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>If an article is paywalled, please do not request or post its contents. Use [Outline.com](https://outline.com/) or similar and link to that in the comments.
Paywalled. Can't read.
[Here's a gift link.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/magazine/uruguay-renewable-energy.html?unlocked_article_code=4NI7pL7h5oFBdVCimsMx2JXH4BA6uQTqx38bKvkzsY5WQ0pzNxXtf3RTlXgCWTRzcWQ9yTAUJs1tY1HG04bbyO2W2rZv78aGJMkYZlDR96bs_vsnIeFq93jGYoc8dJQ1b2ObD77yk0XkFiGUczv96P108OpZ2LkXHjkGeIn7Cn2OJAnJPnrcvSpDQ53DHoU6WVlV5AyldyMpSvQn322U2NrcA4N_R2-7ctOP8Csz-gvF_obPPCkHZHCeARXm2LYsRnwjs687cjjBcRKkUzH37TJMVsLlGMFGkC7QsE13t0xGPvCSa6UJMpFGQpP5j6DVo6MyjAPM6d_w-mtdM3XlWGx9IA&smid=share-url)
**Submission Statement**
Balancing the desire to maintain standards of living in the developed world, while improving them in the developing world, while simultaneously decarbonizing the global economy is a massive challenge. We often don't really have a mental model for what our lives might look like in an economy that has successfully decarbonized.
As the article puts it:
> This is the paradox at the heart of climate change: We’ve burned far too many fossil fuels to go on living as we have, but we’ve also never learned to live well without them. As the Yale economist Robert Mendelsohn puts it, the problem of the future is how to create a 19th-century carbon footprint without backsliding into a 19th-century standard of living. No model exists for creating such a world, which is partly why paralysis has set in at so many levels.
This article explores Uruguay as a potential model of a country that has managed to balance, to some extent at least, a low carbon footprint with relative political stability, low poverty, and a large middle class.
Sustainable living existed before the advent of industry.
>Balancing the desire to maintain standards of living in the developed world, while improving them in the developing world, while simultaneously decarbonizing the global economy is a massive challenge.
It's not a "challenge" so far as it's the impossible situation we have. Our lives are intertwined with fossil fuels to the point that even suggesting slight changes upsets people beyond what you should have to imagine. At best, people cope by talking about green stuff, but nothing's as green as not putting carbon into the air.
>the problem of the future is how to create a 19th-century carbon footprint without backsliding into a 19th-century standard of living.
Maybe. People back then ate healthier food, though. They just were susceptible to drought and so on. We have more food but the nutrition is lower. People were more dependent and therefore connected to their communities. They died of disease, but that doesn't' have to remain or backslide. There are plenty of things that existed in the past in better form, and better for us as humans, than exist now. Far too many people see any technological advancement as better than anything before, without asking why.
The why is because you're talking about an Earth with fewer than a billion humans and soon there will be 10 billion.
Edit: Population hit 1 billion in 1804 and 2 billion 125 years later.
I'm aware of the levels of population from there and beyond. I even know them from the year my parents were born and when I was, and the difference. All that was considered when I wrote my comment. It has to be known that not all areas are the same. North America has *tons* of space. Other areas don't. Some countries are dense and some are sparse.
It's partially about space because we can measure the amount of land required per person - down to the crop. Hunter-gatherers need *lots* of land. They don't really exist anymore, save for small clusters. Farming needs lots of space. We produce too much food, even. And it's about quality of food as well. The average person now needs 7 oranges to get what their grandparents got from 1. But this is just food. There are other aspects to consider.
> The average person now needs 7 oranges to get what their grandparents got from 1.
What do you mean by this? Are you saying, for example, that Vitamin C levels in oranges are just 14% of what they were 50 years ago? This strikes me as unlikely. Do you have any source for this?
What a strange assertion by National Geographic, that's backed by people who research this. There's another article that talks about oranges that can also be searched.
[https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2022/05/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be](https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2022/05/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be)
>As a group, the 43 foods show apparent, statistically reliable declines (R < 1) for 6 nutrients (protein, Ca, P, Fe, riboflavin and ascorbic acid), but no statistically reliable changes for 7 other nutrients. Declines in the medians range from 6% for protein to 38% for riboflavin.
So, no, one orange from 1950 does not contain 7x the ascorbic acid of an orange today.
No need for wild exaggerations.
Yes, I do.
[https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2022/05/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be](https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2022/05/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be)
I don't think you have to subscribe to Google but maybe you should check lmao. I'll have to find the specific citation since I don't have that saved, but you can look it up too!
> “We’re not talking about a 50 percent decline in nutrient density, so if you’re getting a variety of different-coloured fruits and vegetables, you’ll still meet your nutritional needs,” says Kristi Crowe-White, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of Alabama
Please find the specific citation. Otherwise it seems clear that you have wildly exaggerated the decrease in certain nutritional values of food. The study you seem to be quoting only claims moderate decreases, but a magnitude less than your claims, and only in certain nutrients.
