D
David Eather
Guest
On 12/12/2011 9:20 AM, mrstarbom@gmail.com wrote:
be accepted.
The problem is the rate at which we can recycle our resources - and this
totally ignores any GW issues.
The problems come about because of these conditions:
10% of the world population consumes 90% of the worlds "active" resources.
The "average" person in the world lives in a one or two room house or
apartment with little or no yard. They probably easy have access to
water and possibly even water in their own house. The water is unlikely
to be safe to drink without further processing. The average house is
likely to have intermittent electrical power for up to 6 hours per day.
The average household is unlikely to have a form of motorised transport
but may have bicycle or animal transport. The average household probably
has to travel up to 24hours to access basic health care.
Think poor rural Mexican and your there.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to live like that. I don't want
my kids to live like that either.
The problems come about because this is happening:
China, India and Indonesia are rapidly industrialising, which is
creating a middle class and a consumer society. They want more, consume
more and are no longer satisfied with less.
Basic supply and demand states quite clearly that this demand pushes up
prices for all basic goods. Increased demand means it will be increasing
difficult and expensive (and eventually impossible) to maintain our
lifestyles while the 90% of the rest of the world is increasingly
becoming modern consumers. There is no way to stop that growth.
The proposed solutions are:
to increase resource extraction and thereby increase the amount of
active resource in the world. This delays catastrophic failure but does
not prevent it. With massive expansion of mining and other resource
extraction might be increased by 2 to 3 times perhaps, even 10 times if
we can mine the depths of the sea, but the current population will
require 80 times that amount if they were to develop to the average
level of consumption in the developed world.
to recycle - or more correctly to recycle faster. Our best efforts to
date have been, collectively, pitiful. Even recycling that is, overall
90% efficient falls short of needs by nearly an order of magnitude.
And all of this is under the most optimistic projection that assumes
that energy is unlimited and consumed with little consequence.
The nettle no one wants to grasp is that the entire world has to control
it's population. We resist this proposition because we already have too
many people and a decreasing population is an invitation to negative
economic growth and negative profits (that case is not inevitable but it
would require careful management to avoid). No one and no business is
prepared for the restrictions required. No government is game to enforce
them on their people.
(The possible exception is China who put out the one child policy with
just this situation in mind, only they were thinking of it in a limited
regional context)
No GW. Just the weight of humanity needing more. That is the end of my
"green" speech. BTW, the quote "we have failed..." is from David Suzuki.
--
We have failed to address the fundamental truth that endless growth is
impossible in a finite world.
I probably don't have a solution - I certainly don't have one that could
be accepted.
The problem is the rate at which we can recycle our resources - and this
totally ignores any GW issues.
The problems come about because of these conditions:
10% of the world population consumes 90% of the worlds "active" resources.
The "average" person in the world lives in a one or two room house or
apartment with little or no yard. They probably easy have access to
water and possibly even water in their own house. The water is unlikely
to be safe to drink without further processing. The average house is
likely to have intermittent electrical power for up to 6 hours per day.
The average household is unlikely to have a form of motorised transport
but may have bicycle or animal transport. The average household probably
has to travel up to 24hours to access basic health care.
Think poor rural Mexican and your there.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to live like that. I don't want
my kids to live like that either.
The problems come about because this is happening:
China, India and Indonesia are rapidly industrialising, which is
creating a middle class and a consumer society. They want more, consume
more and are no longer satisfied with less.
Basic supply and demand states quite clearly that this demand pushes up
prices for all basic goods. Increased demand means it will be increasing
difficult and expensive (and eventually impossible) to maintain our
lifestyles while the 90% of the rest of the world is increasingly
becoming modern consumers. There is no way to stop that growth.
The proposed solutions are:
to increase resource extraction and thereby increase the amount of
active resource in the world. This delays catastrophic failure but does
not prevent it. With massive expansion of mining and other resource
extraction might be increased by 2 to 3 times perhaps, even 10 times if
we can mine the depths of the sea, but the current population will
require 80 times that amount if they were to develop to the average
level of consumption in the developed world.
to recycle - or more correctly to recycle faster. Our best efforts to
date have been, collectively, pitiful. Even recycling that is, overall
90% efficient falls short of needs by nearly an order of magnitude.
And all of this is under the most optimistic projection that assumes
that energy is unlimited and consumed with little consequence.
The nettle no one wants to grasp is that the entire world has to control
it's population. We resist this proposition because we already have too
many people and a decreasing population is an invitation to negative
economic growth and negative profits (that case is not inevitable but it
would require careful management to avoid). No one and no business is
prepared for the restrictions required. No government is game to enforce
them on their people.
(The possible exception is China who put out the one child policy with
just this situation in mind, only they were thinking of it in a limited
regional context)
No GW. Just the weight of humanity needing more. That is the end of my
"green" speech. BTW, the quote "we have failed..." is from David Suzuki.
--
We have failed to address the fundamental truth that endless growth is
impossible in a finite world.
It is very likely that lifespans will begin to decrease due to lifestyle and 'modern' toxins, and at any time thousands could be wiped out very rapidly by some new plague.