How it got to be too late

[GliderGuider]

I assess human actions, inaction and decisions through a lens formed by three core aspects of biologically evolved human psychology:

1. Humanity suffers from a pervasive sense of separation: self/other, us/them, body/mind, matter/spirit, humans/resources. This issue is very well addressed in Charles Eisenstein’s online book The Ascent of Humanity. I have concluded that this sense of separation is the inescapable Faustian price we have paid for the self-awareness granted by our neocortex.

2. Our brains evolved to favour immediate threats over distant ones. Immediate, visible threats merit a strong, emotional response; distant, abstract threats are ignored. This hyperbolic discount function is a good survival strategy out on the African veldt, but less so in the modern industrial world with its abstract and unseen threats -- our cleverness has far outrun our inbuilt caution.

3. Humans are not rational creatures, we are rationalizing creatures. We have a tendency to make most of our decisions at an unconscious level and dress them up with socially acceptable rationalizations only post–facto, after they emerge into our awareness fully-formed.

As far as I can tell, these are universal human traits that spring directly from the physical structure of the brain.

When I combine those three characteristics, I see a rather cautionary picture:

We appear to be creatures that will treat the entire world as a resource base for human use. We will ignore the consequences of the resulting actions until we are directly and personally affected, and we will accomplish this by reframing our decisions and actions as being manifestly reasonable. Even worse, we will resist mightily any attempt to shift our beliefs through the application of reason or the presentation of facts.

In short, we are a sentient species that is peculiarly unsuited to dealing with the results of its hypertrophied cleverness and is unable to respond preemptively to looming disaster.

These are general traits that we all seem to share to a greater or lesser extent. Some of us are particularly fortunate to have escaped the constraints of our discount function. Only a few of us are aware of our sense of separation, and even fewer work to overcome it. Almost none of us escape the effects of our rationalizing thought patterns.

As a result, the box we now find ourselves in, whether it’s the box of population, pollution, climate change, ecological degradation, resource depletion or hierarchic instability appears in large measure to have been biologically inevitable. This is why I have concluded that it’s largely a waste of energy to try and stop the onrushing trains, to avoid or reverse the consequences of our behaviour. Given the existence of our steep discount function, the mere fact that the threats are now widely recognized means that the trains are essentially on top of us.

Of course it’s not in human nature to sit idly by in the face of a threat. The future is rather unpredictable, and anything we can do to mitigate the effects of the damage we’ve caused is useful. However, I see quite a bit of evidence that points 1 and 3 are still widely in play, even among the ranks of the environmentally and ecologically aware.

One of the things I try to do when I come up with an absolutely great idea is to ask myself, “Is it really a great idea? Why do I think so? What am I getting out of this idea (like status, vindication, self-esteem, pride, etc.) that might be colouring my perception of it? Are there other ways of looking at the question?”

I think it would help if people were more self-critical about the ideas they propose, but given the argument I’ve already made, I have only limited hope for that.

On edit: fixed busted links.

[OKIsItJustMe]

1. Re: In short, we are a sentient species that is…unable to respond preemptively to looming disaster.

How is it then, that we have been able to cut CFC use, to help stop the erosion of the ozone layer, even though the great mass of humanity sees no direct or immediate threat?

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/world_avoided.html

New Simulation Shows Consequences of a World Without Earth's Natural Sunscreen

03.18.09

The year is 2065. Nearly two-thirds of Earth's ozone is gone -- not just over the poles, but everywhere. The infamous ozone hole over Antarctica, first discovered in the 1980s, is a year-round fixture, with a twin over the North Pole. The ultraviolet (UV) radiation falling on mid-latitude cities like Washington, D.C., is strong enough to cause sunburn in just five minutes. DNA-mutating UV radiation is up 650 percent, with likely harmful effects on plants, animals and human skin cancer rates.

Such is the world we would have inherited if 193 nations had not agreed to ban ozone-depleting substances, according to atmospheric chemists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Bilthoven.

Led by Goddard scientist Paul Newman, the team simulated "what might have been" if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and similar chemicals were not banned through the treaty known as the Montreal Protocol. The simulation used a comprehensive model that included atmospheric chemical effects, wind changes, and radiation changes. The analysis has been published online in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

"Ozone science and monitoring has improved over the past two decades, and we have moved to a phase where we need to be accountable," said Newman, who is co-chair of the United Nations Environment Programme's Scientific Assessment Panel to review the state of the ozone layer and the environmental impact of ozone regulation. "We are at the point where we have to ask: Were we right about ozone? Did the Montreal Protocol work? What kind of world was avoided by phasing out ozone-depleting substances?"

…

[GliderGuider]

2. One robin doesn't make a spring.

Perhaps the destruction of the ozone layer was just immediate enough to prompt action, and the cost of dealing with it wasn't overwhelming. I'm not saying we can't act, I'm saying we generally don't. The death of the oceans, rising CO2, the lack of action on oil supply limits -- any of these is more than enough counterweight for the single solitary success of the Montreal Accord.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. You made a clear statement, "(We are) unable to respond preemptively"

Perhaps… (just perhaps) we're not quite as stupid as you assume we are…

I would hazard to guess that today's "Global Warming Skeptics" were yesterday's "Ozone Skeptics."
Here's a sample of their nonsense:
http://www.umich.edu/~mrev/archives/1997/10-8-97/environment.htm

The Sky Falls on Environmental Myths

by C.J. Carnacchio

When I told a friend that I was writing a column attacking the environmental movement, she immediately replied, "How can you be against the environment?" I am not against the environment. I am against the environmental movement: a movement rooted in a Chicken Little ideology of scare tactics, lies, pseudo-science, and a flagrant disregard for individual liberties and private property rights. Let's debunk some of theis movement's myths and examine the true roots of the Greens' ideology and agenda.

Myth #1: Global Warming: Despite the rantings of the apocalyptic eco-prophets, the actual temperature records, taken in North America and Western Europe, show no significant or consistent upward trends. There is, instead, a series of highs and lows. According to the Greenhouse theory, the increase in carbon dioxide emissions since the beginning of the Industrial Age should have increased average temperatures by two to four degrees Celsius over the last 100 years. In reality, temperatures have only increased a paltry 0.5 degrees Celsius.

…

Myth #2: The Hole in the Ozone Layer: Contrary to the environmentalists' claims, there is no permanent hole in the ozone layer and no ozone shortage. Ozone is constantly created and destroyed. The interaction of ultraviolet radiation with oxygen molecules is what produces ozone. In the stratosphere, 10 to 40 kilometers above the earth's surface, several tons of ozone are produced every second.

…

However, despite their interference, humanity took effective action.

[phantom power]

4. I think we can agree that it was a statistical kind of statement, yes?

[GliderGuider]

8. My tendency leave out the qualifiers bites me again.

Yes, it was a statistical kind of statement. I of course meant that we "find it extremely difficult" to respond preemptively to looming disaster.

These characteristics are distributed through the population at varying levels of intensity, but I see a distribution that is very strongly skewed in favour of people exhibiting the tendencies quite strongly.

