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I just spent four hours driving around Houston in frozen molasses thick traffic and a personal belief was driven home once again.
This world is way too populated. We've got so many people we don't know what to do with them all. We can't employ them all. We can't feed them all. We can't house them all. We can't care for them all.
[We could but that's not an issue right now is it?]
The world keeps birthing babies thousands a minute.
I've been staying with a friend and his mother this summer, she's 68. We've had many discussions about her life, her history and the progression of America in 1940 to America NOW. It's very, very scary if you refocus your eyes to the entire population of people.
Geez---the traffic here is so bad and the way the system is set up, it's only going to get worse and worse and worse.
If you look at almost all problems that face our society today, you will notice that over population plays a major role.
What in the world are we going to do?
Or is it really the unspoken American way that even though we give speeches and slogans about the future generations, all we REALLY care about is our lives today.
Posts: 2752 | Registered: Feb 2001
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Being stuck in Houston traffic was one of the things that reminded me how many people there are in the world, too. I mean, I had known about the overpopulation, but sitting there during rush hour a few years ago was when I realized that there are just so many people I will never, ever meet, whose lives will not directly touch mine. It was quite an odd experience.
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The problem is resource allocation, lack of long term planning, and suburban sprawl -- not overpopulation.
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You know, it's not even really a problem here. You should see what it's like in India or China.
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I was in Houston for about a day and a half, way back in 1976, and the traffic was terrible then. I can only imagine what it must be like now. I remember, we were on a freeway, and they were working on one short stretch, but had all lanes but one closed for like five miles in each direction. Insane.
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I once read an article that said if the temperate, habitable portions of the world were divided up and 1/10th was used for agriculture, industry, services, utilities, etc., the rest would be more than enough for everyone to own something like 1.5 acres and have a house all to themselves. Overpopulation is not a problem, population density and the evils of politics controlling food and resource distribution are what makes us believe in the fallacy of overpopulation.
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quote:I once read an article that said if the temperate, habitable portions of the world were divided up and 1/10th was used for agriculture, industry, services, utilities, etc., the rest would be more than enough for everyone to own something like 1.5 acres and have a house all to themselves.
Yeah, but nobody wants to have their 1.5 acres wind up being in Canada... Posts: 1295 | Registered: Jan 2003
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The thing is, for high (read: first world) levels of survival you need more than 1/10th the total space.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Not if you used that 1/10th intelligently and in combination with good technology. 9/10 for living space was a generous portion. Heck, you could cut it in half by making two people live every 1.5 acres, which is still spacious compared to today's standards. Then you could double the portion used for services and food and industry.
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Duragon, you may be right. The trouble is, who's going to direct the resettlement of massive portions of the population?
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Probably won't happen, and mass starvation or pullution-related deaths will eventually occur. Something gruesome like that will probably act as the de-densifier.
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The world IS too crowded. Plus, what does not help is that America and many other Western countries take up more resources than 1 billion people in India do. And why do we have BILLIONAIRES? I don't understand how you cna have these people who have that much money while in another part of the world in order to make this money they will often use workers for 10 cents an hour who live in slums... But what can be done about that besides a massive boycott? Not to mention that they send these jobs from the US to these other countries.. I don't understand. Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I don't the world is overcrowded, I think the population just needs to spread out. When I think of the vast midwest and much of Canada and southern Alaska being uninhabited, it makes me believe its NOT overcrowded.
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The way to limit population growth is to educate mothers, and empower them to control their own reproduction. Mothers with access to good birth control, and with the knowledge and power to use it, tend to have far fewer children, and those they do have get much more allocated to them in the way of parental resources. They are better fed, housed, and educated, and they get better medical care, they have higher birth weights because the mothers know about good prenatal care. Dollar for dollar this is the very best use of development funds for the world. There is not even any need for draconian fertility restrictions as China has had to implement. Education, access, and power for women to control their own reproduction are all that is needed. This is how it will happen that the human species survives the next few decades to centuries, if indeed we do survive them.
