Limits to growth - peak oil - peak resources - peak prosperity

[.kju 3239]

Will provide some resources in a bit, yet I am curious

Who is into this topic? What people, organizations, news sites and podcasts you follow?

Much appreciated :)

[anguis 4]

Sounds like it could be interesting - would you provide resources, please?

[Tonci87 163]

I´m into this. IMHO our economical policy of constant growth is unreasonable.

[St. Jimmy 272]

Yeah this is an interesting topic. It can even cause quite heat discussion or thought on some people. It's hard to limit growth, in money (resources) and population, without pissing somebody off somewhere. Things can be done fast and radically or slow and painfully, there's never a good option that really pleases the most.

 

People are kept alive through all kinds of drugs and medical treatment longer than the system can handle. Probably everyone knows this but naturally people want to live as long as they can and enjoy, so they're ready to take grams of drugs and pills every week. There has been a natural reaction in Europe on population growth. It has gone down for some time already, because people see they can survive long and easily, so no need to make more than one or two babies. Robots are doing work for them and everything is easily available whenever wanted. This is a daemon in the system because it starts from the bottom of the human pyramid and people are iving longer and longer to the top of the pyramind. Seeing inverted pyramind is a nightmare to the current systems, straight box is OK and pyramid is what nations wants so there's always someone to pay the elders penision. Only "human way" in a western human right thinking to compensate this is just bring more humans (encourage people to make babies and/or taking refugees) in but that makes things just worse unless there's a bigger plan. You can rise the age of pension but everyone knows how pissed off people get when that's done because they can't get their pension as early as others before. The optimum for pension is that you actually won't ever even reach it or you only have it a short time, so it doesn't strain the system, before dying. That's the reality that many won't accept.

[Eight Ball 16]

Last night I've watched Zeigeist : moving forward on Netflix.

I guess you'll find it more or less interesting depending where you are coming from.

I've been concerned about these subject since I'm 15, so in my case, they were preaching a converted.

 

Cowspiracy, also on Netflix, might be interesting aswell, again depending where you coming from.

In my opinion it's a remarkable demonstration of how our food industry at large is just unsustainable

 

For the french speaking, I'd recommend le temps des grâces, le monde selon monsanto and les moissons du futur.

3 documentaries about the agricultural industry, the problems we are facing right now and those we'll have to face in the future if we continue with the current model.

I've also read various articles/interviews/books from Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Albert Jacquard, Nicolas Hulo or Pierre Rabi to name a few. All in french unfortunately.

 

Every year we hear about the Earth overshoot day - when humanity’s annual demand for the goods and services that our land and seas can provide exceeds what Earth’s ecosystems can renew in a year.

And every year we're told that if everyone was living like an american we would need 7 or 8 planets, like a european we would need 4 or 5 planets, etc

What is implied but almost never clearly said is that it's only possible because around 80% of humanity is denied that way of life. We're doing our best to keep their heads underwater and ultimately that's what allows us to live way beyond our means.

 

I don't understand how so many people still have faith in this system, like if it was the be-all end-all of human social organisation.

We can look at past societies and every single one them that had even a tenth of the inequalities we currently have, simply collapsed.

Whenever these societies were based on inequality, allowing a tiny percentage of their population to have all the power and the wealth, they disappeared !

That's what History shows us, and there's no reason it would be any different with our current system.

To the contrary, we still have a few examples of very equalitarian societies, you know, those we call savages.

They are living with the same social organisation for 10 maybe 15 thousands years ! They saw the rise and the fall of all these societies we praise for the wonders they built (with slaves, but shhhh)

 

It is estimated that we waste around 1.3 billions tons of food every year while 850 millions people go hungry every day.

For the first time in human history, famine and people dying of hunger aren't because of a lack of food but because of a lack of access to food.

We can feed every one on this planet, we can provide a house/flat and a decent way of life to everyone.

What prevent us from doing so isn't a lack of technology or lack of knowledge, it's the current system we live in.

 

Most people are waiting for some kind of scientific breakthrough or technological revolution that will allow them to keep the exact same way of life but in a sustainable manner.

This is never going to happen. Our way of life is profoundly inadapted to this planet and no amount of technology will change that.

What we need is a "philosophical" revolution. And again, History shows us that this kind of revolution never occured peacefully, before a crisis.

We always need to hit the wall, and hit it hard, before taking the time to consider what got us into that mess.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

I follow solar Roadways. Thing is, the technology has long since existed to get off of fuel resources, even now we can see the pivot of nations to the Arctic North, is a clear sign that many are no longer going to respect the deals of no drilling in the Arctic Environment for, Environmental reasons. With spills in many locations, it would be nearly impossible to clean up a mess in the Arctic, and even if it was, it would be a major blow for the environment, and all inhabitants. Not only that, changing to new, technologically advanced ways to support energy would progress mankind. The Oil and Fuel Companies don't want this, their corporations are filled with greed, and profit, nothing else. It has been ever since to creations of Automobiles. Who ever controls Oil, controls the world.

 

Now of course, i've heard stories that renwable energy plans to get away from oil have always been shut down, better sources for infinite energy using infinite sources, light, wind, Magnetic fields. There's are many ways to create energy from them, but Governments, and Oil companies spend billions to sabotage those ideas. They'd rather use the oil till the world is dry of it, and then what? Guess who has all the money. They do.

 

Fun Fact: Once Oil and Fuel is gone, war will end. There will be nothing left to run our machines of destruction.

 

Though, if we get off of fuel now, find other ways to create sustainable Energy, the Oil companies won't exactly die. Their future is still needed. Lets take Solar Roadway for example. Solar Roadways is built with a sort of tough Glass composition based upon recycled elements including plastics. Now of course, when you think of glass, you think of easily destroy-able China drawers at Grandma's house. But not quite, the Glass is reinforced with many "alloys" so to speak, it's by no means fragile. The Oil company could use their remaining oil facilities to help the production of new components that involve plastics and glass. We would also need to keep a lot of Oil left over for our Military, obviously.

 

Solar Roadways is an in-development idea. It's not perfect, even i can for see a handful of issues, that like any other project, would need a solution. It was predicted that if Solar Roadways was used on every road in America it would be about 3 times as much energy as we all use today. That means we would have more Energy than we need. Last i heard, they were going to be testing this out in Idaho soon, in a small town, in order to gain more accurate numbers. Keeping in mind this is a small town, it won't have as much benefits as larger Cities would from night time commuters, like New York, the City that never sleeps, lights from cars also provide light for the solar panels used in the roads, meaning Energy around 24/7. There's a lot of information i haven't mentioned, but i didn't memorize it all. It's still a work in progress, and don't expect it the be the miracle to save the world just yet, until we obtain much more information from the testing yet to come.

[St. Jimmy 272]

Yeah those Zeitgeist stuff is good to watch. There was also some Finnish one. It had some biased views but if you ignore those it can open mind a bit if you start to think things.

[x3kj 1247]

 

Fun Fact: Once Oil and Fuel is gone, war will end. There will be nothing left to run our machines of destruction.

you have much to learn padawan... once fuel and oil is gone the next ressources are clean water and food