There will always be a few people who don't exhibit these characteristics, or at least not strongly. However I think there are few enough of them that as the group size grows their tempering influence tends to be is swamped, shouted down or out-voted. Unless they grow up to be a president who is not beholden to any power interests and isn't interested in re-election.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. However, the exceptions to this "rule" are numerous (see below)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=191940&mesg_id=191952

(CFC's and the Ozone layer is just one of the most recent examples.)

A properly functioning government, presented with a serious risk, such as this, will enact appropriate legislation, despite popular opinion.

[GliderGuider]

10. It's not a "rule", it's an observation. The supporting evidence far outweighs the exceptions

Here's the list of wicked problems from my article Political Will, Political Won't:

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is approaching 400 parts per million.

World oil production is on a 4 year plateau

Ice caps and glaciers are disintegrating.

In the oceans the coral reefs are dying, dead zones are expanding, and predatory fish species (the ones we eat) have declined by 90% in the last 50 years.

The estimated extinction rate of plants and animals is at least 75 species per day.

Over 75,000 square miles of arable land is lost each year to urbanization and desertification.

A billion people in over 110 countries are affected by desertification.

On the American Great Plains, half the topsoil has been lost in the last hundred years, and the Ogallala aquifer is being drained up to 100 times faster than it is being refilled.

Indian farmers have drilled over 21 million water wells using oil-well technology. They take 200 billion tonnes of water out of the earth each year for irrigation.

We have eaten more grain than we have grown in 7 of the last 8 years, while world carry-over grain stocks declined from 130 days of consumption in 1986 to 53 days today.

The price of fertilizer is rising exponentially.

Climate change may cut African food production in half by 2020.

The cost of food is skyrocketing. Some countries have banned exports of wheat or rice.

We are in the beginning stages of a global financial crisis that could result in either a deflationary or hyper-inflationary depression lasting for a decade or more.

Compared to that list, banning lead or DDT within a single nation, while significant, is hardly evidence that we are equipped to ensure our long-term survival.

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. What do you believe is an appropriate response to these threats?

What actions should we be taking which we are not currently?

I agree that we have a tendency to act on immediate threats, in preference to long term threats. This actually makes sense. (After all, if you don't address immediate threats, then long-term threats don't matter.)

[GliderGuider]

12. It may sould like a cop-out, but I believe the appropriate response

is exactly what we're doing. Expecting anything else (which is what "shoulds" are all about) is flying in the face of observed facts about human behaviour.

That's speaking on a group-to-species level, of course. On an individual level there are all kinds of helpful actions we might take, ranging from specific activities through behavioural changes to shifts in attitude. I decline to tell other people what they "should" do, though. The most I can do is tell people what I found personally helpful. I'm allergic to prescriptions for behaviour or belief.

[OKIsItJustMe]

13. It's true, it does sound like a cop-out

When I was a boy, I remember thinking about leaving plastic rope behind for some future human(s) to find and use. In those days, I was most worried about a nuclear apocalypse. I felt I had a responsibility to those who "came after me."

Despite the threats you enumerate, I believe there will be at the very least a "remnant."

By taking decisive action today, we can make the world better or worse for those who "come after us." Anything that we can do to delay the realization of these threats gives us more time to avoid them, or (more likely) to ameliorate their effects.

As you point out, we're a clever species. Just look at all of the work that is being done at this late date (which should have been done decades ago.)

Sitting back and "watching it all go to Hell" just doesn't seem like a acceptable course of action to me. It seems unforgivably selfish.

It's time for the grownups to start setting priorities…

[GliderGuider]

14. The grownups are setting priorities and doing stuff.

There just aren't very many of them, and even they clung to their adolescence far too long. What I don't want to do is to beat anyone up for not taking action if they don't see the need.

I've done plenty on a personal level, but one of the things that fascinates me is why so many people don't do anything at all. My acceptance of human nature on a group level doesn't mean I'm complacent on a personal level.

I just like understanding why we let the trends get so far out of hand. That understanding has already factored into some of the changes I've made and encourage others to make: healing the separation I describe in point #1 through psychological and spiritual transformation, and questioning why I make the decisions and choices I do. It's not wind turbines, but it's my way of nibbling at the problem set.

[OKIsItJustMe]

15. Re: What I don't want to do is to beat anyone up for not taking action if they don't see the need.

That's your liberal nature, and the nature I was raised with.

I've come to adopt a slightly different stance. We don't need to, "beat anyone up," but we do not have time for them to "see the need."

It's probably too late to stop this whole mess, but it'll never be too late to do something about it ('til we're all dead.)

10. THOUGHTS ON A STATION PLATFORM

It ought to be plain
how little you gain
by getting excited
        and vexed.

You’ll always be late
for the previous train,
and always in time
      for the next.

— Piet Hein

[tama]

17. Learning gardening

is not a bad idea. Both for material needs and psychological well being.

[wuvuj]

24. My response long ago was to get depressed.

Then more recently my response was to get angry and try to wake people to what was happening and was probably going to happen.

Now my response is getting to the place where I realize that I'll probably be gone in 10 - 15 years and will maybe miss the worst of it.

So I'll try to enjoy what's left of my life....and watch as younger people ignore what's approaching...and maybe even get a good laugh out of it for a while.

Might seem a bit callous and irresponsible...but all I can say is......if the people who will be suffering and will lose the most don't have the sense to get off the tracks...I sure can...just long enough to watch part of what happens. :shrug:

In general...I'm thinking that humans are pretty much going to get what they deserve. And they will trash the planet and other species in the process.

So...no. Maybe they will never get what they truly deserve? So bite me.

[tama]

48. Simple facts

I read last night a book by and about a countryman that has been living self sufficiently for years - because that's what his conscience told him to do. For food, clothes and shelter he needs about five ares of gardening land for basic food, fibres for clothes etc. and and let's say about hectare for gathering berries and shrooms and wood for heating, making tools etc.

To satisfy basic needs he needs to work four hours aday (in northern Finland!), rest of the time left for recreation, art, social activities etc.

[GliderGuider]

51. This is about what the estimates are for traditional hunter-gatherers

Marshall Sahlins and others estimate 16 to 20 hours per week of work met all their needs. Lots of leisure time.

Salins called hunter gatherers the original affluent society. It's not hard to see why. If one works so that one can have time off to do as one wishes, hunting and gathering starts to look like a pretty good deal. Of course if one works so that one can have the power to bend all of nature to your will, the rules change -- you can expect to have a lot less leisure time if that's your goal.

[tama]

53. I've started to dislike

the term 'hunter-gatherers' - because it narrows down and distorts the real ways of life of native peoples that includes and has included since days began also intensive gardening, nomadism, slash and burn, herding etc. Symbiotic codependences between various species of this planet, and that is the origing and quite likely only ingenuity of humans - extreme skill at learning and adapting to new symbiotic codependences with huge diversity of plant and animal species that is unrivalled by any other species. The point is not to overreach and fall into hubristic self-deception but to do what we know best to do 'lazily'...

E.g. Indians had learned to use fire very skillfully to make land fertile for their gardens and easy for their herds - the buffalos - in a way that in fact increased biodiversity while made their lives pretty easy and comfy, until the white man came. There was a recent(?) article about that, somewhere... :)

[GliderGuider]

55. That's the mapping/labelling problem again.

Do you have an alternative suggestion for conversational shorthand?

[tama]

56. Just came to me:

symbiotic codependence.