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Because overpopulation is way more than a traffic problem, of course. It's a matter of causing such a huge impact to the ecosystem that the planet will change to the extent that it will no longer sustain our species.
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Actually, when you look down on the world from far above you quickly realize that world is not, in fact, crowded. Rather, it's empty. It's just that so many people are leaving rural areas and moving into cities that people think the world is over crowded.
Resource mismanagement aside, there's plenty of unused space out there.
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Synesthesia, the reason so many people in India can use so few resources is that they live in miserable poverty. The only way any one person can have a standard of living sufficient to enjoy is for thousands of other people to be held down, if only slightly. That sounds harsh, but if all the wealth were spread out evenly it would simply result in everyone being miserably poor. There isn't enough to go around.
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I leanred once that starvation happens not because there's not enough food, but because of how the food gets distributed. Farmers will often dispose of tons of crops. It's insane.
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quote: Synesthesia, the reason so many people in India can use so few resources is that they live in miserable poverty. The only way any one person can have a standard of living sufficient to enjoy is for thousands of other people to be held down, if only slightly. That sounds harsh, but if all the wealth were spread out evenly it would simply result in everyone being miserably poor. There isn't enough to go around.
Macc. Are you really trying to say that there aren't enough basic resources all around Earth to take care of everyone? Are you really shifting the blame from the human watchmen to GOD?
That's freaking nutty. But hey, this is America where on one corner, you've got a Jesus who loves guns, on another corner you've got a Jesus who loves love and on another corner is a Jesus who hates Jesus.
Jesus Christ. It's all so confusing.
Overpopulation is a scary beast and it COULD be managed, there is enough water, there can be enough food, there is certainly enough land, but unfortunetly right now there is not enough will, not enough drive, not enough imagination in the mathematics of the human mind to find and work towards solutions.
We're too misled by politicians who spew lies like an exploding ocean, we're to numbed by weak religious leaders selling us an empty cup as a rocket ride to a brave new world, and most of all we are betrayed by ourselves.
Money drives the human car, so who cares where it goes as long as it's bills are paid on time.
...but for now let us think of how many times we've drank some wonderful and refreshing piss. There's no way that one Rocky Mountain beer commercial is flowing crystal clear water everyday for everybody. If my math is correct we're all drinking old piss from older water that is now "new and improved" water. No?
Where does all that crap go? I'm talking about the kind that squeezes out of your rectum into the toilet. Almost everyone dumps about once a day. 6 billion people X 365 days. Where does all that crap go?
That stuff really doesn't bother me, because God made us and he laid down the rules by which we crap, so we crap out stuff that fits into the eco system cycle pretty darn perfect, what concerns me is the manmade shit.
Today, when I took the trash and the recycleables out to the curb, I look at all the neighbors bins, filled with plastics.
Most of it made to be consumed and then thrown into a "To figure out what to do with later" bin.
quote: I once read an article that said if the temperate, habitable portions of the world were divided up and 1/10th was used for agriculture, industry, services, utilities, etc., the rest would be more than enough for everyone to own something like 1.5 acres and have a house all to themselves. Overpopulation is not a problem, population density and the evils of politics controlling food and resource distribution are what makes us believe in the fallacy of overpopulation.
Duragon -
It's all in the definition. When I say over population, I don't mean more than God and the Planet can handle, I mean more than modern man (and woman) can manage.
It's like if a husband and wife have 100 kids. They can't possibly give the 100 kids the love and attention they need to be healthy, mature kids and continue a healthy family cycle.
The world is now faced with more people than it knows how to handle or manage and the population is outgrowing the world wisdom and enlightenment.
quote:The way to limit population growth is to educate mothers, and empower them to control their own reproduction. Mothers with access to good birth control, and with the knowledge and power to use it, tend to have far fewer children, and those they do have get much more allocated to them in the way of parental resources. They are better fed, housed, and educated, and they get better medical care, they have higher birth weights because the mothers know about good prenatal care. Dollar for dollar this is the very best use of development funds for the world. There is not even any need for draconian fertility restrictions as China has had to implement. Education, access, and power for women to control their own reproduction are all that is needed. This is how it will happen that the human species survives the next few decades to centuries, if indeed we do survive them.
