http://ips-dc.org/reports/070915_manifesto.pdf
Anyone remember the early days of ZPG?
john
Forget global warming - look at root causes
Moderators: MichelleH, Minimalist, JPeters
Forget global warming - look at root causes
"Man is a marvellous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is sort of a low-grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm."
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Days of idealism long past, I'm afraid. Today Zero Population Growth is regarded as unrealistic unless it's worldwide. Even then, many economists think it would ruin the economy.
We have the space, if we utilize it properly. But we must use different resources. They must be renewable. I haven't read the link john, but I will.
We have the space, if we utilize it properly. But we must use different resources. They must be renewable. I haven't read the link john, but I will.
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Rokcet Scientist
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Minimalist
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And a pessimest regarding the future.
That just means that you are paying attention, Beags.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
-- George Carlin
-- George Carlin
Mankind has been living on the edge of extinction since the year dot, and we're still here. Civilisation, such as it is, may be at risk but they also come and go so you've got two choices. Eat sleep and be merry or repent the end is nigh.
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
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Leona Conner
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I'm not as worried about the population as I am the resources it uses up. If we keep with the ideaology that if it makes money so what, we are in really deep shit. The best thing we can do is try to make people aware of what is happening and hope for the best because if we try for ZPG we have the religious right on our asses. As long as they preach that you can't do anything to prevent births (Catholics) or you gotta keep having them (most other religions, except maybe for some Protestant) we will either run out of room for them to live or room to grow the food needed to feed them all. It seems the best land for farming is also the best land on which to build houses way too large for one family to need.
The world could support 6 billion sustainably. It just cant support 3 billion stupid crazy mutherfuckers driven by demagoguery. Liberals bitch about 2 million American men in prison, but I dont see a plan to deal with what we know to be a vast number of crazy violent men.
If I suggest that maybe their daughters should marry them to be able to do in house intensive case management, which is what the crazy bastards need, they aint so liberal any more.
We here should understand that hominids evolved in the wild, not cities. Man was the prime predator, and there's lotsa men in the gene pools now who still feel the need to hunt & kill. If animals are not available for that in the bush, well then- strangers in the city will do.
Lotsa boys try to make do with predatory video games, but sometimes, that will not suffice. The Jihadim think they are in it for real. They do understand, that if the global corporate culture is successful, they will be filtered out of the gene pool, and there are lotsa demagogues in pulpits saying they will be rewarded for their efforts.
The corruption of the global system is giving them a shot at it. The abuse of resources increase their chances. But whatever, its not upta us. You mite speak with the young women, for their wombs are the system that provides the next generation of warriors.
David Hume suggested staying out of the cross fire among the zealots; good advice in the era of muskets. There was lotsa sidelines to get to. No longer in the era of WMD and Nukes. Getting out of the way will require more planning and greater distance from the struggles in the great power centers.
There, your knowledge of how ancient people got by on local resources mite be more useful. Beating it into the bush in a bunker only means you get to starve more slowly. Hominid survival has always depended on group cooperation... of those who were sane enuf to see a common interest.
Lotsa luck on finding any such group. Maybe you can find them online. I do not see many women in the postings however, and none who seem to see the risk, or any plan of what to do about it..
If I suggest that maybe their daughters should marry them to be able to do in house intensive case management, which is what the crazy bastards need, they aint so liberal any more.
We here should understand that hominids evolved in the wild, not cities. Man was the prime predator, and there's lotsa men in the gene pools now who still feel the need to hunt & kill. If animals are not available for that in the bush, well then- strangers in the city will do.
Lotsa boys try to make do with predatory video games, but sometimes, that will not suffice. The Jihadim think they are in it for real. They do understand, that if the global corporate culture is successful, they will be filtered out of the gene pool, and there are lotsa demagogues in pulpits saying they will be rewarded for their efforts.
The corruption of the global system is giving them a shot at it. The abuse of resources increase their chances. But whatever, its not upta us. You mite speak with the young women, for their wombs are the system that provides the next generation of warriors.
David Hume suggested staying out of the cross fire among the zealots; good advice in the era of muskets. There was lotsa sidelines to get to. No longer in the era of WMD and Nukes. Getting out of the way will require more planning and greater distance from the struggles in the great power centers.
There, your knowledge of how ancient people got by on local resources mite be more useful. Beating it into the bush in a bunker only means you get to starve more slowly. Hominid survival has always depended on group cooperation... of those who were sane enuf to see a common interest.
Lotsa luck on finding any such group. Maybe you can find them online. I do not see many women in the postings however, and none who seem to see the risk, or any plan of what to do about it..
Any god watching me hasta be bored, and needs to get a life.
I wouldn’t worry about using up resources.
When thing get scarce we seem to find a way around the shortage.
In Europe, when fuel wood got scarce, a coal industry developed.
When coal became to bulky as a mobile energy source, an oil industry developed. When fueling warships became inconvenient, a nuclear solution was found. When Sperm oil got scarce and we couldn’t oil our watches someone invented digital watches with no moving parts. Meanwhile the plastics guys developed plastic bearing that didn’t need oil and we are back to watches with moving hands.
Sometimes we revert. It is cool to ride a bike on campus instead of having a car. There is a co in Japan that has designed and successfully tested, a sail system for the huge container ships that cross the Pacific like clockwork. Everybody in the business knows it is there, and that it works. But the economics just are not there yet. It will take extra crew members, trained in it’s use, there are high retrofit costs in both dollars to buy and lost revenue while the ship is out of action, and when you are done you cannot carry as many containers. But everybody agrees it’s time will come. They are talking 5 to 15 percent fuel saving. Depending on the wind conditions. (Of course, that kind of variance drives the accounts trying to justify the costs absolutely nuts.)