[GliderGuider]

58. It's accurate, but is it conversational?

Saying, "I'm quitting my job and moving to New Zealand to join a community of symbiotic codependents" may get you some strange looks. :-) Unless you say it to a linguistic anthropologist, of course...

[tama]

62. You know

how linguistic innovations start - just like this - most of them have very short life-spans, but some get out of hand and start a life of their own...

But I like the undertone of that expression that only symbiotic codependencies are biotic - livable - and hierarchies are lethal - for the over-specialized top dogs.

[GliderGuider]

67. People who don't understand that hierarchies are lethal won't get the nuance, I'm afraid. nt/

[tama]

79. On the other hand

Alpha males in chimpanzee tribes get to spread their gene pools bit more than other chimps, as long as they don't defy the collective will of the female social network too far - which defying will lead to ousting and death of the former alpha male in short time.

Hierarchies are a complex issue, also and especially given shamans and all that jazz... my word of the day: never trust a shaman unless you trust your and your tribe's ability to tame a one. Fully tamed.

Tomorrow, don't know what the word will be.

[GliderGuider]

57. A story: How Much is Enough?

An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow-fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied only a little while. The American then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs. The American then asked, but what do you do with the rest of your time?

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?” To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then, senor?”

The American laughed and said that’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.

“Millions, senor? Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

[tama]

63. A story worth repeating

many times. With copy-paste. :)

[GliderGuider]

66. It's been around, hasn't it?

I don't even know who to credit for writing it in the first place.

[XemaSab]

54. If you qualify things too much, you end up saying nothing

:pals:

[GliderGuider]

59. That's exactly it.

Thanks! :toast:

[OKIsItJustMe]

91. If you qualify things too much, you say less (not nothing)

Scientists warning about the effects of "Global Warming"/"Climate Change" will use terms like "Extremely likely" which is a good thing™ because we find that things are not always quite as they expect.

For example, quite often (it seems) things are happening "faster than expected."

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. Those are threats that could be addressed by the very few.

The masses had nothing to do with it. A few people got heard by a few other people who passed the laws to make it happen.

A few scientists who had the ability to see potential disaster took the problem to the political class which is trained to deal with more distant threats, and it worked. The cooperation of 193 nations essentially comes down to the votes of 193 people.

In the twenty five years since the problem with the ozone layer was first recognized, the population of the earth has nearly doubled from 3.5 billion to 6.8 billion. And we've been hearing about the dangers of overpopulation for fifty years, but THAT is not a problem that can be easily addressed by the few - limiting population requires the cooperation of all 6.8 billion of us, and that ain't gonna happen.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. OK

So… let's see…

How is it that we avoided the scenario described by Rachel Carson in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring">Silent Spring?

How is it that we stopped adding lead to our http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Lead">gasoline?

How is it that we decided that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Water_Act">using our rivers and lakes as open sewers was a bad idea?

(I can go on…)

As a general rule, I would say these were all the result of government regulation. (If you will) the "very few" said, "This is what we're doing folks!" with no call for a popular vote on the matter.

[pscot]

6. The chlorofluorocarbon lobby

wasn't nearly as pervasive and powerful as the carbon lobby. The public was only dimly aware of CFC's as some obscure substance hidden in the bowels of their fridge. The transition away from CFC's was painless and largely unnoticed. Carbon withdrawal is going to be a bitch. The carbon lobby is broad and deep, and has plenty of cash. Every citizen of the planet benefits from the exploitation of our carbon resources. The problem is one of scale, a notion that few seem to fully understand.

[tama]

16. I think what is crucial

in this case that the whole world economy and prower structures etc. are so totally dependant on cheap fossile energy that all the talk about doing something about climate change and the whole looming catastrophe is utterly meaningless drivel. The system, as it is and behaves, is systemically unable to prevent the looming catastrophe of it's own (un)doing.

[OKIsItJustMe]

18. Re: "totally dependant on cheap fossil energy"

OK, so how about replacing "cheap fossil energy" with "cheap alternative energy?"

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2237250/first-solar-reaches-dollar-per

First Solar reaches "dollar per watt milestone"

Thin-film solar manufacturer claims to have produced modules at cost of 98 cents a watt

BusinessGreen.com staff, BusinessGreen, 25 Feb 2009

Thin-film solar cell manufacturer http://www.firstsolar.com/">First Solar yesterday announced it has broken the $1 (70p) per watt cost barrier that is widely accepted as the point at which solar panels become cost competitive with fossil fuels.

The company said that during the fourth quarter of last year, the manufacturing cost for its solar modules stood at 98 cents per watt, taking it below the $1 per watt mark for the first time.

Mike Ahearn, chief executive at the company, hailed the achievement as a "milestone in the solar industry's evolution towards providing truly sustainable energy solutions", adding that it provided evidence that solar manufacturers could prosper in the long term even as government subsidies are reduced.

First Solar said it was confident that plans to more than double its production capacity through 2009 to more than one gigawatt would allow it to reduce costs further to a point where energy from solar panels can undercut that from natural gas and coal.

…

[tama]

19. By all means

Please come back when you have solved the problem of economy of scales and diminishing EROEI in the very limited timeframe, given that the system is badly in overshoot - based on debt since about 1979.

I mean, it takes a lot of fossile energy and other natural resources to build all the windmills, solar panels, electric cars and tractors and airoplanes and ships and plastic factories to make plastics from... err what? While feeding the people with an agroindustry based on fossile fuels... I mean, the problem is OVERWHELMING...

[OKIsItJustMe]

21. Myth 6: …you can never get the energy out that it takes to produce the system.

What is the EROEI of solar anyway?

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/printable_versions/myths.html#6

…

Myth 6: PV is too expensive and will never compete with "the big boys" of power generation. Besides, you can never get the energy out that it takes to produce the system.

The cost of producing PV modules, in constant dollars, has fallen from as much as $50 per peak watt in 1980 to as little as $3 per peak watt today. This causes PV electricity costs to drop 15¢-25¢ per kilowatt hour (kWh), which is competitive in many applications.

In the California market, where state incentives and net metering are in place, PV electricity prices are dipping below 11¢/kWh, on par with some utility-delivered power. Moreover, according to the U.S. PV Industry Roadmap, solar electricity will continue this trend and become competitive by 2010 for most domestic markets (http://www.nrel.gov/docs/gen/fy03/30150.pdf">PDF 674 KB). http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html">Download Adobe Reader

The energy payback period is also dropping rapidly. For example, it takes today's typical crystalline silicon module about 4 years to generate more energy than went into making the module in the first place. The next generation of silicon modules, which will employ a different grade of silicon and use thinner layers of semiconductor material, will have an energy payback of about 2 years. And thin-film modules will soon bring the payback down to one year or less. This means that these modules will produce "free" and clean energy for the remaining 29 years of their expected life.

…

30:1 that's pretty good. (Isn't it?)

Note that this is already out-of-date. (i.e. the cost is now dropping below $1/peak watt.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h9FLvj2ZJM

[tama]

47. Indeed

"you can never get the energy out that it takes to produce the system."

That is what laws of thermodynamics state, so that's not a "myth" but the foundation of modern physics. QM negentropy is a bit vague area and not really an issue here.