Yes. But now you're fighting religion, and some people would then accuse you of fighting GOD himself. Some religions want mothers and fathers to have as many babies possible as long as they stay within the religion.
Many of these religots are nudged into having as many children as possible and keeping them within the church. The Church sees this as an excellent way for growth.
quote:Actually, when you look down on the world from far above you quickly realize that world is not, in fact, crowded. Rather, it's empty. It's just that so many people are leaving rural areas and moving into cities that people think the world is over crowded.
Yes. ..but people NEED money to live. This is a modern absolute. It's a mathematical fact that there are more jobs in the cities and more densly populated areas.
Which is another problem of overpopulation, how do you create and maintain jobs for 4 Billion people?
If you're going to DEMAND that they pay society $1000 dollars a month to live, you've got to allow them to make $1000 a month.
With overpopulation and technology (machine robots) corporations are needing humans less and less.
quote: The problem is resource allocation, lack of long term planning, and suburban sprawl -- not overpopulation.
Semantics. It's like saying "The problem isn't that I have 100 children, the problem is that I can't house them all and feed them all and love them all."
Hmmm...6 billion humans present many problems.
Posts: 2752 | Registered: Feb 2001
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The world's biggest problem is the automobile.
Currently 20% of the population consumes 70% of the world's resources.
If we were to decrease the world population to 40% of its current level, but all those peope consumed at the level currently typical in the US, the demand on world resources would double.
The problem is not too many people, it is too much gluttony. The solution isn't to reduce the population, it is to start cutting back -- and cars should be at the top of the list of things to cut.
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Easy for a rabbit to say. You're small, fast and efficient. You're the Honda of animals, and I'm an SUV.
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Ah The Rabbit hits another nail on the head...
Not only is the automobile harmful in a hundred ways, the WAY cars are being produced and then thrown aside is a problem.
The corporate market needs people to use a car for 3 years or less and then buy another brand spanking new one (or 1 1/2 years old for extremely fiscaly responsible people).
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...I believe that anyone who owns a Hummer has a small penis, a bad personality, and no sense of humor.
(((Did you know that the Enron Astro's (the Houston Professional Baseball team) did away with 7th inning DOT races and now has Hummer races? Did you know that Shell gas is now doing a "Drive like a Billionare" contest where they give one "winner" a Hummer and free year of gas? I hate the Hummer)))
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I want to hit on the population stabilization/depopulation idea here in this thread--I had been talking about it in the Gay bishops thread.
I just want to again point out the irony of our current birth statistics. We are around 1.6 children per woman in "developed countries". This looks good on some levels, and it will supposedly be ideal if we can hit and maintain 2.1 children per woman.
But the funny thing is that some subcultures tend toward higher birthrates. This is compensated for by others having even fewer children. Therefore, a birthrate of 1.6 is not actually a sign to me of stabilization, but of an impending population shift toward those groups who are least willing to lower their birthrates. See, that's ironic.
How does society deal with this challenge?
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Don't get me started on the Hummer. There is a vehicle that should absolutely be banned from the public road ways
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But popatr, on a global scale, those who have higher birthrates also tend to consume far less percapita. So perhaps the shift is toward people with far more reasonable economic expectations.
For people in western countries to talk about overpopulation without also talking about excessive consumption is shear hypocracy.
The Insatiable desire for material goods is unsustainable at any population level and unless we address the western attitude toward consumption and begin reforming our economies, we will destroy the world whether or not we are able to limit population growth.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Rabbit, do you have a car? Could you get to work without one and still have the energy to do your job? Perhaps it's different if you live in a city where you can take the bus anywhere you like, but that's not true out here in the small towns or the country.
