framework. The problem is that such framework is intensively
individualistic and, without Government intervention, creates the worst
possible outcome from a sustainability point-of-view because it assumes
eternal growth and results in the concentration of resources into only a few
hands.

I would love to see a startup that focuses on making its customer's lives more
fulfilling while at the same time less "affluent", which is possible to
because after you have all your basic needs covered (food, shelter, medical
care), no amount of money can make you happier... but small things, like a
stimulating social life, or a sense of pride on what your work produces,
definitely can. The founders of course, would need to be living proof that
their startup delivers on that promise, so they wouldn't make a penny more
than necessary to live a fulfilling life where most fulfillment came from
bringing happiness to others. That's where I think this idea breaks down! I am
sure there would be founders doing this if they thought they could make a
billion $$$ first :D but if they could do that, the whole motivation for the
project would've been undermined already.

------
zvrba
The paper would perhaps have a greater impact if I didn't have to google for
the meaning of the word in the title ("affluence").

~~~
bamboozled
It’s a common English word.