Problem with EROEI in modern society is where to draw line, what energy costs to count in and what to left out - from the whole lifespan of the newest gadget and the energy input into the system (social etc.) that produced it, from mining and transporting the ores to recycling and waste handling etc.

Money as measure only distorts the real count. How many work hours does it take to build a wind-mill from and with solar power - let's say using only wood and stones and manual work powered with solar power in form of eatable veggies, how much for maintenance to keep it working? The problem is, hypnotized with energy capital flowing freely from ground, we have lost and forgotten ability to understand basic energy exchange, social and individual metabolism that would be truly sustainable.

[Nederland]

88. You are misapplying the laws of thermodynamics

Once you start talking about solar power you are talking about including in the "system" a gigantic energy spewing machine. Yes, you will never get more energy out of the system than you started with, but when you include the sun in the system the amount of energy you start with so exceeds your wildest needs it really doesn't matter.

[OKIsItJustMe]

22. How can we make plastic without petroleum?

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/04/08/global-warming-cds.html?ref=rss

Chemists say CDs, eyeglass lenses could help stem global warming

Last Updated: Tuesday, April 8, 2008 | 3:16 PM ET
CBC News

Compact discs, beverage bottles and other products made from hard, clear plastics may have a role to play in slowing global warming, chemists said Tuesday.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans, chemists Thomas E. Muller and Toshiyasu Sakakura separately presented ways to manufacture polycarbonate plastics from waste carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide is produced during the combustion of fossil fuels and generally released into the atmosphere, contributing to the greenhouse effect that warms the Earth.

Muller, a professor at the Institute for Technical Chemistry and Macromolecular Chemistry at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, said the millions of tonnes of plastic used each year for products such as eyeglass lenses and discs present "intriguing sinks" for waste CO2.

…

There's just no point in trying. It's all hopeless.

[tama]

49. In fact

plastics can be made also from plant cellulose. But with the same problem as with biofuels, the land allocated to producing plastics and energy to craft them is away from feeding people and rest of biodiversity.

[OKIsItJustMe]

23. How can agroindustry grow food without fossil fuels?

The "agroindustry" is figuring out that people are willing to pay more for "organic" food. They're also learning that organic farming can be just as efficient (or more so.) One rule of thumb I use is that industries (and corporations) exist to make money. So, can they still make money growing food without fertilizers made from fossil fuels? (Of course.)

http://www.organic-gardening.net/articles/organic-hydroponic-gardening.php

Organic Hydroponic Gardening

What is organic hydroponic gardening?

Well, first you need to know what hydroponics is before you can understand how it is used organically. Hydroponics is the process of growing plants in water and nutrients as opposed to growing in soil. Many people feel that this is better for the plants. Many people use organic hydroponic gardening when growing food items like vegetables for eating.

When it comes to hydroponics, many people have mistakenly thought that it was non-organic but this is not true. Water is organic, as is the nutrients that are used and the fertilizer can also be adapted to be organic so you can easily have organic hydroponic gardening.

What is Hydroponics?

Hydroponics is a Latin word that when translated basically means "working-water". Hydroponics refers to a method of gardening that is safer for the environment. Using indoor gardening methods, water and lighting, etc. plants are grown. This method of growing plants without soil has been dated back as far as the 1600s but has really become more popular recently. People have been growing in water since before they began planting in soil.

Hydroponics progressed over the years but with the invention of plastics, it really took off again. The creation of plastic was a huge step forward for hydroponics. This is because it allowed you to use plastic for the pots and it made the entire process a bit easier so more people are willing to try it over traditional soil planting.

…

[tama]

50. Funny, or rather pitiful (for us all)

You try to answer the question 'how con agroindustry grow food without fossile fuels' with plastics and nutrients and water produced with net energy deficiency...

[OKIsItJustMe]

25. Energy return on investment (EROI) for wind energy

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_investment_(EROI)_for_wind_energy

Energy return on investment (EROI) for wind energy

…

This article reviews 119 wind turbines from 50 different analyses, ranging in publication date from 1977 to 2006. This survey shows average EROI for all studies (operational and conceptual) of 25.2 (n=114; std. dev=22.3). The average EROI for just the operational studies is 19.8 (n=60; std. dev=13.7). This places wind energy in a favorable position relative to conventional power generation technologies in terms of EROI.

…



…

Comparison with other power systems

The EROI for wind turbines compares favorably with other power generation systems (Figure 3). Baseload coal-fired power generation has an EROI between 5 and 10:1. Nuclear power is probably no greater than 5:1, although there is considerable debate regarding how to calculate its EROI. The EROI for hydropower probably exceed 10, but in most places in the world the most favorable sites have been developed.



…

Compare these figures for EROEI for oil:
http://eroi.theoildrum.com/node/4762

…

Just to give you a rough idea as to where we are at present with respect to EROI, “according to legendary oilman Charles Maxwell” on http://www.moneyshow.com/directory/speaker.asp?speakerid=707SPK">The Money Show, most countries report that it costs from $55 (Saudi Arabia) to $70-90 (Russia and most of OPEC) to $90 (Iran and Venezuela) to produce a barrel of oil. That is a lot of money but underneath the surface also represents a lot of energy. Recent work in our lab suggests that when you divide the energy produced by the energy used by oil and gas industries (data is available for only a few countries such as the US and UK) that these industries use about 17 MegaJoules (MJ) per dollar spent in 2006. This is the energy intensity per dollar spent for seeking and producing oil. This compares to about 14 MJ per dollar for heavy construction and about 8-9 MJ per dollar as a societal average, so it seems to be in the right ballpark. If we assume 5 percent inflation since 2006 we might expect there to be used about 16 MJ per dollar spent by the oil and gas industries in 2008. So if it takes Saudi Arabia $55 to produce a barrel then $55 times 16 MJ/$ equals about 880 MJ required per barrel. For Venezuela, which requires $90 a barrel, this number would be 1440 MJ required per barrel. Since a barrel of oil contains about 6164 MJ of energy, the EROI would be about 7:1 for Saudi Arabia to 4.3 for Venezuela or Iran. These estimates, although crude, indicate the seriousness of the problem and sound a clarion call for opening up data banks all around the world to greater scientific scrutiny while also calling for companies to make their energy, as well as dollar, costs explicit and public.

…

How can we afford to use oil at all with such a lousy EROEI?

[GliderGuider]

38. You disagree. We get it.

One part of me hopes you're right. The anti-Polywell part of me desperately hopes you're wrong.

It's confusing to be a yinyang person in Yangworld...

[OKIsItJustMe]

46. I don't mind if we disagree

I mind if one bolsters one's argument with demonstrably false claims (ex. the EROEI of alternative power sources is much worse than for fossil fuels.)

[kristopher]

39. A closer look at the list used for that study

Shows that it is seriously out of date. If we are trying to determine the worth of what technology to pursue then wind in our best resource sites like offshore and the Pickens' corridor (Texas to Canada) extracted with current and next generation technologies appears to deliver between 1:50 and 1:80. The 1:25 includes a lot of old technology at some poor sites.

[OKIsItJustMe]

45. The study makes that plain

Never-the-less, even with the handicap, the calculated EROEI is quite favorable.

Similarly, the EROEI for thin-film solar is quite good.

