[Laughs_Last]

Yes. He uses a broad definition of the word "design". The word has more than one meaning and he uses all of them, sometimes in the same sentence as both nouns and verb. To him, design includes all things built, devised, or invented by Man, as well as the act of doing so, and relates to all possible things related to those acts and deeds. In this sense, it should be spelled with a capital D. He uses it in place of all other verbs of creation or intention, this is a confusing act. I think architects do it intentionally to flatter and obfuscate their own efforts.

I think he is arguing that Design is the cause and solution to all terrestrial problems. On one of his slides he insists that there are no "limits to growth", without actually using that that term. His utopia requires that each generation of humans be more intelligent than the previous generation. I'd like to see him argue that with Archimedes. What he probably really means is that incremental increases in technology combined with ethical choices will save us before the die-off. (I hope so, but I strenuously doubt it.) He doesn't say "die-off", he leaves the curve un-labeled.

Other notes:
He also assumes that his audience is familiar with Wes Jackson. I agree that he has some good points, but some of his other points are laughable due to certain ironies, for example his analogy "Efficiency is bad if you're a Nazi".

[Kylon]

I don't believe we will be saved by a technocratic future.

Not because it can't be done, or really that it's even hard to do.

Simply because the system is controlled by the common man, the mobsters on top, and they don't want change.

The change necessary would be genetic engineering, to enhance the intelligence of mankind, combined with a worldwide recognition of patent rights, that way inventors who invent industrial technologies would get what's rightfully theirs.

If you have a market that's ten times as large, the profit incentive is ten times greater, the amount of technology produced will have a much greater chance of being developed.

Once developed the entire world benefits tremendously.

But the world I don't know/think will accept patent rights, especially not the third world nations, because they can get away without respecting them, and they won't care nearly as much about the whole of humanity when their own people can barely feed themselves.

[PeakingAroundtheCorner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')il's pretty close to an ideal energy form. It's very energy dense, it's easily transportable, and at least the stuff we've been burning for the last century, is very easy to get at and refine. Saudi and Iraqi light has an energy ratio of about 30:1, and costs about $6 or $7 a barrel to pump out of the ground. Cheap. Very cheap.

But the good stuff is coming to an end, and depending on how you want to calculate the numbers there are about 3.5 to 4 billion people who never got a Western standard of living, or even close to it.

And there are, currently, no good substitutes for cheap oil. There is nothing that has as good an energy ratio; there is nothing that is as cheap to pump out of the ground. Technology will let us use a lot less to get things done, but even if we could reduce consumption per capita by half it still wouldn't make there be enough cheap oil to even cover people who are already fully in the oil economy.

Continued here...

[Tanada]

The problem with this article IMO, is it uses the rosy numbers of 30:1 for Saudi light crude at $7.00/bbl while ignoring the fact that this oil makes up a very small percentage of the total supply. The ill informed read that and think all oil should be sold for $7.01/bbl without any concept of just how expensive it is to actually produce an average barrle, nor how expensive the most expensive oil currently in production is.

[roccman]

Two parallel stories...

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/3550



$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t is safe to say that, in the 1950s, Marion King Hubbert and Jay Wright Forrester didn't know of each other's existence. Yet, working independently, they were setting the basis for a new science. They were not the first to study the limits of the world's resources. But they were the first to do that using mathematical models that could be extrapolated into the future.

[bratticus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]ABC Williams says we have been lying to ourselves about the economy

... skip ...

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams made his humble appearance yesterday at Convention where he was greeted with standing, but polite applause from the House of Bishops. He sat at the back of the room next to the Bishop of Tanzania. Later, at a lecture where he basically bashed capitalism to an overflow audience, the archbishop said we've been lying to ourselves, and described the threefold crisis of truthfulness that he believes lies at the heart of current financial worries. "There has been a "drastic erosion" in the ordinary values of truthfulness and relationship building, said Williams."Our word," he said, "has not been our bond." Secondly, we've lied to ourselves about our place in creation, pretending that our limited world will support limitless growth and that profit is risk free." Thirdly, the Archbishop stated that our nature as essentially communal beings hasn't been truthfully engaged economically and that we've ignored the social impact of profit making. With this critique in mind, our task isn't simply to restore finances to "normal" but to rebuild and reform a system that has proven itself dysfunctional."

... snip ...

[kiwichick]

WOW!

it's very very late but.......