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I currently live 7.5 miles from where I work and I bicycle to work year round. I have done so in 4 different US cities for nearly 20 years. I am not some sort of super athlete. In fact until 6 years ago I was always severly anemic.
But all of that is really beside the point. Americans need their cars because America has chosen to design cities so that there are few if any practical alternatives. It doesn't have to be this way. I spent most this summer working in Muenster Germany which has fantastic bicycling infrastructure including a two level bicycle garage by the train station that can park 10,000 bicycles. You can get to and from any point in the Muenster region by bicycle, bus or train with relative ease and speed. It isn't an accident that you can live easily in Muenster without a car -- it was a choice. The people who live there choose to make it that way.
You may not be able to give up your car today, but you can support the funding mass transit. You can support zoning laws and city planning that put grocery stores and businesses within easy walking and cycling distance of residential areas. You can support the building of bicycling paths. You can choose to live close to your place of employment. You can be cautious and courteous to those of us who choose not to drive cars everywhere we go. You can choose to drive a small fuel efficient vehicle instead of a hummer.
Americans don't have to keep being the biggest gluttons in the world. It's a choice.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
I have an admission to make, I own and drive an SUV. This is my second one, too. I've got a Montero Limited Edition and previously had a Ford Bronco.
But, you know, I could always and still can, validate my reason for having one.
Before moving to Greensboro, NC, I lived in a rural mountainous area. My job over the prior decade had been as a newspaper editor/reporter/photographer and in the winter times I also did radio ski reports. Both jobs required quite a bit of severe winter weather driving (if a blizzard hits, the paper better have a story and photos and you've GOT to do ski reports). Also, at least three or four times a month a story would come in that would require quite a bit of offroad driving (forest fire, hunting accident, wildlands preservation, etc...). Over those years, having a four-wheel drive vehicle with adequate clearance (Subarus just won't cut it) was a necessity.
So now, here I am in a different situation that doesn't require me to have such a vehicle. Snow here isn't a worry, although there are ice storms (and never, never drive a 4WD vehicle on ice with the 4WD engaged). I don't report forest fires or have to drag out to the back of beyond to see how deep the snow is or to take a picture of a new beaver dam. I still have and drive an SUV, though.
Why? Because I like having it. I feel safe in it and have confidence in its abilities to protect my wife and someday children should there ever be an accident. Rollover worries? None, I've learned how to drive these in the best and worst situations. I also like that when something large needs to be carried home or I help someone move, I just load the vehicle up.
Gas mileage is something I do feel a bit guilty about, but for around-town trips and commutes, my wife and I use a Camry. Long trips, however, bring the Montero into play. Gas mileage improves tremendously; the crash-worthiness is much better on highways crowded with semis, work trucks and other SUVs; and the comfort level is so much higher than in a small car. A six hour trip is nothing.
Sure it uses up more gas, but this two-year old vehicle's emissions are immensely lower than some of the 10-, 15-, 20-year old cars on the road. And don't get me started on cars with diesel engines. And yes, every two weeks I have to fill up the 20-gallon gas tank, and I do pay something of a price at the pump. But I'm not using as much gas as the folks who commute 50 miles each way, every day to work.
I'm not compensating for anything, either. I like the styling of my vehicle, the safety of it and when my wife and I move back to the mountains, I will greatly appreciate the off-road capabilities that are based on a five-time Paris to Dakkar Rally system.
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Sorry, just to add, I hate the new Hummer 2. How could they turn such a rugged, robust and capable vehicle (although too unwieldy IMO) into that sissified thing?
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Thomas Malthus pretty much laid it out: as long as there is food enough to support an expanding population the population will expand. Currently, even with the waste, there is more than enough food to support an expanding population. The starvation that occurs is generally due to war and corrupt government.
In nature populations are controlled by predators. The top of the foodchain predators, parasites, disease and the food supply. Humans have no problems with predators, not much with disease, no real problems with parasites, so it is strictly by food supply (and to a lesser extent culture)that population is controlled.