On the other hand, we will build first where the winds and sun are most favorable (and where the EROEI will be best.) Later building sites will probably have lower EROEI's.

[tama]

60. Don't get me wrong

I'm not against wind-energy, which is very old technology that we might be getting wise enough to use as a genuinely sustainable tool instead of falling to the technocracy trap of energy deficit and must for conquer.

Perhaps - who knows - a world wide web of Internet could be sustainably (enough) built and maintained. I have serious doubts but who knows for certain - I don't and nobody else does either. What I know any genuinely sustainable system can be built only from scratch, starting from the bottom - and I have very little confidence in the ability of this system to do any makeover worth mention on the fly.

[kristopher]

68. Not necessarily.

Where projects are located is a product of more than looking at the best resource. A good example is the distortion cause by the availability of power lines to get the power to the system. Particular policy regimes can also have distorting effects. Germany's feed-in tariff resulted in profitable development of some areas with very poor resources while much better resources around Europe received little attention. Here that could manifest itself through differences in state's policies.
The point is that the distortions in the calculations you cited are varied, complex and significant. Not everyone delves into the original sources and leaving the casual reader with such a false impression of what wind is currently delivering is a disservice. It is as if you included the historic performance of petroleum production in today's average.

[tama]

52. In the good old days

oil EROEI used be something like 100:1 or much more - you know, make a hole in the land, look how the black stuff flows out, put a bucket under. A days manual work (= 1 kWh = 3,6 MJ) to get 6164 MJ of energy capital.

No wonder we went grazy.

[OKIsItJustMe]

77. However, those days are long gone

http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/4678

…

Energy Return On Investment (EROI or EROEI) is simply the energy that one obtains from an activity compared to the energy it took to generate that energy. The procedures are generally straightforward; simply divide the Energy Gained (Out) by the Energy Used (In), resulting in a unitless ratio. The running average EROI for the finding and production of US domestic oil has dropped from greater than 100 kilojoule returned per kilojoule invested in the 1930s to about 30 to 1 in the 1970s to between 11 and 18 to 1 today. This is a consequence of decreasing energy returns as oil reservoirs are depleted and as energy costs increase as exploration and development are shifted deeper and offshore (Cleveland et al. 1984, Hall et al. 1986, Cleveland 2004). Even that ratio reflects mostly pumping out oil fields that are half a century or more old since we are finding few significant new fields. In other words we can say that new oil is becoming increasingly more costly, in terms of dollars and energy, to find and extract. The increasing energy cost of a marginal barrel of oil or gas is one of the factors behind their increasing dollar cost, although if one corrects for general inflation the price of oil has increased only a moderate amount.

The same pattern of declining energy return on energy investment appears to be true for global petroleum production. Getting information on global oil production is very difficult, but a study currently submitted for publication indicates that the global EROI for petroleum production has been declining over the past 8 years and is currently about 18:1 (Gagnon and Hall, submitted). In fact, if the rate of decline continues linearly for several decades then it would take the energy in a barrel of oil to get a new barrel of oil. While we do not know whether that extrapolation is accurate, essentially all EROI studies of our principal fossil fuels do indicate that their EROI is declining over time, and that EROI declines especially rapidly with increased exploitation rates (e.g. drilling).

This decline appears to be reflected in economic news also. In November of 2004, The New York Times reported that for the previous three years oil exploration companies worldwide had spent more money in exploration than they had recovered in the dollar value of reserves found. Therefore it is possible that the energy “break-even” point has been approached or even reached for finding new oil. Whether we have reached this point or not the concept of EROI declining toward 1:1 makes irrelevant the reports of several oil analysts who believe that we may have substantially more oil left in the world, because it does not make sense to extract oil, at least for a fuel, when it requires more energy for the extraction than is found in the oil extracted.

…

Declining EROI is mainly a consequence of the “best first” principle. This is, quite simply, the characteristic of humans to use the highest quality resources first, be they timber, fish, soil, copper ore or, of relevance here, fossil fuels. This is because economic incentives are to exploit the highest quality, least cost (both in terms of energy and dollars) resources first, as was noted 200 years ago by economist David Ricardo (1821). For instance, the peak in finding oil was in the 1930s for the United States and in the 1960s for the world, and both have declined enormously since then. An even greater decline has taken place in the efficiency with which we find oil; that is the amount of energy that we find relative to the energy we invest in seeking and exploiting it. The pattern of exploiting and depleting the best resources first is occurring for natural gas as well. US natural gas originally came from large fields in Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. Its production has moved increasingly to smaller fields distributed throughout Appalachia and, increasingly, the Rockies. The largest fields that traditionally supplied the country with natural gas peaked in 1973, and then as “unconventional” fields were developed second by drilling a vast amount of wells, a somewhat smaller peak occurred in 2007.

…

[tama]

78. Honest question

If you accept (even speculatively) the narrative of being energywise in serious overshoot since 1980 and running financial debt ever since - until know that the Wiley E. Coyote symbolizing modern civilization is looking down...

How do you suggest, as realistically as possible given the state of politics etc., that the Wiley E. Coyote could best pile up cushions upon cushions and then some pillows on top on the ground while in free fall far away from the edge of the cliff - the cartoon we all would like to see?

Do you see any merit to this cartoonish picture representing current situation?

[OKIsItJustMe]

90. The cartoon has some small merit as a metaphor

The problem with metaphors is that they aren't reality.

So, as just one example, has Wiley E. Coyote (Super Genius) run off the edge of a mile high cliff? Or has he run over the peak of a hill? Perhaps he even took a little leap as he did!


Let's say we've hit "peak oil" (or recently passed it.) What does that mean? Does that mean that tomorrow all of the wells will run dry? No, it means that oil production will go into decline. As oil grows more and more expensive, people will have greater and greater incentive to migrate to alternatives which are growing less and less expensive (in real terms as well as relative to oil.)

We've already seen this playing out. Friends who have never been interested in alternatives have been asking me about them. As gasoline prices increased, interest in electric cars increased.

Demand, we're told, is still down. Why? well, because the economy is down.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/04/02/ap6246217.html

…

Americans are collectively driving billions of miles less each month, helping push U.S. oil inventories to 16-year highs. …

Decreased demand means a less precipitous trip down the backside of the hill.

My biggest concern is not, "What will happen when we run out?" it's, "What will happen if we don't run out soon enough?"

[HamdenRice]

20. Fortunately, one or two Zen Canadians of the Great White North will survive while the brown breeders

yellow breeders, and red breeders die off of their own licentious breeding and short sightedness!

And a good thing that is, indeed! We will need to re-breed the human race with a superior stock of neo-tribalist neo-hunter gatherers under more appropriate and stringent social Darwinist conditions!

[Canuckistanian]

26. I have no idea what you're talking about

Are you attempting to be satirical?

[Systematic Chaos]

27. Nah.

And yet he has the nerve to call me "stupid".

:woohoo:

[Canuckistanian]

28. Ah.

So this is personal.

As it is with me. He's the only DUer I've actually met and I find his thoughts prescient, frightening and hard to face when I realize their true impact.

But at least I'd try to deal with him as a rational thinker and attempt to provide critical discourse.

This is accomplishing nothing.

