Al Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize

[madnak]

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I don't want to go through all the rest again but I can't see why you believe this to be true. It's an extreme form of hedonism that even I can't buy though I'd like to.

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There may be exceptions, and our standards of well-being may be different, but you haven't presented any credible refutation of my argument in this thread. If improvement is cumulative, then a step backward for us is a step backward for future generations, etc. And it seems clear to me that improvement is a cumulative process.

You seem to view history as some inevitable path from which we can never deviate. That doesn't make much sense, unless you believe in divine influence. The future will be what it is because of the aggregate state of the present. To put it more clearly, the state of the world at any point in time is determined by a causal chain of events that goes back billions of years. If this chain is interrupted at any point then the future may be altered irrevocably.

I won't make the claim here that the future is solely a product of the present in a causal sense, but it is substantially so. It's hard to say exactly which variables will have the greatest impact, but we can make some educated guesses. If I step on a bug tomorrow, that probably won't change the course of human history markedly. But if we achieve stable and peaceful societies, that probably will.

And look at our own history - the black death, who knows. But the end of the ice age led to the development of civilization - its effects define each of our lives. The Roman Empire set the cultural underpinnings that we live with to this day. The establishment of religions, the wars through the world, the literature and philosophy, these are the ingredients that make the present what it is. I think it's reasonable to suggest that what we do today will similarly affect the future.

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I disagree. If there's the sort of climate change being envisaged then it will drive massive technological innovation far faster than anything normal.

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What's your basis for that?

If the climate change happens and is a disaster for us, then our communities will dissolve, our resources will be restricted, and all our effort will go into repairs. Any innovation will be based around coping, and real concerted efforts will be impossible until greater stability is achieved. At minimum, it will set us back decades.