by Ingenuity_Gap » Mon 28 Nov 2005, 00:44:05
You really got me, EnergySpin. I’m actually a pathetic crypto-luddite paranoid bigot, like every other peak-oiler on this forum. But you see, we are not very different. You say you are agnostic, but in fact you are no less religious then I am. The only difference is the name of our gods. Judging by the way you express yourself it’s safe to say that your god’s name starts with “Techno”.
You think we should continue our business as usual, improving our technology, fixing up some minors mistakes like MacMansions and antibiotic abuse, Wal Marts and globalization, and working hard will have a brighter future.
I think we’re on the wrong track and we need to fundamentally change our way of life until it’s too late. Sure, science and technology should go on finding solutions to our vastly increasing problems, but it’s not going to be enough. We need something else, more humility, more respect, more selflessness, a completely different way of viewing things.
You’re right, technology in itself is not good or bad, it’s the way we USE it. Well, until now, we chose wrong too many times because of our inherent human nature, because of our indifference, greed and selfness. And the more tools we have, the more mistakes we seem to make. We have to somehow change our society. And that’s not an easy task. It’s going to take a totally different approach.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
')Technology is NOT a person ... saying that technology will "fail us" is like saying the "Sun will fail us". We are (?not) going to fail ourselves especially since the technology to sustain civilization is here. I don't think the McMansion can be sustained .... maybe in 50-100 years, who knows but the original decision to build them was a dumb one
Don’t fool yourself. Technology IS a person. It’s the personal Jesus of our times. It’s everywhere: in our air, in our food, in our houses and in our cars. It’s almighty. We were raised to believe that it can fix everything. People really believe that. I hear this all the time when I try to discuss Peak Oil with others. You are joking, they say, certainly there is still a lot of the black gold in the ground. Or, they'll certainly come up with something else, like fusion.
Well, technology certainly can fix a lot of things, but it can create a lot of problems too. And still you say it’s all good (with a few minor glitches like nuclear bombs, killer germs and toxic gas I should add)
To come back to this thread’s main theme: this is our problem, our iceberg. It’s the way we USE our technology that makes the difference. In our rush to become masters of the universe we thought that oil and gas and coal are an inexhaustible resource, and we were wrong. For understandable reasons, we chose to rapidly exhaust our fossil fuel heritage and in the process destroy our environment, and we’ll soon face the consequences.
Now, we can go on and do what we know best: build countless windmills to capture the estimated 80 TW of wind energy, or thousands of nuclear plants to tap in the remaining uranium we have in our mines or even employ closed cycle nuclear fuels. What will that accomplish? We’ll probably melt the tip of the iceberg. In the short-term everybody will be happy, except probably the doomers, the stupid, pathetic peak-oil environmentalists, who will see their beloved predictions ridiculed again. And after years or decades of triumph we’ll find out that our windmills and nuclear plants multiplied our problems, like killing half of the world birds and generating so much radioactive waste that nobody will know what to do about it. Not counting the enormous resources needed to build those mills/plants in the first place (and the job places created that eventually will generate more abundance and more consumerism). I’m not saying we shouldn’t build them, we’ll probably have to try every conceivable method of getting energy if we want to survive at our present level of population and consumption.
But the iceberg will be growing instead of shrinking. This is exactly what happened during our entire history. We are more numerous, powerful and technologically advanced now than anytime in the past, and still we are the most vulnerable. What makes you think that our USE of technology will suddenly become only benign?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
')Misunderstanding ... I do not care about the Borgs. It is one thing to watch Star Trek and another one to think it is true.
You should care. Maybe we are still far from Star Trek fantasy, but we are slowly but surely going to that direction. To quote you:
')... the amount of knowledge generated by machines AND humans is amazing.