[GliderGuider]

29. You haven't met the new, kinder, gentler me yet...

There seems to be something about the way I think that is deeply offensive to some people. It makes them all reactive. I don't get it, but there it is.

It's long past time for another beer, I'll introduce you to Bodhisantra (the guy in the subject line...)

[Canuckistanian]

30. Looking forward to it

Remember, we have a date for the Green Festival, if not sooner.....

[glitch]

31. Which Green Festival? I was thinking of crashing your party :) nt

[GliderGuider]

33. It's called "The Art of Being Green"

http://artofbeinggreen.ca/

It's held in Lanark Township, which is sort of near Ottawa, in July. Maybe we can turn it into an E/E meetup...

[glitch]

34. Oh shoot. I was hoping it was the Green Festival in San Francisco in November.

since we just missed the one in Seattle. I don't think I can afford Ottawa, unless a miracle happens and I win the lotto. :hi:

[GliderGuider]

35. That's the problem with the Interweb

For a Global Village we sure do seem to live awfully far apart...

[glitch]

36. True that. But at least we can connect electronically Maybe even spiritually. :) nt

[GliderGuider]

37. Indeed!

:toast:

[HamdenRice]

41. "the way I think that is deeply offensive"-an analysis w/o concern for politics, economic interest

or for human life.

I've been fortunate to have spent a significant part of my life divided between observing/participating in the struggles of working people (civil rights movement, South Africa, Asian peasants) and closely observing economic and political elites (finance, international relations).

So it seems quite absurd to me to attribute the world's problems to some sort of inherent inability of humans to have insight about their situations and their projected outcomes. At both ends of the spectrum, people are very aware of their situations and projected outcomes. What prevents people at the bottom from addressing them is political and economic power relations, not some absence of frontal cortex, a problem that, btw, you seem to believe only you and a few close disciples have escaped (hence the laughable, "Some of us are particularly fortunate to have escaped the constraints of our discount function.")

Without acknowledging power relations and the constraints they impose on people and the culpability of those who use power relations to prevent the addressing of survival, your analysis, is essentially amoral -- it is devoid of ethical and moral content, and incapable of assigning culpability or pointing the way forward.

So we might ask, for example, why has the world not addressed global warming?

Your answer seems to be some sort of inability to think through the issue.

My answer would be, because powerful, unscrupulous oil, coal and gas companies want to continue to sell oil, coal and gas, regardless of the consequences for billions of people because the individuals in positions of power in these companies rationally expect that their wealth will insulate them from the worst consequences, even if billions of others die. The vast majority of people understand the threat, but can't address it because they lack power in the face of implacable, essentially evil, economic interests -- forces you relieve of responsibility, because they don't exist in your model, which places the blame on the "stupidity" of people other than yourself.

Following your "analysis" the answer to a problem like global warming is to embrace a zen-like ability to contemplate the destruction of the natural environment and the genocidal destruction of whole populations of humanity ("This is why I have concluded that it’s largely a waste of energy to try and stop the onrushing trains, to avoid or reverse the consequences of our behaviour"). By my analysis the answer would be to seize more populist political power -- which is the answer I learned by closely observing the civil rights movement in the US, the anti-apartheid forces within South Africa in the 1980s, and the environmental movement in Asia.

So, yes, your approach is quite offensive.

[GliderGuider]

42. If my way of thinking is offensive (to you), then don't adopt it.

I'm not asking you to adopt it, nor am I suggesting it's "the solution" to human problems (whatever that means). It works for me, so I talk about it so others can see if it works for them. If it does, fine. If it doesn't, that's fine too. I don't understand why you seem to find this way of thinking so threatening that you must try to prove me personally wrong at every turn. The world is big enough for all of us, and the marketplace of ideas can only benefit from diversity and competition.

Seizing populist power seems a noble and worthy goal. I do worry that it has a poor track record throughout history (the French, Russian and American revolutions all had populist underpinnings and each failed in a different way), and I wonder why that is.

[HamdenRice]

43. "offensive" is different from "threatening"

If someone proposed that the solution to our problems was rounding up and killing "Jews", that wouldn't be threatening to me because I'm not Jewish, but it would still be offensive.

Cheering on the great human die off, while giving malevolent economic interests a free pass is offensive, not threatening.

It's also illogical and full of faulty reasoning, and like any other ideas in the market place of ideas, it will come in for its share of criticism.

Or do you think your ideas should be immune from criticism, no matter how wacky or immoral?

[GliderGuider]

44. The reason I used the word threatening

Is that usually when I find someone else's thinking offensive I simply ignore it. I've noticed that if I feel compelled to react and try to invalidate their thinking (as opposed to simply correcting their facts) there is usually something deeper going on within me, and that I feel personally threatened at some level by the ideas. Of course those are just my observations about my own reactivity.

On edit: My ideas are no more immune to criticism than anyone else's, and receive their fair share if it every time I post. What surprises me about your responses are the personal nature of many of your comments.

[tama]

65. Good post

Sound bit like Chomsky's criticism against anarcho-primitivism. A die-off, systemic collapse or something to the same effect is simply unthinkable, hence those open to that thought, likelihood or inevitability and dealing with or trying to deal with it psychologically are 'offensive'.

Bit like personal death is very offencive idea to each person-construct.

[HamdenRice]

71. It's that and also the issue of culpability and political economy

To use an extreme example, it would be like saying that the holocaust was caused by Jews not being unified enough to create a nation state in Europe, without regard to the fact that Germans systematically murdered them.

These fatalistic analyses based on "culture" or "brain function" leave out of the equation that despite our ability to predict environmental disaster, there are entrenched interests who profit from us doing nothing. It lets those people completely off the hook -- it's not Exxon or Bush, it's our frontal lobes.

But millions of people do know what's coming, the majority actually, want to do something to stop it, and are prevented from doing so. It's not some cognitive incapacity that prevents addressing it; it's entrenched economic interests. If those interests want the eco-system to collapse for profit, then we have to call them what they are -- malevolent evil.

The fatalistic, zen, mental cultural approach lets "power" completely off the hook, morally, and is therefore itself an amoral and immoral way of looking at the problem.

[tama]

75. Thanks for those thoughts

I feel there is common ground here. A friend once said that we should forget likelihoods and propabilities - they tend affect adversly on miracles happening, which is - I feel you agree - what is required to achieve the fluffiest soft landing there can be or even remotely so. Miracles do happen, cancers do vanish without medical explanation - but denial of the cancerhood of this current system in this situation is no answer to anything. Seeing the root of the problems is non sine qua - and miraculously, often enough by itself.

Perhaps there can be also agreement that cognitive incapacity to "deal with reality" is usually linked to economic interests, both on social and individual levels. Together with force of habit (result of social conditioning) and mental inertia and friction. But also something "collective" wave of change maybe brewing that cannot be directly seen, or maybe not. In any case, it would seem prudent to stay open to such possibilities.

And as for "power" and letting it off the hook, I'm reminded of what Nietzsche said about fundamental idea or existance of European "metaphysics": wille zur macht beats survival instinct.

