[mos6507]

The problem with technology is that it is hard for humans to follow the house that Jack built, the story of Stuff. It's a lot easier to know something is sustainable when you're doing the permaculture homestead closed cycle thing.

I think it all comes back to the limitations of our senses. Think about the endless debates we have about EROEI or how the Prius is more damaging than a Hummer because of the embodied energy in the battery pack. We're just really bad at quantifying environmental impact when the supply lines are long between extraction and consumption.

Ever since I became a doomer I wince every time I buy a gadget. When I bought my (now obsolete) 24" monitor, with all the rare earth materials. My new motherboard and components. I wince because I know how much energy is embodied in all that stuff. Most people don't bat an eyelash over any of this, and will certainly be cavalier about green consumerism products like EVs and the like.

So if you want to sell the idea that high tech can be sustainable, then you've got to address all these issues, otherwise give up any nothing that you're being sustainable.

[Narz]

Planned obsolescence & consuming of ever newer gadgets doesn't really have anything to do with the type of technological progress. Computers could be built to last & easily upgradable. Your iPod could last a lifetime (or at least twenty years) and be upgradable to the next model. There's no reason my current laptop couldn't be upgraded with 95% less waste as opposed to tossed for a new model in 2-3 years.

I cringe whenever I buy a new gadget also (which is as little as possible) but technology itself is not to blame.

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', 'P')lanned obsolescence & consuming of ever newer gadgets doesn't really have anything to do with the type of technological progress. Computers could be built to last & easily upgradable. Your iPod could last a lifetime (or at least twenty years) and be upgradable to the next model. There's no reason my current laptop couldn't be upgraded with 95% less waste as opposed to tossed for a new model in 2-3 years.

[mos6507]

Greer has an article up that I think touches on the whole technocopian vs. powerdown argument. It's worth reading for those who have been following this thread.

This bit I couldn't say any better:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Like the age of the Earth or the distance to the nearest star, that torrential flow of energy is on a scale our minds are simply not capable of grasping in any but the most abstract sense. From the perspective we inherit from our evolutionary origins, where the effort needed to chase down an antelope or fight off a hyena lies toward the upper end of our imaginations, the power needed to keep a couple of hundred tons of aluminum, steel, fuel, luggage, and human flesh in midair for most of a day is so close to infinite that it’s all too easy to confuse the two.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'w')e're just too broke to afford to retool the planet for renewables.

[Narz]

How broke are we really? The middle class & poor may be getting poorer but there's still rich people building McMansions, still casinos running, still office & store lights blazing thru the night all thru US cities (enough to light up half of Africa probably).

There is still tons of waste. At a 5% decline rate per year we'd be screwed but if we could manage a 5% decline rate per decade I think we could manage.

I find neither the BAU model (that Obama & others in power since Reagan tend to use as if it's the only model that exists) nor the "we're all doomed, it's hopeless trying to build anything" model very empowering.

Like it or not money is going to be spent in the next 10-15 years, projects are going to be undertaken, buildings are going to be built, products made, programs funded & people put to work. How this is is all done is what's critical. Three years ago I was worried about being "doomed" in the not to distant future. This made it hard to act in our society because what's the point of making money that might not be worth anything in a few years or getting immeshed in a system that's going to collapse?

I'd probably be better off today if I hadn't gotten involved in this subculture. It's one of those things you should either do full-on (buy land, start a hardcore doom-community) or not at all. Buying bulk grains & trying to grow a few vegetables on your tiny suburban lot is just going to depress you (and likely provide little to no benefit in either collapse or BAU).

Remember, PenultimateManStandard? I met him in San Diego at a Starbucks. He told me he'd bought $10,000 in bulk food & was convinced the hard crash would come in 2009 or 2010 (this was 2008 I think). He waxed poetic about bandits smelling his pot of rich cooking outside his apartment turned bunker & crashing it (I suggested quinoa which can be sprouted & eaten raw). He was silly, if he was serious about the survivalist thing he should've moved to &/or founded some sort of doomtopia, instead he's eating some nasty freeze-dried crap (or more likely not eating it) and wondering... well, who knows, maybe someone should PM him.

Surviving peak oil is a lame hobby, especially if you live in the suburbs. If I could talk to my 2007 self I'd say "either go all out or don't fucking worry about it". I'd say the same to everyone here. Some people here seem to go all out, most are just Internet addicts worried about the future. The ones doing the most don't seem to reassure people "you can be just like me, just perm out your space", they acknowledge that it's a alot of work & expense. If you don't have the wherewithall or money or social support/willpower/whatever to do all that you may as well keep your job in the city (rural areas will be much more screwed by peak-oil as they are much more dependent on cheap transportation).

[mos6507]

I really think all this hinges on whether you believe BAU is resilient or a house of cards. If there is "a lot of fat to cut" then we just kind of lean back and wait for "the market" to apply enough pressure for people to come around to where most of us are now as far as reducing energy use, renewables, lifestyle adaptation, etc... Greer sometimes strikes that tone. But, if you think BAU is a house of cards and that the frog must boil in the pot, then the time between now and when we boil is basically do or die. That's what fuels most of the anxiety and frustration of doomers. The climate piece in particular is clearly a frog in the pot phenomenon, and the Hirsch report says the same about peak oil.

So to wait casually for the threshold of pain to bring in changes, and to expect those changes to be enough to keep things on a relatively even keel during the downslope is not that realistic.

It's true that BAU has been more resilient than doomers thought it was (think Rockman heading to the bunker) but "Past Performance is No Guarantee of Future Results", as they say.

Not that I think a life well lived is best spent cowering in a bunker waiting for the zombies to come. But I think we should at least hold an honest assessment of the future. If we're not in the most survivable place, it should not be seen as a shame to fellow doomers as it so often is. There's a lot of judgmentalism and status-symbolism with doomers. Where we are in life should just reflect where we want to be after weighing all the odds, since not all of us find meaning and happiness in life through obsessing over survivalist game-theory. (I do think there is a moral undercurrent as far as environmental footprints go, but you'll never see eye to eye with everybody on that one.)

I am also kind of at the burnout phase of doomerism, but it doesn't mean I'm not a doomer or I think Wile E Coyote isn't in the process of freefall. To me it's more a general acceptance that the degree of individual control we have to engineer our survival is limited, and what leeway we do have may just result in exchanging happiness for perceived security.

It's a fine line to walk between acceptance and denial.

[mos6507]

BTW, this is the sort of thing that makes me inclined to be anti-technology, at least the the worshiping at the altar of technology that many people do. The fact that Kurzweil can still get himself mainstream articles written about his cult with no mention of global warming, peak oil, or any other limit to growth in 2011, while billions are already living in 3rd world squalor, left out of the techno-explosion, is offensive to me.


Zardoz

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'w')e're just too broke to afford to retool the planet for renewables.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')
Nukes aren't really that expensive.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'B')TW, this is the sort of thing that makes me inclined to be anti-technology, at least the the worshiping at the altar of technology that many people do. The fact that Kurzweil can still get himself mainstream articles written about his cult with no mention of global warming, peak oil, or any other limit to growth in 2011, while billions are already living in 3rd world squalor, left out of the techno-explosion, is offensive to me.


Zardoz

[Cid_Yama]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')img]http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/zardoz/zardoz01.jpg[/img]
Zardoz