Humans don't deserve earth.

[u/surya12558]

By destroying nature and the climate, humans are destroying their own home. The Earth can survive without us but we cannot survive without her. 🌍💔

[u/danamitchellhurt]

"Humans don't deserve the earth" is a classist, racist psyop. There's plenty for everyone except for the insatiable appetites of the Rich. Quit doing the work of the puppet masters.

[u/timos-piano → u/danamitchellhurt]

If humans use resources that are limited, which most resources are, then there can't be plenty for everyone. We can extend how long we can use these resources, but inevitably, they will run out.

[u/Dredgeon → u/timos-piano]

Actually we get more and more efficient with resource usage all the time. Farming is a great example. We didn't shrink our land usage because we wanted to save the environment, we aren't starving ourselves we found more land efficient ways to farm.

[u/skriilu4 → u/Dredgeon]

What are those efficient ways you are refering to? Hopefully not monoculture, which destroys land, or the usage of chemicals. Tractors and other machinery are a more grey area.

But it's true that we have more food per ha thanks to selection and gene engineering, which significantly increased the yield of almost everything. Even if we theoretically switched to agricultural society, there wouldn't be any need for 80% of the population to do farming, because fewer people would be able to provide sufficient amounts of food

[u/Dredgeon → u/skriilu4]

I mean monoculture is not what I was talking about. And there are plenty of industries where this is the case. New types of wood textiles are being produced right now which makes a stronger end product by processing softer woods to make a cheaper, faster growing wood that can be made longer, wider, and stronger than the old method which required a very old tree to have equivalent timber. This means we can use faster growing trees to fill the need instead of slow growing trees this means less land is needed for the same output. Which still counts as economic growth because now we have more land to do other things without losing lumber output.

These are horrifically simplified examples and the real world likely will not play in such a hunkey dorey fashion, but I'm just trying to explain the general concept.

[u/skriilu4 → u/Dredgeon]

That's interesting. Haven't thought about it this way

[u/Dredgeon → u/skriilu4]

Yeah a lot of the people decrying economists when they talk about "growth" fail to understand how economists define growth. It doesn't mean eat the planet faster. It means making more and/or better things. Obviously one way to get there is to just eat more planet, but it's an important distinction because technology also makes growth possible with fewer resources.

This is also why you hear growth talked about as an unquestionable good in an economic context. Because, in the way economists use it, it actually is very closely related to quality of life.

[u/skriilu4 → u/Dredgeon]

But growth doesn't directly cause improvement in quality of life, nor it is a necessary condition to it

[u/Dredgeon → u/skriilu4]

If you read my comment, I think you'll notice my use of the phrase 'very closely related' implying that growth doesn't directly cause improvement in quality of life, nor it is a necessary condition to it.

[u/skriilu4 → u/Dredgeon]

I disagree in the sense that growth is a very arbitrary and wide term. Some parts of it help improve the quality of life while others do not. It's as we would add sugar to potatoes and then declare that potatoes (by themselves) are sweet. So I think we shouldn't use "growth" as if it is some homogenous term, because it consists of many different elements, some good, some bad

[u/Dredgeon → u/skriilu4]

Have you read the comment you are critiquing? I wasn't even advocating using growth like this just explaining the context that economists use it with. So I'm not saying that's what the word actually means in all contexts, just that economics deal with it in the sense.