[GliderGuider]

76. The powerful are just as much products of their evolved psychology as those they exploit.

Every exploitative relationship needs two parties, and if it's not OK to blame the victims for their situation, what makes it OK to blame the exploiters? We don't blame the gazelle for getting caught, should we blame the lion for hunting? I truly see human relations as more of a blame-free predator/prey model. Within that context, we can sharpen the game by giving the prey better skills to avoid capture, and place constraints on the hunters, but as with any selection mechanism that's just going to change they dynamics, not eliminate the struggle.

You can say that the reason we got here was because of the amoral use of power, and I would agree completely. After all, it's that power that has directed the rape and poisoning of the natural world. What's most interesting to me right now is why they did it, and that's where evolved psychology comes in. After all, the raping and poisoning isn't restricted to just the top 1% of the human race -- the belief that it's OK permeates our culture to such an extent one has to ask whether there are intrinsic factors. To see this in action just ask your average GM worker if it's OK to drive an SUV...

BTW, your first entry into this thread involved an implication of racism. Now your example implies anti-Semitic Nazism on the part of those who disagree with you. Are you comfortable with that?

[GliderGuider]

70. The problem is not our inability to think through the issue

Lots of people have thought it through. The problem is our inability to respond to the conclusions with any sense of emotional urgency, because the problem is abstract. The people with vested interests understand this, and come up with lots of short-term anxiety-inducing ideas that override any concerns we might have about the original problem. Like raising the boogey-man of economic catastrophe if we try to address the "insignificant inconvenience" of global warming.

The problem is, the PR people working for Exxon know exactly how the human brain works. They understand exactly the characteristics I described in the OP, and know how to use them to manipulate people into supporting their position. That's precisely why understanding how our brains work is so important -- it can make us less vulnerable to such manipulation.

[HamdenRice]

72. Wrong

"The problem is our inability to respond to the conclusions with any sense of emotional urgency, because the problem is abstract."

No, plenty of people, the majority actually, react with emotional urgency. The problem is entrenched economic power.

You seem determined to let them off the hook.

[GliderGuider]

74. I'm certainly not letting them entirely off the hook

They are better at manipulating our emotions than we are at resisting the manipulation. In order to make them stop, though, we first have to be able to resist being co-opted into their cultural narrative of growth and dominion. Co-opting us into their worldview is the goal of their manipulation, because in a co-opted population all resistance to their agenda vanishes. So far we haven't been able to resist being co-opted, at least in large enough numbers (and close enough to the seats of power) to make much difference. Why do you think that is?

[tama]

64. Sometimes I think

that the process of facing and dealing with the Jungian Shadow makes the one in the process socially a Shadow, ie. pariah... :)

[tama]

61. You do have a point

in the war between humans dependent on antibiotics and bacteria the winner goes without saying (it's the one that has 50 generations a day) - and who can tell a mother not to give her child antibiotics because that would hurt grandchildrens chances to survive? Not me.

What beats me is the blatant racism of the post.

[Gregorian]

32. What an interesting way of approaching this situation.

It seems rather tangential. I'll admit that I'm not typical. I come from a family of strange and distant thinkers. We see way ahead of the immediate. But I've just marveled at how unaware of our pending "doom" people seem to be. I watch the jets cloud over a normal blue sky and turn a day into a gray veil, and promise never to get in a retched jet. Others just delight in the thought of hiking in the Himalayas, and hop in a plane. Just last night I was looking over the area that I recently left, and was appalled at the serious damage I see due to logging. I even took a screenshot. I left the area because I simply couldn't watch the chainsaws and bulldozers any longer. But when I talked to the neighbor, he was thrilled that he could make a million dollars off what was once his sheep farm. The old turd was 89 years old. I couldn't figure it out. Trash and run. Leave a legacy of destruction.

I do see fewer children among the latest generations. And I attribute that to a positive feedback system. Eyes. People see the mess. They may not even notice it like us. They may not digest it consciously like we do. But their brains are saying no to three kids. They'll have none. Or one. So I see a biological function that appears to be alive.

This is the coast of Oregon. To some, it looks like green and brown. To me it's disaster. It's places where up to fifty percent of the landscape is devoid of forest. I remember talking to many people in Oregon who called it "a tree farm". No, it's not a tree farm. It's a planet. This is the very thing you mention in your post. Blindness of a sort. Perhaps it's just the corner we've painted ourselves into. Our dependency on destruction in order to support a kingly lifestyle in these numbers.

I might add that each one of those little non-green areas is 160 acres, or a quarter square mile. This is the picture of most of the coast of Oregon. What effect on the planet's operation does a fraction of treeless areas like this have? And why are we not trying to stop it by discussing the root of the problem?

[Mithreal]

40. Excellent discussion. K&R. nt

[Speck Tater]

69. I have nothing against humans. Some of my best friends are humans.

However, humans evolved to thrive in a specific range of environments. While human action alters the environment, human evolution proceeds too slowly for the species to adapt to the changes it wrought in the environment. Like yeast thrown into a vat of sugar water, finding it a tasty environment, they busily turn sugars into alcohol. But in a little while the sugar starts getting scarcer and the concentration of alcohol becomes too great in their environment and the yeast die off.

Humans found a tasty environment and they busily started converting resources into waste products (with a brief period of "use" in the process). But like yeast, they have been too successful, and the environment is becoming overloaded with waste while resources are getting scarcer and more costly to extract.

Evolution never rests. Eventually the human race will adapt to the new environment. But the way that works, the way it has always worked, is by overshoot and die off of maladapted members of the population. In time, the population as a whole becomes more healthy and better adapted to the new reality. But "nature red in fang and claw" is not the comforting, nurturing mother, but the cruel and brutal testing ground where species discover if they have what it takes to survive in a basically hostile world. Of all the species that have ever lived, 99.9% are now extinct. Humans are not necessarily in the top 1/10th of 1 percent of species best adapted to escape extinction. Sharks and cockroaches rank far above us in those qualities.

On the contrary, the person who chopped down the very last tree on Easter Island knew it was the very last tree, and still believed that chopping it down was necessary. It doesn't matter if 10% of humans are forward seeing visionaries who would protect our future. It doesn't matter if that number is 20% or 30%, as unlikely as such high percentages might be. It doesn't matter because it only takes ONE person who believes that it is necessary to chop down the last tree. It only takes one person, desperate to feed his starving child, to pull the last salmon from the world's rivers, or to chase down and club to death the last emu in Tasmania.

Tactically, destruction is so must faster and easier than conservation that unless a significant majority of humans turn their efforts to conservation, the forces of destruction will win out in the end. The human race is not necessarily doomed to extinction, but the kind of civilization we are experiencing right now, based on depletion of non-renewable resources and poisoning of the environment, certainly IS doomed to extinction.

Some day the human race will evolve to live in harmony with nature. Either that, or it will become extinct. There is no middle ground. But the path that takes us from where we are to where we need to be to survive as a species is a path that will see starvation for tens of billions. Sad. Very, very sad. But inevitable.

[GliderGuider]

73. We don't really need to evolve to live in harmony with nature. We already did that.

That happy state lasted for many hundreds of thousands of years. Then about 10,000 years ago or so, something broke. How we get from here to a new balance with nature is imponderable, but since all complex adaptive systems oscillate around a balance point it's inevitable that the human/gaian system will do the same.