We are a pretty adaptable bunch. The only species I know of that can live successfully in any Earthly climate.
I think RS said it in another post. “Humans have been living on the edge of existence since the year dot.”
So far we are still at the top of the food chain.
Yeah, I am a cynic, but I am also an optimist.
End of sermon.
When thing get scarce we seem to find a way around the shortage.
In Europe, when fuel wood got scarce, a coal industry developed.
When coal became to bulky as a mobile energy source, an oil industry developed. When fueling warships became inconvenient, a nuclear solution was found. When Sperm oil got scarce and we couldn’t oil our watches someone invented digital watches with no moving parts. Meanwhile the plastics guys developed plastic bearing that didn’t need oil and we are back to watches with moving hands.
Sometimes we revert. It is cool to ride a bike on campus instead of having a car. There is a co in Japan that has designed and successfully tested, a sail system for the huge container ships that cross the Pacific like clockwork. Everybody in the business knows it is there, and that it works. But the economics just are not there yet. It will take extra crew members, trained in it’s use, there are high retrofit costs in both dollars to buy and lost revenue while the ship is out of action, and when you are done you cannot carry as many containers. But everybody agrees it’s time will come. They are talking 5 to 15 percent fuel saving. Depending on the wind conditions. (Of course, that kind of variance drives the accounts trying to justify the costs absolutely nuts.)
We are a pretty adaptable bunch. The only species I know of that can live successfully in any Earthly climate.
I think RS said it in another post. “Humans have been living on the edge of existence since the year dot.”
So far we are still at the top of the food chain.
Yeah, I am a cynic, but I am also an optimist.
End of sermon.
Yes, I agree. We have always been quite resourceful when the threat becomes critical. But usually not before. My earlier statement about being cynical is based on that one viewpoint.When thing get scarce we seem to find a way around the shortage.
As long as we have what we want in our daily lives, I doubt that much will be done to meet the threat of impending shortages in the not so distant future. Oh, we will wring our hands and complain about nothing being done, but that's all.
The end result is an unknown amount of human misery that may take generations to resolve. But we will get through it.
watch the price of gas at the pump. China is putting a million new cars on the road every year. Remember, Columbus was looking for China, which always had been a big deal. And, he was doing that cause Moslem greed and instability made the Silk Road unreliable and unprofitable.
Which had cut China off from Europe and dried up the flow of cash it'd always received for silk. In the same era when opening up the New World invigorated the European economies. China had a lot of competition from the rest of the world for European attention, and went to sleep.
And now, we all know it is waking up. And like the Mandarins, we dont see the problems and shortage in the provinces. Some have looked at all the Chinese cars going on the road and spurred development of Ethanol. Iowa may have already installed enough to convert its entire corn crop, but in any case the CBOT, http://www.cbot.com/ shows corn at $3.75/bu, Wheat at $8.74; not a big deal, we dont eat that many corn flakes or wheaties, but in cultures where they only make $1/day, its gotten their attention.
Mexico has already had riots over the price of corn. Damn Yankees have always been lucky. The corn crop is near record levels of 155bu/acre. But if ethanol conversion jacks the price of corn, more Mexicans will flip out, and the resulting revolution will stop the production of Mexican oil & gas which now gets imported to the US.
There is a certain irony, that ethanol production, intended to lower the price of gas, will very likely lead to gas prices going thru the roof. The history of empires has always been that those in the great power centers are the last to see the shortages going on in the provinces that lead to civil unrest, and then total collapse of the whole empire.
So- do you see a shortage? No. That's not the question. The question is, whether the power elite sees the systemic shortage coming from their place on top of the heap where they should have the longest view. China is coming, and will get here about the time the boomers want to retire and the cost of Social Security along with all the other commodities at the CBOT will be going thru the roof.
Looks like a perfect storm.
Which had cut China off from Europe and dried up the flow of cash it'd always received for silk. In the same era when opening up the New World invigorated the European economies. China had a lot of competition from the rest of the world for European attention, and went to sleep.
And now, we all know it is waking up. And like the Mandarins, we dont see the problems and shortage in the provinces. Some have looked at all the Chinese cars going on the road and spurred development of Ethanol. Iowa may have already installed enough to convert its entire corn crop, but in any case the CBOT, http://www.cbot.com/ shows corn at $3.75/bu, Wheat at $8.74; not a big deal, we dont eat that many corn flakes or wheaties, but in cultures where they only make $1/day, its gotten their attention.
Mexico has already had riots over the price of corn. Damn Yankees have always been lucky. The corn crop is near record levels of 155bu/acre. But if ethanol conversion jacks the price of corn, more Mexicans will flip out, and the resulting revolution will stop the production of Mexican oil & gas which now gets imported to the US.
There is a certain irony, that ethanol production, intended to lower the price of gas, will very likely lead to gas prices going thru the roof. The history of empires has always been that those in the great power centers are the last to see the shortages going on in the provinces that lead to civil unrest, and then total collapse of the whole empire.
So- do you see a shortage? No. That's not the question. The question is, whether the power elite sees the systemic shortage coming from their place on top of the heap where they should have the longest view. China is coming, and will get here about the time the boomers want to retire and the cost of Social Security along with all the other commodities at the CBOT will be going thru the roof.
Looks like a perfect storm.
Any god watching me hasta be bored, and needs to get a life.