Thinking The Unthinkable

[4dsc]

http://www.countercurrents.org/po-church170706.htm

Oil depletion is just the first of a series of resource crisis humanity is about to face because there are just too many of us! This century we will face peak resources, period.

There are many fascinating and exciting renewable energy developments. Wind turbines, solar energy, geothermal, biomass, wave and tidal power schemes which are all important energy sources for the future - and could at least help keep the electricity grid going to some degree!

The popular assumption is that these renewable energy sources, perhaps also including uranium, plutonium and just possibly nuclear, which seems to be coming back on the agenda, will smoothly replace fossil fuels as these become scarce, thanks to our inherited technological expertise. However, although these all produce electricity they are not liquid fuels.

There is nothing that can replace cheap oil for price, ease of storage, ease of transportation and sheer volumes in the timeframe we need.

[jpak]

1. Ethanol and biodiesel are not renewable liquid fuels - they don't work

Electric public transport systems that use renewable electricity can't be built.

Wood/straw pellet stoves and solar thermal systems (passive or active) can't replace fuel oil to heat homes.

Nay nay nay...

[endarkenment]

2. Oh sure there is.

Everyone has to move back into cities unless they are farming and cities have be auto-free zones. It is where we are going anyhow, we just don't know how to get there.

[SlipperySlope]

4. "back into cities"?

What do you mean "back into cities"? Cities are the most unnatural way for humans to live. We need to stop concentrating humans into these huge cesspools of population that need to be fed, consume our water, and concentrate power into the hands of the few.

Your post would have made more sense if you proposed moving "back to the country"...

[endarkenment]

5. It depends on how far back down into burro time we have to move.

I suggest that cities are the natural form of modern human society, not some abberation, and that if we intend to keep a modern industrial society that is also evolved to be sustainable, that cities are essential. Your vision works but requires a die off of billions of people and that is not something I can sign on to.

[dcfirefighter]

8. What about us is natural?

Are you suggesting we return to a hunter-gatherer system? Are you daft?

Cities produce more wealth per resident than any other form.
Cities promote a blending of cultures - vs. xenophobia.
Cities are where people exchange ideas. Cities are where liberalism thrives.
Cities are where people have a variety of mates / partners to choose from.
City residents use less energy than non-city residents.
Cities are where commerce occurs.
Not all cities are big. Some are quite small, and yet quite urban. Many old cities are this way.

[Odin2005]

10. He's falling for the usual "noble savage" rubbish.

Worshiping an idealized past = stupidity.

[Odin2005]

9. Primitivist crap

[Dissenting_Prole]

13. Everyone can move back to the country...

and we'll call it "suburbia".

A great idea if there were only 80 million people in the US.

[SlipperySlope]

3. The solution is in your first sentence

resource crisis humanity is about to face because there are just too many of us

The solution is staring you in the face. We need less people on this planet.

Almost every major problem we face would vanish if there were less people competing for resources. At the extreme, if there was only one person remaining, there would be plenty of food, plenty of water, plenty of oil, and the environment could handle it all.

The question is, how many people can we have and still have plenty of resources. The current number is too high, one is too low, the right answer is somewhere in between.

[4dsc]

6. The jist of the article is hear

Although there is growing awareness of the problem, there is also widespread ignorance and denial, even by people who should know better.

Mankind has, it seems, an infinite capacity for denial. The evidence is overwhelming that we are in the "overshoot" phase of the industrial life cycle, yet most people and most organizations refuse even to discuss this matter, let alone acknowledge it. The world after the industrial age will be very different from the world of today. For most people on Earth (if mankind escapes extinction), it will be similar to the world of the past millions of years - a primitive, natural environment (although perhaps less bountiful and beautiful than before).

Although most people will not survive the collapse of the industrial age, it will belong, in concept and structure, to those who prepare for the great change that is about to happen

[dcfirefighter]

7. There aren't too many of us.

The world could feed 100 million people, relatively sustainably. Even without eliminating poverty, we'll stabilize before we reach 20 million. If we eliminate poverty, we'd probably stabilize around 8 million.

It's an economic and political problem, not a physical one.

The problem is that we do not charge for using nature. We allow nature to be bought an sold, while the speculators keep the gains. Then, forgoing this gain, we turn around at take a portion of a person's labor, we tax his industry, and we discourage his commerce. All of this means that we 'use up' more nature than we need to, and we discourage employment. A great recipe for the few to 'own' the natural world, and charge the rest of us to live here.

[Odin2005]

11. I think you mean BILLION, not MILLION.

And there are too many of us. Using modern farming methods we can only sustainibly support 2 billion people.

[dcfirefighter]

12. Yes, Billion.

My apologies

From the UN, there's 5 *B*illion Ha of agricultural land.
Sustainable biointensive agriculture can grow food for one person on as little as 5,000 s.f, or more than 20 people per Ha.

5B x 20 = 100B.

It's not a physical problem, it's an economic problem.

[Dissenting_Prole]

14. If only someone had told them.

It's not a physical problem, it's an economic problem.

Take that, people of Easter Island!

[dcfirefighter]

15. Easter Island economics

put a premium on building moai, but the Rapa Nui never really died out until the Europeans found them. Then the society's isolation made them pay the price - most of them were enslaved by technologicially superior Europeans, many of them died due to exposure to pathogens not previously encountered.

A 163 sq km, in the tropics, on fertile volcanic soil, Rapa Nui could easily support food for more than 100,000 people on farming on less than 1/3 of it's land. At their peak population, the island had maybe 15,000 people, at the nadir, they had 110. Today they have 3800.

So, it's not a physical problem of running out of room to grow food, it's an economic problem of assigning scarce resources to the wrong usage.