[scas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '
')Look at the pyramids and the great wall of china. Individual human muscle power has created huge monuments even in antiquity at a fraction of our energy use and populations. They did it by banding together with a common purpose, and sticking with it straight through to the end.

[scas]

Of course they are all impractical and won't be done. This is why the Venus syndrome is looking plausible or at best human extinction with a return to microbial and small aquatic life. People will not band together, and it's likely that countries and borders will dissolve this century, along with geoengineering and technological capabilities.

The benefit of peak oil is a massive die off, the negative is a reduction in aerosols and technological capabilities for remediation.

[Ludi]

The vast majority of the Earth's people (and of course other critters) would be a lot better off if we implemented Mos's suggestions. First World people would feel picked on initially because we'd have to give up a lot of our luxuries, but most of the Third World would benefit enormously with higher quality of life from restoration of forests and watersheds and local non-industrial food production.


None of these suggestions are impractical and in fact they are being done, just not on a large enough scale. There is no magical unknown technology needed, just the will to do the work.


http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/

http://permaculture.org.au/2007/03/01/g ... n-youtube/

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

[scas]

Recommended reading:

James Hansen's Storms of My Grandchildren,
James Lovelock's The Vanishing Face of Gaia,
Peter Ward's Under A Green Sky
Cid-Yama's Runaway Global Warming thread.

The conclusions are revealing. Permaculture, reforestation, and food orchards may make life slightly easier in the present, but is unlikely to have much significance in the long term. There is this thought where if we stop burning fuels, be 'good', and treat the Earth well that things will get better. This is incorrect.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', 'P')ermaculture, reforestation, and food orchards may make life slightly easier in the present, but is unlikely to have much significance in the long term.

[scas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', 'P')ermaculture, reforestation, and food orchards may make life slightly easier in the present, but is unlikely to have much significance in the long term.

[TWilliam]

Mos, one of the first points made in the film when the discussion of The Venus Project begins (at least that I got) is that humans are inseparable from their environment, and that one of the primary goals of the project is a sustainable society, one that recycles, at least to the fullest extent possible, all material resources used, one that does not extract renewable resources at a rate in excess of nature's ability to replenish them, and one that has repair, regeneration and improvement of the ecosystem as a whole as a foundational principle. Maybe it's possible, maybe it isn't, but they do have these issues in mind.

As far a "6 billion pharaohs" is concerned, that's not what is being advocated. What is being advocated is free and equitable access to universal human necessities, not individual wants. BIG difference. When needs are met, wants change, typically in a diminishing fashion. The fact is that our consumptive lifestyle is based upon the non-fulfillment of basic needs, particularly our emotional needs. It is our indoctrinated sense of lack that drives the relentless pursuit of acquisition. Eliminate that sense of lack and the acquisitive lifestyle collapses of its own accord.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', '
')Yup, the inability for long term thinking is one of the main reasons were in such a predicament.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TWilliam', ' ')What is being advocated is free and equitable access to universal human necessities, not individual wants.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', '
')Permaculture, reforestation, and food orchards may make life slightly easier in the present, but is unlikely to have much significance in the long term.

[scas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', '
')Yup, the inability for long term thinking is one of the main reasons were in such a predicament.

[scas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', '
')Permaculture, reforestation, and food orchards may make life slightly easier in the present, but is unlikely to have much significance in the long term.

[scas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TWilliam', ' ')What is being advocated is free and equitable access to universal human necessities, not individual wants.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', '
')We have nothing to lose. We should be doing it all, and supportive of scientific forays into solutions that don't yet exist.

[scas]

Sometimes the wrong tone comes across on message boards. My apologies if that is the case, I don't mean to offend. It actually seemed that you had argument with me!

Geoengineering is only science fiction until we do it

[Ludi]

You didn't offend, I was just trying to find out where we were disagreeing. And it turns out we weren't, and aren't! (as far as I can tell! )

Ok, you were slightly offensive when you implied people who are interested in restoring watersheds, forests, etc are somehow incapable of long-term thinking.

Now we can edit our way into a real disagreement.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', '
')Ironic that so many people in this thread dump on Zeitgeist and any form of technological mitigators to climate change and peak oil, when their 'solutions' are hardly better.