[Speck Tater]

81. Nope. We NEVER have lived in harmony with nature.

The myth of the noble savage

One of the more interesting myths to seep into American culture is the myth of the noble savage. In this myth, Native Americans prior to the coming of white people were noble and dignified and lived in harmony with nature. James Fenimore Cooper was an early propagator of this myth, and throughout the 19th century it alternated with the myth of the Native American as bloodthirsty savage until finally, after the last Indian was moved to a reservation, it became the predominant myth regarding Native Americans.

Over the past 40 years the Greenies in the environmental movement seized upon this myth and used it as an anti-technology screed. See, they say. It isn't necessary to have all these nasty dirty machines, you can live a noble life just fine in harmony with nature.

The only problem is: It simply isn't true.

"Native Americans lived in harmony with nature"... bah. What a bunch of drivel. Native Americans drove the proto-horse and mammoths of the Americas into extinction. Using only stone adzes and pottery bowls Native Americans turned the Rio Salado valley into a salt-ridden desert that took hundreds years to recover to the point where agriculture was possible again (the Hohokum culture disintegrated once no longer able to raise enough food for survival). The Anastazi did much the same over in New Mexico. Native American cultures were continually at war against each other, to the point where, when they had a common enemy, they refused to unite and drive said common enemy into the sea, indeed the only way that Spanish could defeat the Aztecs with the few thousand men at their disposal was by enlisting the neighboring tribes to go to war with the Aztecs at the same time. As for technology, the Native Americans eagerly embraced as much technology as they were capable of absorbing given their lack of education, rapidly adopting the horse and stirrup to the point where when American settlers encountered the Plains Indians they assumed that the Plains Indians had always been nomadic tribesmen (they had previously been sedentary agriculturalists), embracing whiskey and wool blankets to the point where they were used to destroy Native American cultures by giving them smallpox-infected blankets and all the whiskey they could drink, and Native Americans could never get enough guns.

All in all, the only difference between the Native Americans and us is that they didn't have a Scientific Revolution. If they'd had the capability, they would have despoiled the Earth just as much as we're doing. If you really believe that nonsense about Native Americans being such "stewards" of the Earth, I suggest you go to any Native American reservation. There's enough trash and junk lying around to make that stereotypical TV Indian cry. The backside of the Hopi mesas has centuries of trash just piled up where they just shove their trash off the edge of the mesa. The Navaho stripped all the grass covering off their reservation by running so many sheep that they turned high plains grassland into utter desolate desert. Some of this is just poverty, of course -- impoverished people generally aren't concerned about making their homes look nice, they're concerned about survival. But the same was true 500 years ago before the "White Man" came on the scene too.

More at: http://blog.badtux.net/2007/04/myth-of-noble-savage.html

And other studies have come to the same conclusion. Humans have ALWAYS raped and plundered the earth to the limit of what their technology allowed. When technology only allowed a little raping and plundering, then we only raped and plundered a little. But it was not our noble or high ideals that prevented us for more extensive raping and plundering. It was ONLY our technological limitations.

So the premise upon which your fantasy is based is patently false.

[tama]

83. James Fenimore Cooper

My childhood favourite. I never grew up, don't think I ever will.

[tama]

84. As for your point

Yup, local environmental catastrophies, destroying and/or outgrowing local carrying capacity has a long history and many examples known by historians and anthropologists and - what is most important - those that learned from those experiences, painfully enough not the repeat them never no more if in their power. What your litany failes to recognize is that among the native peoples learning from the local experience has been the rule, not the exception. The exceptions are no more with us to tell their stories - which kinda makes sense, given what we know and understand about evolution.

Except for one exception - us, the modern willingly or unwillingly globalized peoples. This time the local learning experience is whole planet wide, not just a river valley or a continent. And the only question worth asking, do we learn the hard way or are we real humans - capable of learning from experience of others to avaid repeating their worst mistakes? Or just wannabe gods?

[Speck Tater]

85. "learning from the local experience has been the rule, not the exception"

And as the current economic crisis shows, that learning lasts just about one or two generations. As those that learned from the Great Depression all retired and dropped off the policy-making map, the next generation, who thought themselves so much smarter than the generations before them, made the same mistakes all over again.

So yes, a single specific tribe might learn, the hard way, how to live in harmony with their surroundings, for a short time. But after a few generations, or when that tribe is replaced by another tribe, all that learning is lost. Not lost in the sense that the knowledge is actually gone, but lost in the sense that nobody takes that knowledge seriously any more because the realities and necessities of the new generation seem so much more important to that new generation. So we may still know, as a species, HOW to mend socks, but what we don't know is that mending socks is actually better than throwing them away to buy new socks from China. We are "too good" for that.

And so, as a young tribesman, my grandfather might have taught me to respect the natural balance, but if my family is hungry and I can do a better job of feeding them using some ecologically unsustainable practice, then I will justify that decision to myself by telling myself my need is greater and those old rules just don't apply any more anyway. And besides, those old people are just foolish and old-fashioned.

And since it only takes a few people to undo whatever practices have been learned and passed down, and ruin the sustainability of the village as a whole, we arrive at Speck Tater's First Law:

Axiom 1. It only takes one bad apple to spoil the barrel.
Axiom 2. There's always at least one bad apple.
Conclusion: In the long run, the barrel will always be spoiled.

[tama]

89. Australian aboriginals

remembered until Europeans came. Projecting American attention span to native peoples falsified.

[GliderGuider]

86. I admit I vacillate

I understand where you're coming from, it's the implication of my point #1 in the OP. If our sense of separation is the root cause of our current predicament (as I believe), then we were doomed from the start. Our neocortex is what makes us human. However, if it is truly our Achilles heel then you're absolutely right, we have carried the seeds of our own destruction from the very beginning. The anarcho-primitivist shibboleth that we didn't overrun the planet until we developed agriculture is revealed as an illusion born of circumstance.

Is humanity more than that? Can we perfect ourselves even in the face of such a mighty rift in our being? What do we have to lose by trying?

[Speck Tater]

87. In my most optimistic moments

I wish and hope that we can, as a species, transcend our inborn limitations and become the best that we can be. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

[tama]

82. Risky business,

the rapture and redemption memeology. A good friend joined Jehowa's witnesses, other friends adopting similar puritanisms and condemning those that don't meet the standards of their God(s). Yaldabaoth, methinks. Me just a big sinner, with all human faults worth mentioning and whole lotta of these unmentionables.

Same with the Eagle and Condor business... 2012 (13, and perhaps even 14) is going to be what we make of it, together with rest of the universe. I don't accept the chains of American Shaman's predictions any more than my own... let's just try to keep it open and not fix and fixate too much... and this coming from someone with some, however little, experience of the Toltec etc. experience of luminous eggs and all that jazz of endless variety.

What goes for Buddha goes for boddhisatvas and shamans - if you meat them on your path, kill them. They, we, are not real, or just as real and unreal as and as full of shit as anything else...

Naked of all that, maybe there is a self... the, emperor, emperors clothes, the worshipping crowd and the little boy speaking truth to the power.


Yours truly, Tailor

[tama]

80. Unlike yeast

we know or at least have the potential to know we are behaving like yeast in a barrel of grape fruit juice.

Gnothi seauton, know thyself, said Socrates, quoting someone. And so the rest of the gang.