[Ferretlover]

There goes *his* chance of Popeship!
Wonder if the catholic church will bring back the Inquistition? "Are you a Doomer?? Then, it's the rack for you!"

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ferretlover', 'T')here goes *his* chance of Popeship!

[hardtootell-2]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ferretlover', 'T')here goes *his* chance of Popeship!

[bodigami]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ferretlover', 'T')here goes *his* chance of Popeship!
Wonder if the catholic church will bring back the Inquistition? "Are you a Doomer?? Then, it's the rack for you!"

[MonteQuest]

In 1972, I read a study published by the Club of Rome, entitled, The Limits to Growth. Based on a technique known as systems dynamics, developed by Professor Jay Forrester at MIT, a large-scale computer model was constructed to simulate likely future outcomes of the world economy and to simulate the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies.

Here’s a synopsis:
“Three main conclusions were reached by this study. The first suggests that within a time span of less than 100 years with no major change in the physical, economic, or social relationships that have traditionally governed world development, society will run out of the nonrenewable resources on which the industrial base depends. When the resources have been depleted, a precipitous collapse of the economic system will result, manifested in massive unemployment, decreased food production, and a decline in population as the death rate soars. There is no smooth transition, no gradual slowing down of activity; rather, the economic system consumes successively larger amounts of the depletable resources until they are gone. The characteristic behavior of the system is overshoot and collapse.

The second conclusion of the study is that piecemeal approaches to solving the individual problems will not be successful. To demonstrate this point, the authors arbitrarily double their estimates of the resource base and allow the model to trace out an alternative vision based on this new higher level of resources. In this alternative vision the collapse still occurs, but this time it is caused by excessive pollution generated by the increased pace of industrialization permitted by the greater availability of resources. The authors then suggest that if the depletable resource and pollution problems were somehow jointly solved, population would grow unabated and the availability of food would become the binding constraint. In this model the removal of one limit merely causes the system to bump subsequently into another one, usually with more dire consequences.

As its third and final conclusion, the study suggests that overshoot and collapse can be avoided only by an immediate limit on population and pollution, as well as a cessation of economic growth. The portrait painted shows only two possible outcomes: the termination of growth by self-restraint and conscious policy—an approach that avoids the collapse—or the termination of growth by a collision with the natural limits, resulting in societal collapse. Thus, according to this study, one way or the other, growth will cease. The only issue is whether the conditions under which it will cease will be congenial or hostile."

Richard Heinberg, author of the Party’s Over, recently wrote: “The worldwide financial crisis, and the decline in available energy, mean that we may also have seen the final year of aggregate world economic growth…If so, there will be an ocean of consequences. For those in the tiny universe of environmental NGOs, one of the consequences is this: The time for arguing against economic growth may be over. Yes, everyone who understands our human impact on the environment, and the disastrous implications of our economic growth imperative, knows that it is absolutely essential that the world find an alternative to growth; that instead, the human economy must contract to a point that it no longer threatens the viability of ecosystems. This is the essence of sustainability.”

So, if you are counting on the stock market or real estate values to recover, you may wish to reconsider your short-term, short-sighted, selfish wishes. We must learn how to effectively deal with our immediate problems in a way that is consistent with long-term sustainability, not with an endless growth paradigm that has no future. But, herein lies our collective dilemma: As the number of the people living on this planet increases with every passing second, there must be growth to support these new comers with new job opportunities, more food, more clothing, more housing, etc…or we must come to accept, and learn to cope and adapt to the fact, that our share of the pie is going to grow ever smaller for the foreseeable future. For we are going to have to learn to share.

Even the most optimistic among us must conclude that we are not well positioned to anticipate nor prepared to meet tomorrow’s energy needs. In the 1970s, energy plans were drafted and adopted, calling for exactly the changes that would have made matters today much less dire: conservation standards, public transit projects, zoning changes to reduce the need for cars, the limiting of population growth, etc. Nobody has even looked at these plans since Ronald Reagan announced there were no limits and that it was “Morning in America.”

In the 38 years since The Limits to Growth was published, none of the major needed changes in our physical, economic, or social relationships have occurred. Our window of opportunity to voluntarily choose to powerdown and limit the population may well be past.

Remember, Mother Nature bats last.

[Jotapay]

Club of Rome is generally considered tin foil, unless you actually read the document and see that it really exists. It explains a lot of the UN policies since then. It's quite illuminating to connect the dots.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jotapay', 'C')lub of Rome is generally considered tin foil, unless you actually read the document and see that it really exists. It explains a lot of the UN policies since then. It's quite illuminating to connect the dots.

