Quote:
|
Originally Posted by niky
Trying to recall the name of that story... a future where all children are "born" in virtual reality, and have to earn the right to become "physical" humans and occupy actual bodies.
|
This sounds like our society, where people are born 'proto-humans' unable to consent and remain so until anointed by The State at age of majority.
I'm starting to like the Post Carbon Institute. Here's another related article:
Why Climate Change Isn’t Our Biggest Environmental Problem, and Why Technology Won’t Save Us
Quote:
|
Our core ecological problem is not climate change. It is overshoot, of which global warming is a symptom. Overshoot is a systemic issue. Over the past century-and-a-half, enormous amounts of cheap energy from fossil fuels enabled the rapid growth of resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumption; and these in turn led to population increase, pollution, and loss of natural habitat and hence biodiversity. The human system expanded dramatically, overshooting Earth’s long-term carrying capacity for humans while upsetting the ecological systems we depend on for our survival. Until we understand and address this systemic imbalance, symptomatic treatment (doing what we can to reverse pollution dilemmas like climate change, trying to save threatened species, and hoping to feed a burgeoning population with genetically modified crops) will constitute an endlessly frustrating round of stopgap measures that are ultimately destined to fail.
|
Not understanding the origin, we drained the oil fields faster than they are replenished from the deep, hot abiotic sources; and squandered the essentially 'free' energy on idling our car at the stoplight, on the way to our job selling insurance — or worse yet, selling advertising for insurance.
