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I think - I may be wrong, it's only a suggestion - that if you handed round a questionnaire asking what aspects of eighteenth century life were moral outrages on a scale way past any other, the most common answer would be slavery.

My other suggestion is that if you ask the same question about today's society when it has taken on the same aspect of "the way things used to be in the old days", there will be a dead-heat tie between slavery, imprisonment and killing things so as to eat them. I don't think future generations will distinguish between the enormity of each of those three behaviors.

Do you wear leather shoes?

maybe in England but I'm not sure about elsewhere though

magentaflame;1523139 wrote: maybe in England but I'm not sure about elsewhere thoughMany people aren't enslaved in Australia? I'd have thought it would be roughly the same proportion as in England, and the same goes for imprisonment. Perhaps you all avoid killing things to eat them, maybe you have no slaughterhouses for example. Perhaps there is no domesticated species being farmed. In which case Australia is obviously a gracious society and I congratulate you.

Hang on, are we talking about the enslavement of people or animals or animals or people?

magentaflame;1523186 wrote: Hang on, are we talking about the enslavement of people or animals or animals or people?


As best I know, slavery is only a word applied to humans. Other words apply to non-humans. It's just a vocabulary issue, I'm happy to use words in any sense so long as the sense is agreed by both parties.

Anyway, I'm using the term as applied to 21st century Australia/Britain/America in the sense described in the Wikipedia Wage slavery article which has been current for at least the last 250 years. The article explains exactly why the condition qualifies as slavery. In today's zero-hours contract economy things are getting worse, not better. At some stage in the future, wage slavery will be universally considered equivalent to the chattel slavery of the plantations or classical slavery in the Ancient Greek sense. At the moment the notion is derided by - you guessed it - capitalist employers and their political and legal representatives.

oh, yep totally agree with that then.

tude dog;1523211 wrote: I don't see the connection between slavery and eating food,


Nor me. I merely suggested that in future people will find three behaviors in particular reprehensible. One is slavery, one is killing things in order to eat them, and one is imprisoning people. I don't see any connection other than one of moral outrage.

( sorry for the double post)



I don't see the comparison between slavery and food.

tude dog;1523213 wrote: I don't see the comparison between slavery and food.
You'll not allow me an attempt at serious discussion?

OK, seriously, what's more immoral than the devastation of the planetary ecology? Especially since that will kill us all?

Saint_;1523253 wrote: OK, seriously, what's more immoral than the devastation of the planetary ecology? Especially since that will kill us all?


I think the jury is still completely out on whether global warming is a benefit or a liability worldwide and I've not seen anyone even try to provide a balanced argument.

How about from the point of view that perhaps the whole of northern Canada, Greenland and Siberia transform into Harvest Central as a result, before things stabilize? Does that provide a counterweight?

The chief damage is the mass destruction of species by homo sapiens and guess what? That bit already happened over the last 50,000 years. Just go and count the remaining non-domesticated terrestrial species over that time period with an adult average weight over 50kg. Well over half of them are gone in the blink of a geological eye, and the spread of homo sapiens is the trigger which killed them all.

You're locking the species stable after the horse bolted. If you want immoral, start 50,000 years ago. Nothing we do now will be as destructive as what we've already done.

spot;1523255 wrote: I think the jury is still completely out on whether global warming is a benefit or a liability worldwide and I've not seen anyone even try to provide a balanced argument..


Your point: Colder countries will be able to have longer growing seasons.

My point: Climate disasters, hurricanes, tornados, massive wildfires, desertification, and the flooding of coastlines will kill millions if not billions.

That doesn't balance out for me.

although...I am hoping the pressure will force mankind in space.

Saint_;1523258 wrote: That doesn't balance out for me.


I thought you taught math. Perhaps if you lay out a rough balance sheet based on sensible possibilities we could find we're not disagreeing.

spot;1523260 wrote: I thought you taught math.


I do teach math. And if you'd like to compare graphs, you know it would show total disaster looming.



Perhaps if you lay out a rough balance sheet based on sensible possibilities we could find we're not disagreeing.


I'm having trouble understanding what you would consider a "good" outcome for global disaster. Yes, I understand that certain countries would have a greater agricultural season, but vast swaths of the planet would become uninhabitable. How can that be good?

Unless, of course you consider that there is too much overpopulation right now. (In which case, wouldn't a good nuclear war accomplish the same thing? With a nice nuclear winter to help the warming trend as well?)

Saint_;1523263 wrote: vast swaths of the planet would become uninhabitable. How can that be good?




It depends on what you mean by vast, I suspect.

I have no difference with you as far as the increase in greenhouse gas emissions is concerned, the increase in ppm has to be reversed and brought down to a sustainable level. That means your graph has to go negative for quite a while and it obviously hasn't yet been turned downward much less brought negative. By 2050 that graph will have turned, it will have reduced from 3 to 2 or so and still be headed downward. By then carbon dioxide will be up from the pre-industrial 250ppm past today's 410ppm to 2050CE=470ppm and still rising, but rising more slowly. I'd hope it would peak out before 600ppm and start downward. I expect a sustainable long-term level might be 400ppm but that's a matter for observation.

So what you're trading is, perhaps, a 30m rise in sea level for a doubling of agricultural output. That's a lot of displaced people for a few generations. Is it a net plus or minus? I've no idea, but I know I don't know. I definitely know it's unavoidable. I also know it would be less of a problem for the poor if the rich were less damned selfish. Is it "vast swaths of the planet would become uninhabitable"? No, I don't think it is. It's an adjustment.

As for overpopulation, of course there's overpopulation. If homo sapiens numbered a hundred million worldwide it would be overpopulation. If we're dickering I'll settle for ten million but that's a compromise on my part, not a desired outcome. Name me another top predator species on the planet that exceeds a million individuals worldwide. Jackals? 80,000, which is described as "large" in the Red Book. There's a lot more jackals than wolves. I'd rather have jackals than most of the people I see about me.

There's a solution to species extinction and it involves leaving room for what currently exists to thrive. Space is the overwhelming crisis, not global warming. Leave adequate room for wildlife. And stop taking fish out of the sea while you're at it.

If you consider the amount of land and the number of major cities within thirty meters of sea level I would see at least a short term problem with the added population pressure - the "new lands" that are exposed by the rising temperature will not be habitable or productive for a fair while.

I also think that the temperature rise is going to be far worse than you expect - once we start hitting the tipping points and the positive feedback kicks in I would expect, As Saint says, that vast swathes of the land will be desert and most of the sea will be effectively sterile.