[Jotapay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jotapay', 'C')lub of Rome is generally considered tin foil, unless you actually read the document and see that it really exists. It explains a lot of the UN policies since then. It's quite illuminating to connect the dots.

[Newfie]

Read the 30 year update last year. I thought it was pretty good, conservative even. Overly optimistic in that it did not address the possibility of a sudden collapse due to some unforeseen circumstances. It just sort of runs out scenarios if nothing drastic and sudden happens.

Can't understand why it is seen so negatively.

[MonteQuest]

Because I know it's coming....

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Matthew Simmons', 'O')ver the past few years, I have heard various energy economists lambast this "erroneous" work done. Often the book has been portrayed as the literal "poster child" of misinformed "Malthusian" type thinking that misled so many people into believing the world faced a short mania 30 years ago. Obviously, there were no "The Limits To Growth". The worry that shortages would rule the day as we neared the end of the 20th Century became a bad joke. Instead of shortages, the last two decades of the 20th Century were marked by glut. The world ended up enjoying significant declines in almost all commodity prices. Technology and efficiency won. The Club of Rome and its "nay-saying" disciples clearly lost!

After reading The Limits to Growth, I was amazed. Nowhere in the book was there any mention about running out of anything by 2000. Instead, the book's concern was entirely focused on what the world might look like 100 years later. There was not one sentence or even a single word written about an oil shortage, or limit to any specific resource, by the year 2000.

The members of the "Club or Rome" were also not a mysterious, sinister, anonymous group of doomsayers. Rather, they were a group of 30 thoughtful, public spirited-intellects from ten different countries. The group included scientists, economists, educators, and industrialists. They met at the instigation of Dr. Aurelia Peccei, an Italian industrialist affiliated with Fiat and Olivetti.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'S')o, if you are counting on the stock market or real estate values to recover, you may wish to reconsider your short-term, short-sighted, selfish wishes. We must learn how to effectively deal with our immediate problems in a way that is consistent with long-term sustainability, not with an endless growth paradigm that has no future. But, herein lies our collective dilemma: As the number of the people living on this planet increases with every passing second, there must be growth to support these new comers with new job opportunities, more food, more clothing, more housing, etc…or we must come to accept, and learn to cope and adapt to the fact, that our share of the pie is going to grow ever smaller for the foreseeable future. For we are going to have to learn to share.

[leaflight]

They study of rome, was rome fell before just by a tax bubble busting in times past way back when.

Today we have credit , bonds, and property taxes bubbles busting which = crash , burn and perish for such systems.

Peak and pop bubbles busted dried up like dust and rust, so such systems are experiencing now.

The growth of credit, bonds, and property taxes in most places was likend unto usury itself, that eventually undermines the objective in the first place prosperitiy true propels and is promising
it dosent crash burn and perish.

This can be learned from the cows and bees way of doing things milk and honey, a little little, line line, precept precept. Of course then again the cows and bees get along with eachother and have the same goals in heart one accord.

Today you have vanity people fighting for (control power) of systems based on credit, bonds and property taxes,
ooh what a accomplishment of vanity as the foundations themselves were based on vanity.

Contentment ,course ,Patience , (CcP) in one heart accord is not easy and hefty frail foundation of credit, bonds, and property taxes.

Nothing can ultimately be greater than its foundation/roots, as the sap goes up and down up and down, and what goes around comes around as the famous saying goes.

Also any empire or war that loses favor with the poor , loses more regardless of shore for sure. This can be seen time and again in Universal history knows and shows.

The fed has been feeding money sap into the system of banks, and some corporations but that sap hasnt even come close to reaching the whole tree, just a couple of branches of the system. And as the tree/system goes so will the branches of that system regardless of the iv of sap into some branches of banks and corporations.

Intresting irony, paradox, anomaly, twilight zone is thier is basically no limit to the growth of the poor.

As the famous saying goes the poor we shall have with us always.

Also some of the whatevers(powers) that be apparently had a meeting a couple of years ago , and decided to shut the industrial era age, down. Me personally I never liked the rat race mirage maze of the middle class lifestyle anyway as much as I never entered it.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', ' ') If your too much of a chicken to buy or sell a few shares, you can at least check the stock now and then, but it encompasses the Cornucopian/Doomer argument very nicely, don't you think?