Truth_and_Power
12-12-2007, 03:49 PM
I was thinking about what the world "sustainable" really means, byproduct of reading science fiction novels lately. It means a practice that can be continued ad infinitum. Now removing the greatest extreme of "oh well when the sun expands to a red giant.." how does this word apply to current industrialized society?
The majority of our practices are unsustainable. In other words, eventually we are going to run out of our current energy sources, eventually the sea is going to run out of food, eventually we are not going to be able to feed the world's expanding populations (even as well as we do now). Right now our entire society is based on the idea that improving technology will save us. Either that or the world will end due to nuclear war or religion or both! So we essentially have two camps: The technologists and the fatalists. Everone else is just not paying attention, they don't get a camp.
Either way it requires a real extensive amount of faith. To believe that god is going to end the world and take everyone away to happy land.. well do I need to explain why that requires a lot of faith? There's no real hard evidence to support it, you just have to believe it.
To believe that technology will continue to support our growing society in ever-more efficient ways, continually improving before the current methods falter and drop us in an era of freefall & famine is another great leap of faith. What if nothing better & more efficient than the current paradigm of oil/coal/gas/fission is developed before those methods run out? How long do we really have, 100 years? If it takes 150 years to develop a new energy source, society could collapse and destroy the effort before it is complete. It is not just a faith that technology will eventually triumph, it is a faith that technology will triumph in time.
And what happens when the seas run out of food for us to pillage? The resources of the worlds oceans are steadily diminishing. 20 years ago no one was selling orange roughy, it was a trash fish thrown back. Now it's sold regularly in restaurants and fish markets -- and not just to the poor. All the natural fish hatcheries along the coasts of the world are being developed into places for humans. Between that and our need to feed ourselves from its bounty, the ocean is dying. And the leading source of animal protein in the human diet globally is from underwater.
Even if our population were holding steady our current methods still would not be sustainable. But that is not the case. The population continues to grow and could increase 25% between now and 2030. And again. And again. The world's population is current pegged at 6.6 billion. At that rate by 2100 we could have a population of 13 billion or more. So we need double the energy, double the food, and that's assuming our consumption does not grow. Does anyone think the people of africa are going to keep living like they are presently as their countries develop? What about asia? The majority of the world's population has yet to "develop".
And yet the great fear for the next 100 years is supposed to be global warming? Based on the problems above a little flooded coastland and more intense hurricanes are the least of our problems. And the next great shortage is going to be fresh water, which also ties into agriculture and thus the food problem. We as a species need to start thinking logically about the future. If we are going to place our faith in technology saving us in 100 years, don't you think we should take it more seriously? Right now technology is something that government chips in to but which is largely driven by private industry. This means that the technology that gets the focus is the technology that rich people are willing to pay for. So we spend our technology dollars on anti-depressants, stem cells, cooler more curvy car bodies, marketing strategies, and last but not least better fabrics for making your fat ass look healthy. How is any of that stuff going to save us? We need to stop worrying about looking good, and stop worrying about living past 70. We need to worry about the next generations and what kind of world they will have left.
The clock is ticking, will modern society fail in 100 years?
The majority of our practices are unsustainable. In other words, eventually we are going to run out of our current energy sources, eventually the sea is going to run out of food, eventually we are not going to be able to feed the world's expanding populations (even as well as we do now). Right now our entire society is based on the idea that improving technology will save us. Either that or the world will end due to nuclear war or religion or both! So we essentially have two camps: The technologists and the fatalists. Everone else is just not paying attention, they don't get a camp.
Either way it requires a real extensive amount of faith. To believe that god is going to end the world and take everyone away to happy land.. well do I need to explain why that requires a lot of faith? There's no real hard evidence to support it, you just have to believe it.
To believe that technology will continue to support our growing society in ever-more efficient ways, continually improving before the current methods falter and drop us in an era of freefall & famine is another great leap of faith. What if nothing better & more efficient than the current paradigm of oil/coal/gas/fission is developed before those methods run out? How long do we really have, 100 years? If it takes 150 years to develop a new energy source, society could collapse and destroy the effort before it is complete. It is not just a faith that technology will eventually triumph, it is a faith that technology will triumph in time.
And what happens when the seas run out of food for us to pillage? The resources of the worlds oceans are steadily diminishing. 20 years ago no one was selling orange roughy, it was a trash fish thrown back. Now it's sold regularly in restaurants and fish markets -- and not just to the poor. All the natural fish hatcheries along the coasts of the world are being developed into places for humans. Between that and our need to feed ourselves from its bounty, the ocean is dying. And the leading source of animal protein in the human diet globally is from underwater.
Even if our population were holding steady our current methods still would not be sustainable. But that is not the case. The population continues to grow and could increase 25% between now and 2030. And again. And again. The world's population is current pegged at 6.6 billion. At that rate by 2100 we could have a population of 13 billion or more. So we need double the energy, double the food, and that's assuming our consumption does not grow. Does anyone think the people of africa are going to keep living like they are presently as their countries develop? What about asia? The majority of the world's population has yet to "develop".
And yet the great fear for the next 100 years is supposed to be global warming? Based on the problems above a little flooded coastland and more intense hurricanes are the least of our problems. And the next great shortage is going to be fresh water, which also ties into agriculture and thus the food problem. We as a species need to start thinking logically about the future. If we are going to place our faith in technology saving us in 100 years, don't you think we should take it more seriously? Right now technology is something that government chips in to but which is largely driven by private industry. This means that the technology that gets the focus is the technology that rich people are willing to pay for. So we spend our technology dollars on anti-depressants, stem cells, cooler more curvy car bodies, marketing strategies, and last but not least better fabrics for making your fat ass look healthy. How is any of that stuff going to save us? We need to stop worrying about looking good, and stop worrying about living past 70. We need to worry about the next generations and what kind of world they will have left.
The clock is ticking, will modern society fail in 100 years?