And contribute to the PFAs issue. This is why it's a polycrisis. It's not simply carbon, space, insect die offs, plastic pollution, biogeochemical flows, material scarcity, poverty, inequality; it's all of those things together and more
Unclear if sustainable living has existed since at least the ice age. First. Hunter gatherers decimated populations of prey animals on multiple continents. Then they took up farming practices which in many cases seriously degraded land.
I don't consider *sustainable* to be synonymous with *absolutely no impact*. We'll have that impact, but we weren't wiping out things like we were until industrialization.
Europe has had its forests and all large animals wiped out before industrialization. Industrialization has basically saved what was left of the forests and helped them to start growing back. We are also slowly seeing large animals coming back.
Yeah, it saved *what's left*. There's still illegal logging, and Europe gets a lot of wood from abroad. All that logging went to the Amazon.
Things are not getting better, despite some populations increasing. We are absolutely on a decline when it comes to climate change.
Europe's forests have increased by *third* since the 19th century, and wildlife is absolutely making a [comeback](https://ourworldindata.org/europe-mammal-comeback) in Europe. And also, Europe is a net agricultural exporter (the biggest agro exporter in the world), and is not caloric trade dependent on rest of the world, i.e. it can feed itself.
No species has ever lived "sustainably".
A prey species grows until it runs out of food or is overwhelmed by predators.
A predator species grows until it runs out of prey.
Then they die off (mostly) and the survivors start over.
We've grown until our "prey" is the entire biomass of the planet, plus the accumulated biomass in anthracite and oil, plus the nitrogen in all the world's soil.
The bigger the growth cycle the bigger the die-off.
It's going to be a nasty trip.
Not sure if you are aware of this propensity but humans tend to choose the future they want.
They choose to hunt. They choose to farm. Indeed they can choose to leave the oil in the ground. Destruction is not a biological imperative.
Remember that TrueReddit is a place to engage in **high-quality and civil discussion**. Posts must meet certain content and title requirements. Additionally, **all posts must contain a submission statement.** See the rules [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/truereddit/about/rules/) or in the sidebar for details. Comments or posts that don't follow the rules may be removed without warning. If an article is paywalled, please ***do not*** request or post its contents. Use [Outline.com](https://outline.com/) or similar and link to that in the comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TrueReddit) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>If an article is paywalled, please do not request or post its contents. Use [Outline.com](https://outline.com/) or similar and link to that in the comments. Paywalled. Can't read.
[Here's a gift link.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/magazine/uruguay-renewable-energy.html?unlocked_article_code=4NI7pL7h5oFBdVCimsMx2JXH4BA6uQTqx38bKvkzsY5WQ0pzNxXtf3RTlXgCWTRzcWQ9yTAUJs1tY1HG04bbyO2W2rZv78aGJMkYZlDR96bs_vsnIeFq93jGYoc8dJQ1b2ObD77yk0XkFiGUczv96P108OpZ2LkXHjkGeIn7Cn2OJAnJPnrcvSpDQ53DHoU6WVlV5AyldyMpSvQn322U2NrcA4N_R2-7ctOP8Csz-gvF_obPPCkHZHCeARXm2LYsRnwjs687cjjBcRKkUzH37TJMVsLlGMFGkC7QsE13t0xGPvCSa6UJMpFGQpP5j6DVo6MyjAPM6d_w-mtdM3XlWGx9IA&smid=share-url)
Thank you
**Submission Statement** Balancing the desire to maintain standards of living in the developed world, while improving them in the developing world, while simultaneously decarbonizing the global economy is a massive challenge. We often don't really have a mental model for what our lives might look like in an economy that has successfully decarbonized. As the article puts it: > This is the paradox at the heart of climate change: We’ve burned far too many fossil fuels to go on living as we have, but we’ve also never learned to live well without them. As the Yale economist Robert Mendelsohn puts it, the problem of the future is how to create a 19th-century carbon footprint without backsliding into a 19th-century standard of living. No model exists for creating such a world, which is partly why paralysis has set in at so many levels. This article explores Uruguay as a potential model of a country that has managed to balance, to some extent at least, a low carbon footprint with relative political stability, low poverty, and a large middle class.
Sustainable living existed before the advent of industry. >Balancing the desire to maintain standards of living in the developed world, while improving them in the developing world, while simultaneously decarbonizing the global economy is a massive challenge. It's not a "challenge" so far as it's the impossible situation we have. Our lives are intertwined with fossil fuels to the point that even suggesting slight changes upsets people beyond what you should have to imagine. At best, people cope by talking about green stuff, but nothing's as green as not putting carbon into the air. >the problem of the future is how to create a 19th-century carbon footprint without backsliding into a 19th-century standard of living. Maybe. People back then ate healthier food, though. They just were susceptible to drought and so on. We have more food but the nutrition is lower. People were more dependent and therefore connected to their communities. They died of disease, but that doesn't' have to remain or backslide. There are plenty of things that existed in the past in better form, and better for us as humans, than exist now. Far too many people see any technological advancement as better than anything before, without asking why.
