And that other 90% of humanity is working to industrialize to get where we are. It’s a massive issue that as far as I’m aware we have no solution to.
The problem has never really been industrialisation or resource shortage (e.g Rare Earth Metals aren’t really rare at all, just more difficult to extract and the cheapest methods are polluting >.<) . It’s that the technologies used to do it in a green way with more automation have been actively pushed against by the oil and gas industry (for example solar cells have been around for a long time but refining the tech to improve cost/kWh could only happen recently with absolutely tons of pressure, or the way cities are designed for cars, etc.), the fact that we do not recycle important resources very much (phosphorous in particular), and also the fact that the upfront cost of automation for the more dangerous aspects is higher than using slave/cheap labour, which is enabled by capitalism in combination with extreme short-term mindsets which prevent automation systems from reaching economies of scale/meta-automation nya. Also, because right now polluting is slightly cheaper in the current economic system than containing waste and even reprocessing it, which is another problem.
The main risk with “resource shortage” is actually land-use agriculture rather than industrialisation more generally. In particular, we value “unused” (in colonised areas, this is often formerly controlled/managed by indigenous groups, but this was not considered “usage” by colonialists >.<) land very poorly, and our economic systems incentivize using order-of-magnitude less efficient agricultural technologies on wide open land, over using indoor (or vertical) systems which are far more able to recycle water and avoid fertilizer runoff/waste, are more resilient to climactic changes, and produce significantly better yields with no pesticides nya.
Such systems require some construction and hence the land cost is much higher, even though it would be far more ecosystem-friendly and promote food autonomy for urban areas, as well as allowing “re-wilding” efforts by massively reducing land use. The other problem is energy usage - but generally I think we should prefer higher-energy mechanisms that are more circular and less land-hogging, because electrically powered systems can be and are being green-ified over time as the electric grid becomes more powered by renewables or nuclear.
Even basic techniques, not including the vast potential of environmentally controlled indoor farms, massively mitigate a lot of the issues with agriculture, but a lot of places are unable to do these sorts of things due to various socioeconomic factors >.<, including things like intellectual property law increasing costs and decreasing mass production capabilities of mechanized agricultural systems (including things like those robots that can kill weeds without pesticides), or access to research and education on these topics for farmers, or the fact that Slash and Burn is often cheaper in the short term.
For example, the yield of potatoes per hectare has huge variance, with New Zealanders getting on the order of 60-80 tons/hectare, but many other countries getting much lower yields (19-30 tons/hectare >.<). This is just with basic outdoor farming, not including the massive potential of environmentally controlled farms, vertical farms, etc.
(Note: I haven’t mentioned the sand issue around concrete, but I could go on a whole thing about that - it is possible to make artificial sand and we could probably do an economy-of-scale thing with that, too, even if it’s higher energy for the same reasons of electrification being a good idea even if right this second it still produces more CO2 than directly harvesting the right type of sand from riverbeds and oceans nya).
The problem has never really been industrialisation or resource shortage (e.g Rare Earth Metals aren’t really rare at all, just more difficult to extract and the cheapest methods are polluting >.<) . It’s that the technologies used to do it in a green way with more automation have been actively pushed against by the oil and gas industry (for example solar cells have been around for a long time but refining the tech to improve cost/kWh could only happen recently with absolutely tons of pressure, or the way cities are designed for cars, etc.), the fact that we do not recycle important resources very much (phosphorous in particular), and also the fact that the upfront cost of automation for the more dangerous aspects is higher than using slave/cheap labour, which is enabled by capitalism in combination with extreme short-term mindsets which prevent automation systems from reaching economies of scale/meta-automation nya. Also, because right now polluting is slightly cheaper in the current economic system than containing waste and even reprocessing it, which is another problem.
The main risk with “resource shortage” is actually land-use agriculture rather than industrialisation more generally. In particular, we value “unused” (in colonised areas, this is often formerly controlled/managed by indigenous groups, but this was not considered “usage” by colonialists >.<) land very poorly, and our economic systems incentivize using order-of-magnitude less efficient agricultural technologies on wide open land, over using indoor (or vertical) systems which are far more able to recycle water and avoid fertilizer runoff/waste, are more resilient to climactic changes, and produce significantly better yields with no pesticides nya.
Such systems require some construction and hence the land cost is much higher, even though it would be far more ecosystem-friendly and promote food autonomy for urban areas, as well as allowing “re-wilding” efforts by massively reducing land use. The other problem is energy usage - but generally I think we should prefer higher-energy mechanisms that are more circular and less land-hogging, because electrically powered systems can be and are being green-ified over time as the electric grid becomes more powered by renewables or nuclear.
Even basic techniques, not including the vast potential of environmentally controlled indoor farms, massively mitigate a lot of the issues with agriculture, but a lot of places are unable to do these sorts of things due to various socioeconomic factors >.<, including things like intellectual property law increasing costs and decreasing mass production capabilities of mechanized agricultural systems (including things like those robots that can kill weeds without pesticides), or access to research and education on these topics for farmers, or the fact that Slash and Burn is often cheaper in the short term.
For example, the yield of potatoes per hectare has huge variance, with New Zealanders getting on the order of 60-80 tons/hectare, but many other countries getting much lower yields (19-30 tons/hectare >.<). This is just with basic outdoor farming, not including the massive potential of environmentally controlled farms, vertical farms, etc.
(Note: I haven’t mentioned the sand issue around concrete, but I could go on a whole thing about that - it is possible to make artificial sand and we could probably do an economy-of-scale thing with that, too, even if it’s higher energy for the same reasons of electrification being a good idea even if right this second it still produces more CO2 than directly harvesting the right type of sand from riverbeds and oceans nya).