Where To Enroll This Summer: Science Camp Or Fantasy Camp?

[hatrack]

Two competing camps attract people from all over the world. One is Science Camp, and the other is Fantasy Camp.

At Science Camp, the counselors teach campers that we live on a single blue-green planet with finite resources. The curriculum at Science Camp focuses on figuring out how to conserve and share those resources. There’s a strong undercurrent of appreciation (maybe even reverence) for nature and humanity’s place in it — a desire to learn about and safeguard life on this planet.

At Fantasy Camp, the counselors educate campers to believe that humanity can circumvent natural limits. Campers are taught that our unstoppable ingenuity can overcome any resource shortages or manage any amount of waste generation. There’s a strong undercurrent of consumption — a desire to accumulate ever more power and stuff in an attempt to gain complete control over life (and even death).

EDIT

As Bill Rees has noted, “If intelligence and logic were the principal determinants of economic policy, the primary goal would be to ensure that growth slows as we reach the optimal scale and that the economy not exceed this optimal size.” But given the struggle of ecological economics to gain ground on neoclassical economics, we can mostly eliminate “intelligence and logic” as driving forces that motivate people to decide which camp to enter. Indeed, three factors that have little to do with intelligence and logic are behind this.

EDIT

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-07-30/triumph-fantasy-over-science-part-1

[GliderGuider]

1. Logistic vs. Exponential curves

Fantasy Camp recognizes only the bottom part of the curve. Science Camp recognizes the top part as well.

However, in the end we all find out we're actually living in "Reality Camp". In this movie we stay in Fantasy Camp until we've eaten all the food, then instead of our situation flattening out gradually as the logistic limits approach, we fish out the lake, cut down the trees for firewood, then begin to starve and kill each other for scraps of food. We all finally collapse as the counselors from Science Camp gather around our convulsing bodies and make sad, moralistic "told-you-so" noises.

It's a spectacular ending, much more fun than that boring nerdy Science Camp documentary.