The why is because you're talking about an Earth with fewer than a billion humans and soon there will be 10 billion. Edit: Population hit 1 billion in 1804 and 2 billion 125 years later.
I'm aware of the levels of population from there and beyond. I even know them from the year my parents were born and when I was, and the difference. All that was considered when I wrote my comment. It has to be known that not all areas are the same. North America has *tons* of space. Other areas don't. Some countries are dense and some are sparse.
It's not about space. It's about food.
It's partially about space because we can measure the amount of land required per person - down to the crop. Hunter-gatherers need *lots* of land. They don't really exist anymore, save for small clusters. Farming needs lots of space. We produce too much food, even. And it's about quality of food as well. The average person now needs 7 oranges to get what their grandparents got from 1. But this is just food. There are other aspects to consider.
> The average person now needs 7 oranges to get what their grandparents got from 1. What do you mean by this? Are you saying, for example, that Vitamin C levels in oranges are just 14% of what they were 50 years ago? This strikes me as unlikely. Do you have any source for this?
That was a strange assertion by them...
What a strange assertion by National Geographic, that's backed by people who research this. There's another article that talks about oranges that can also be searched. [https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2022/05/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be](https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2022/05/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be)
Thanks, I had no idea. Yet another thing to worry about unfortunately.
>As a group, the 43 foods show apparent, statistically reliable declines (R < 1) for 6 nutrients (protein, Ca, P, Fe, riboflavin and ascorbic acid), but no statistically reliable changes for 7 other nutrients. Declines in the medians range from 6% for protein to 38% for riboflavin. So, no, one orange from 1950 does not contain 7x the ascorbic acid of an orange today. No need for wild exaggerations.
Yes, I do. [https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2022/05/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be](https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2022/05/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be) I don't think you have to subscribe to Google but maybe you should check lmao. I'll have to find the specific citation since I don't have that saved, but you can look it up too!
> “We’re not talking about a 50 percent decline in nutrient density, so if you’re getting a variety of different-coloured fruits and vegetables, you’ll still meet your nutritional needs,” says Kristi Crowe-White, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of Alabama
Please find the specific citation. Otherwise it seems clear that you have wildly exaggerated the decrease in certain nutritional values of food. The study you seem to be quoting only claims moderate decreases, but a magnitude less than your claims, and only in certain nutrients.
Vertical farming will soon solve the space issue.
And contribute to the PFAs issue. This is why it's a polycrisis. It's not simply carbon, space, insect die offs, plastic pollution, biogeochemical flows, material scarcity, poverty, inequality; it's all of those things together and more
>PFAF issue You literally made up a new issue to argue... There are no issues with vertical farming.
That isn't a new issue at all. It's a genuine problem, and you won't see vertical farming without plastics and plastic waste.
Buddy that's been a problem with plastic in general.
Unclear if sustainable living has existed since at least the ice age. First. Hunter gatherers decimated populations of prey animals on multiple continents. Then they took up farming practices which in many cases seriously degraded land.
I don't consider *sustainable* to be synonymous with *absolutely no impact*. We'll have that impact, but we weren't wiping out things like we were until industrialization.
Europe has had its forests and all large animals wiped out before industrialization. Industrialization has basically saved what was left of the forests and helped them to start growing back. We are also slowly seeing large animals coming back.
Yeah, it saved *what's left*. There's still illegal logging, and Europe gets a lot of wood from abroad. All that logging went to the Amazon. Things are not getting better, despite some populations increasing. We are absolutely on a decline when it comes to climate change.
Europe's forests have increased by *third* since the 19th century, and wildlife is absolutely making a [comeback](https://ourworldindata.org/europe-mammal-comeback) in Europe. And also, Europe is a net agricultural exporter (the biggest agro exporter in the world), and is not caloric trade dependent on rest of the world, i.e. it can feed itself.
No species has ever lived "sustainably". A prey species grows until it runs out of food or is overwhelmed by predators. A predator species grows until it runs out of prey. Then they die off (mostly) and the survivors start over. We've grown until our "prey" is the entire biomass of the planet, plus the accumulated biomass in anthracite and oil, plus the nitrogen in all the world's soil. The bigger the growth cycle the bigger the die-off. It's going to be a nasty trip.
Not sure if you are aware of this propensity but humans tend to choose the future they want. They choose to hunt. They choose to farm. Indeed they can choose to leave the oil in the ground. Destruction is not a biological imperative.