{"id":276075,"date":"2023-08-28T19:24:02","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T17:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=276075"},"modified":"2023-08-28T19:24:05","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T17:24:05","slug":"fast-company-climate-optimists-are-worse-than-climate-doomers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=276075","title":{"rendered":"Fast Company: Climate Optimists are Worse than Climate Doomers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essay by Eric Worrall<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Brian Kateman, climate alarmists like Musk who think colonising other planets will solve our problems are worse than people who think it\u2019s all hopeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Climate doomerism is dangerous. Climate optimism is even worse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope is crucial in effecting change. Blind optimism is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

08-23-23<\/em>
BY\u00a0BRIAN KATEMAN<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we talk about climate change, especially as it applies to the U.S. and public policy, the subject matter often seems to divide people into two strict, opposing camps: environmentalists and\u00a0<\/em>science deniers<\/a>. But those of us who acknowledge the very real risks posed by climate change aren\u2019t a monolith.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

Optimists tend to reject \u201c<\/em>Malthusian<\/a>\u201d thinking, which is based on the idea that finite resources cannot support an\u00a0<\/em>exponentially growing population<\/a>\u00a0forever, instead advocating for\u00a0<\/em>more<\/em>\u00a0people instead of fewer<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s nice to think that\u00a0<\/em>more<\/a>\u00a0humans would mean more innovations and more chances to address the effects of climate change, but it\u2019s just\u00a0<\/em>not supported by evidence<\/a>. The rapid growth of our population over the past half century is\u00a0<\/em>correlated<\/a>\u00a0with a 69% drop in wildlife populations and the alteration of at least 70%\u2014possibly up to 97%\u2014of the world\u2019s land. If history shows us anything, it\u2019s that a growing human population has always meant more planetary destruction, even as new and better technologies have been developed. There\u2019s little reason to think that this\u00a0<\/em>simply won\u2019t be the case<\/a>\u00a0going forward.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, some prefer to ignore the grim reality. For example, I find self-identifying \u201cpathological optimists<\/a>,\u201d like Elon Musk, are the ones most excited to bring humans to other planets before we\u2019ve even figured out how to not wreck our own. This idea is bizarre for many reasons, one of which being that space colonization<\/a> is supposedly an inevitable piece of our not-so-distant future. It\u2019s not really a problem if the Earth\u2019s resources are limited, the belief goes, because we\u2019ll soon be expanding to other planets anyway. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Brian Kateman cofounded the Reducetarian Foundation in 2015 after coining the term\u00a0<\/em>reducetarian\u00a0to describe a person who is deliberately reducing their consumption of meat. He is the author of\u00a0<\/em>The Reducetarian Solution<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>The Reducetarian Cookbook<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/em>Meat Me Halfway<\/a>, and is the lead producer of the documentary version of\u00a0<\/em>Meat Me Halfway<\/a>.Read more:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/90943444\/climate-doomerism-is-dangerous-climate-optimism-is-even-worse<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What I find more bizarre is people like Brian Kateman think there is any alternative to eventually going off planet to obtain the resources we need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resources are finite, and will eventually be exhausted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greens can spout all the nonsense they want about developing a\u00a0circular economy<\/a>, but we live in an age where we can\u2019t even recycle wind turbine blades, let alone challenging items like EV batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the inevitable eventual need to obtain off planet resources, though that crisis likely won\u2019t occur for centuries or millennia, what are the options?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The engineering challenge of economically transporting vast masses to and from Earth orbit, and ferrying them around the solar system, has already been solved.\u00a0Freeman Dyson<\/a>, who worked with Robert Oppenheimer and other giants of physics in the 1950s, led Project Orion alongside\u00a0Ted Taylor<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project Orion<\/a>\u00a0found a way to use atomic bombs to propel spaceships. They would have been big spaceships \u2013 thousands, even millions of tons, aircraft carrier size or larger, but launching the ships, and returning back to Earth, would cost a fraction of the current cost per pound of a chemical rocket launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously nobody is going to build such a ship tomorrow, unless a desperate need arises, such as the early detection of a large comet on a collision course with Earth. Nobody in today\u2019s world is keen to be downwind of a nuclear launch range. And hopefully our descendants will find less polluting ways to transport large masses to and from Earth orbit, than a series of atmospheric nuclear explosions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if it comes to a deadly choice between civilisation collapse and mass starvation, and detonating a few atom bombs to alleviate the shortages, I hope my distant descendants have the courage to make the right choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Brian Kateman, climate alarmists like Musk who think colonising other planets will solve our problems are worse than people who think it\u2019s all hopeless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":276080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691822143,691822142,691818154],"class_list":{"0":"post-276075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-climate-doomers","10":"tag-climate-optimists","11":"tag-net-zero","13":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/image-1042.png?fit=1536%2C1023&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-19OP","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":250039,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=250039","url_meta":{"origin":276075,"position":0},"title":"Multiple Outlets Admit \u201cCatastrophe\u201d Narrative is Counterproductive","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"28\/03\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"After the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change\u2019s (IPCC) latest Synthesis Report, multiple media outlets cautioned their peers against leaning too far into the catastrophe narrative, as it might be counterproductive for climate policy and, perhaps, inaccurate too.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/image-1207.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/image-1207.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/image-1207.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/image-1207.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/image-1207.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":422407,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=422407","url_meta":{"origin":276075,"position":1},"title":"Climate Alarmism at War with Itself","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"21\/01\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent piece in Climatewire by Scott Walderman, \u201c\u2018Doomerism\u2019: Why scientists disagree with Biden on 1.5 C,\u201d begins: Damned. 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