[HN Gopher] The Anti-Promethean Backlash
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The Anti-Promethean Backlash
Author : jseliger
Score : 43 points
Date : 2022-11-20 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brinklindsey.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brinklindsey.substack.com)
| polotics wrote:
| Rarely have I read such unmitigated bullshit, with wordy
| arrogance as topping. "We" didn't have a "Promethean backlash" in
| the 1970's, we had the first oil-availability crisis. Same as
| 2008 when conventional oil peaked, 2016 when... Just read the IEA
| reports, the IPCC reports...
| wmf wrote:
| Shouldn't an oil crisis _increase_ investment in nuclear power?
| Why did we have the opposite?
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Because every time society figures out how much they depend
| on Oil, they'd rather go back to it than impoverish
| themselves
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Other forces at play.
|
| The nuclear _energy_ movement in the 1970s was closely
| affiliated with the nuclear _weapons_ movement. As one
| indicator of the latter, the phrase "ban the bomb" was
| already peaking in 1963, as the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was
| being proposed: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?conten
| t=ban+the+bomb&y...> (Google Ngram viewer)
|
| A similar search for "anti-nuclear movement" shows a later
| peak, in the late 1970s, which would correspond with the
| Three Mile Island incident (1979):
| <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=anti-
| nuclear+m...>
|
| Essentially, nuclear power had a significant public-image
| problem, and it got markedly worse just as embargo-based oil
| shortages were peaking for a second (and far more
| significant) time, with the Iranian Oil Embargo (also 1979):
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_oil_crisis>
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It had that effect in France and Japan.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Hypothesis: Oil crises increase the political power of fossil
| fuel extractors, which can then use regulatory capture to
| prevent competition.
| viburnum wrote:
| the author:
|
| "in the context of climate change, it is only through the
| continued development of our technological powers that we can
| hope to arrest and reverse the immense damage we have caused."
|
| homer simpson:
|
| "Here's to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's
| problems."
| [deleted]
| empiricus wrote:
| tldr: the world seems fine, but it could have been so much better
| if we would have taken advantage of nuclear power. In my opinion
| the real issue is that all ppl (me included) are incompetent to
| an incomprehensible degree.
| empiricus wrote:
| Let me make this point stronger (im drunk): we just put two
| rocks together to get free energy (1000 to 1000000 times more
| energy than other sources) and after 100 years we are still not
| able to use this. I have no words.
| teucris wrote:
| This article commits so many logical errors, it becomes hard to
| unpack. But here are a few that struck me:
|
| 1. Attribution of the slower growth in energy usage to a
| environmental backlash by showing a correlation but no evidence
| of causation
|
| 2. > Indeed, as is now becoming clear in the context of climate
| change, it is only through the continued development of our
| technological powers that we can hope to arrest and reverse the
| immense damage we have caused.
|
| Or, you know, stop continuing to cause damage
|
| 3. Somehow, this article seems to ignore "risk-adverse" policies
| that have great harm to the environment, like not re-regulating
| fishing and grazing rights
|
| I mean, there's a kernel of something here. We need to be
| learning what technologies enable us to protect ourselves and the
| environment, and we're being too slow to do that. But just
| building a bunch of nuclear power plants isn't it - that just
| doubles down on our expectations of endless growth and increases
| the likelihood of nuclear proliferation. Instead we could be
| investigating geothermal or even thorium reactors. Or better yet,
| figuring out how to end our reliance on a system that requires
| constant economic growth.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| You can see this in some peoples reactions to "cityscapes of the
| future" paintings/artwork. Those that are not of the dystopian
| aesthetic invariably feature tall, slender, delicately
| constructed, hyper-dense structures. Greenery is everywhere, in
| winter gardens, on rooftops. Hawks circle, fish can be seen in
| ponds with ornate bridges crossing. Smoke, pollution, and of
| course cars... are notably completely absent. And
| environmentalists hate them.
| zeruch wrote:
| Why do they 'hate' them?
| sideshowb wrote:
| I suggest because such a cityscape implies a vision where we
| solve all environmental problems with tech.
|
| Whether we can do that or not is a moot point, because - from
| the opponents view point -
|
| 1. numerous historical attempts to solve things with tech
| have led to more problems down the line
|
| 2. "We'll solve it with tech" has also been used as an empty
| promise and excuse by those with vested interests who want to
| continue the status quo
| nickdothutton wrote:
| A great question. I've never had a coherent explanation from
| anyone. Maybe they think "more" (people, buildings,
| technology) necessarily means more destruction of the natural
| world and "consumption" of nature (ignoring the fact it's
| more efficient in almost every way to service a dense
| population than that same population spread out thinly).
