Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
Sure, these are "silent" ways that renewables are being expanded through Federal policy, but they appear to have an effect. Perhaps not as much of an effect as some would like, but quadrupling renewable energy in a decade seems pretty effective to me.
I'll point out that the end of every story is that everyone dies.
Perhaps we could all live as cavepeople with very limited numbers and enjoy 500 million years of adequate resources. Or, we could get smashed by an asteroid within that time-frame.
Bacteria don't multiply as sparingly as possible and slowly consume a food supply, saving it so that their colony can persist as far into the future as possible. Nature has chosen resource consumption as the best strategy for survival, and the bacteria's best bet is to eat while the food is there.
Consumption is not an invention of capitalism, it's encoded into DNA, and is neither virtuous or evil.
I'm all for wise and efficient use of resources, and I'll admit that in many ways we fail to wisely utilize these resources. That said, innovation and technological progress involves consuming more than subsistence levels of resources, and inevitably involves waste.
I do believe there are non-catastrophic solutions to seemingly runaway resource consumption, as the declining rate of population growth suggests. There are limits to resources, but there is no limit to resourcefulness.
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*Wow! thanks for the homework on the federal initiatives,tax credits,etc..
It explains how there might be a silent consensus as to what we ought to be doing,and move in that direction without rattling investors (economy).With the equivalent of an oil depletion allowance for alternate/renewable energy,the market is incentivized to go where the new money will be found,incrementally,over time,allowing capitalists to modify their investment portfolios over an acceptable time frame.
*Yes,absolutely,the days on Earth are numbered.The time scale is unknowable,but no one will get out alive.(AeroStealth attempts to address this in his new sci-fi novel).
*I've never settled on a number for a natural carrying capacity,sustainable population for Earth.The World Bank,at one time,thought we'd settle out at around 10-billion,if those in the developing world had confidence that their children would make it to adulthood and outlive them.I don't know what parameters they used,nor assumptions.They may have made projections for a planet that no longer exists.
*If the population continues to grow exponentially,we will be like bacteria in a petri dish,consuming all available resources and extincting ourselves.Historically,when communities were stressed,conflict between the haves and the have-nots ensued.In the animal world,numbers increase to the natural carrying capacity.We have technology that complicates the calculus.
*After 1890,and the 'frontier' was 'closed' in the USA,there was no longer a physical place where people under population stress could escape to.Mass-marketing was born then and there,to create an 'internal' world of hedonic adaptation for Americans to go to,where consumerism could purchase short term endorphins and dopamines to distract us from our lives which sucked.Vance Packard wrote largely on this theme in the 1950s.Today,you see this same psychological juggernaut at work on TV,cable,satellite,radio,print media advertising,along with television and motion picture product placement advertising.We can purchase any number of approved lifestyles (killing styles).And we go from fix to fix,in an endless cycle.And Shylock will lend at interest if you don't happen to have the income to support it.
*Innovation will be something to watch as things unfold.'Necessity is the mother of invention' has now become,'The necessity of invention is a mutha.'
*We are a technological society,and as my dad would say,'It's a lot easier going forward,'I suspect that we'll see new technology in the pipeline to at least cushion our transition to who knows where.
Thanks again for all the data.We can use all we can get!