| Maybe they are somehow generally "anti-future" (strange since
| our past has been a very dirty one which we are now dealing
| with). Maybe they don't believe that gleaming skyscrapers of
| nanowire and bio-crete, with "living walls" will ever be
| possible. Maybe they think all of this will only hasten the
| arrival of the dystopian type of future city. I wish I knew,
| but the reaction is often quite visceral. This leads me to
| believe it is driven by something deep and pre-rational.
| Maybe they feel that they will be alienated, that there is no
| place for them in such a futuristic place.
| _dain_ wrote:
| If you're talking about the same genre of concept art as I
| think you are, this twitter thread has some good reasons to
| dislike them (and more importantly, offers an alternative
| future aesthetic):
|
| https://nitter.1d4.us/380kmh/status/935965568670273537
|
| >if your idea of a future city involves:
|
| >- towers inna park >- flying cars >- flashy geometric
| buildings >- few or no people
|
| >then it is not a very serious idea
|
| ---
|
| >what do people do in these cities? walk around in the
| Green Space (tm), or sit in their Glass Box (tm) and admire
| the Futuristic Cityscape (tm)
|
| >work? lol of course not
|
| ---
|
| >as architecturally implausible as they are, one thing I
| love about Imperial Boy's cityscapes is that they actually
| look like, you know, SOCIETY
|
| >there are shops, there are workers, there are
| improvisations and decorations, there are cheap structures
| and ornate ones, etc etc
|
| ---
|
| > most important of all, they focus on how the city looks
| _from the perspective of the people who live in it_
|
| ---
|
| >The sterile glass renderings earlier in the thread suggest
| an artist who
|
| >1) doesn't understand why people live in cities, and/or
| >2) doesn't understand what people do for fun
|
| ----------
|
| (back to me now) the "towers inna park" quip is really at
| the heart of it; these kinds of places exist in real life
| and they're just terrible. it doesn't matter how much grass
| and greenery there is in between the gigahuge buildings if
| there's nothing to do there. it's not a new idea[1], we
| tried it and it sucks[2]. it looks good in concept art
| until you think about it for five minutes and imagine
| living in this place at ground level. it's utopia as
| imagined by some omnipotent top-down planner (literally, we
| nearly always see these places from above).
|
| it really has nothing to do with environmentalism one way
| or the other; they just look like awful places to be.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_Radieuse
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia
| rob74 wrote:
| I would bet that most environmentalists would prefer
| skyscrapers (dense housing) over suburban sprawl. The real
| problem is that your average middle-class citizen would
| rather have a nice suburban house and the car that must
| accompany it than an apartment in a skyscraper...
| [deleted]
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Would you care to provide 1--3 examples of what you're
| describing here?
| jitl wrote:
| This sounds like a silly straw man. Here, I am an
| environmentalist and I would enjoy living in such a city.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| What has the environmental movement accomplished? The oceans are
| still depleted, oil is still the number one game in town, our
| environment is awash in a deluge of little understood chemicals.
| It would seem to me that they're very ineffective. About the only
| accomplishment I can count is that we no longer clear cut
| forests, but we rotate logging land as a compromise.
|
| But we have damage from them, they've stopped nuclear power.
| Maybe the risks were too high, maybe they did save us, but we
| will never know. But we do know that it was the solution to their
| number one problem for decades and they stopped it.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Our air and water are hugely cleaner than they were when the
| environmental movement started. I'm guessing you are too young
| to remember.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Not too young, no. In particular the problem was largely
| trash and smog over cities. These were largely resolved due
| to the inhabitants of the cities wanting to clean up the
| cities themselves, and movements against littering. I suppose
| at least the anti littering movement was driven largely by
| environmentalists.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Have you considered the possibility that were it not for
| 'environmentalism' as a movement, things could have been a
| whole lot worse? We are not exactly in a great spot, but events
| like River Fires[1] seem a little less common these days
| partially thanks to some level of awareness of the issues.
|
| [1]https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this un-self-critical display of complete absence of knowledge
| on a large topic, using a politics label, with a topping of
| "blaming those that made changes" with the worst of what
| happened, despite real actions to prevent exactly that.. is
| presented without rebuttal (yet) today.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| So rebut.
| User23 wrote:
| It's been fabulous for coastal California real estate prices.
| Environmental impact studies are a wonderful NIMBY tool and
| keep housing prices on California's paradisiacal coast high by
| restricting density and supply. I'm not even sure that's a bad
| thing though. Would our nation really be greatly enriched by
| having Malibu look like Tijuana?
| throwboi123 wrote:
| What is living agreeably?
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(page generated 2022-11-20 23:01 UTC)