It seems mighty likely that we will continue to expand until technology and the ecology can support no further growth.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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I once read that, of everyone who has ever lived on the earth, one-half of them are alive now. I don't know how you could check that, but if it's true, it's scary to think that in just seventy years (give or take) we've managed to make as many as those who have ever lived before that, combined.
Posts: 113 | Registered: Aug 2003
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I'm really not sure if we're even close to reaching that bio-overrun benchmark. Our overcrowding seems to be isolated in certain areas, while there are still vast tracts of land that are relatively untouched. Along with vast tracts of untouched land to live upon, there are vastly superior methods of raising food on that land (and in the sea).
Looking globally, India and China alone acount for over 2 billion souls with mouths to feed and shelter to build. That's roughly one third of the world's population on much, much less of one third of the world's arrable surface. But just how crowded are these places:
India: 330.7 people per sq. km. China: 135.7 people per sq. km.
For contrast: The US: 29.5 people per sq. km Canada: 3.3 people per sq. km
But when you look at population density, one has to pay particular attention to how dense the people are packed and what their access to food is as well as the threat of disease pandemics. To say that the US and Canada are much better off just because they aren't as crowded doesn't really make sense.
Some of the most densely populated places in the world have almost 0% worry about starvation and have not worried about pandemics in any modern sense of the world. Taking out the tiniest of countries (which throw the figures out -- Macau, Hong Kong, Monaco) let's look at some of these places.
Belgium's population density is 336.6 people per sq.km., the Netherlands is 464.2, but neither suffers from starvation and disease. In Asia, Japan pushes 336, South Korea 472 with few worries.
North Korea at 184.2 is always on the verge of famine and worries about health care are always present. On the top end of the scale, Bangladesh's 952.9 people per sq. km. is literally a place bursting at the seams. While food is not at a luxurious level, it and the health care are constantly in a teetering balancing act. Infrastructure (what there is of it) is terribly strained and every major typhoon hitting the nation results in hundreds to thousands of deaths immediately and thousands more from the diseases that follow along behind.
The continent of Africa, on the other hand, is relatively uncrowded but it's always on the verge of one famine or another, epidemics are fairly common place (many times with age old diseases that are rare in developed nations) and warfare is commonplace.
Here, more than anywhere else, shows that population density is not the worry, but that good development and responsible governments make more difference than anything else.
Sub-saharan Africa holds very few success stories. Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa are probably among the most stable in many ways, but none are top-notch on the world stage. Poverty is rampant, and HIV has been tragically common, but outright starvation is not a day to day occurance. Each has had relatively stable governments (for the region that is) and generally makes some effort at providing goods, services and stability. A person can point at places such as Ethiopia (52.1 ppl/sq km), Liberia (28.8), Rwanda (318.9) and other hot spots to see that the quality of life doesn't necessarily depend as much on density as it does on a host of other factors.
Over population isn't the problem and it doesn't truly exist on the global scale. A stable government, innovative and responsible agricultural practices, economic diversity and growth, and health care/sanitation are much bigger problems. It's not the number of people, but how responsibly people in an area can work together.
In American and Canadian cities (as in many other countries), food supply and sanitation are taken care of. The services didn't appear over night and hard work went into creating the fields and practices that put food on everyone's tables.
I personally believe the UN would be better served in its efforts to make this a better world for all by pressuring the governments of the poorest-performing nations to truly overhaul their infrastructures and economies. Funding and on-the-ground work could go a long way to helping. Perhaps the UN should develop its own version of the US's Peace Corps.
Edit: To add a LINK to where the statistics were found.
posted
The amount of land per individual is really an irrelevant number because land is unlikely to be the limiting factor for population.
Right now, it appears that the first thing to run short will be fresh water. Clean drinking water is only the tip of the iceberg. Fresh water is essential for agriculture and industry. Fresh water for irrigation and other agricultural uses is the largest and most critical issue. Only 0.003% of the water on the planet is accessble fresh water. It is located primarily in rivers, streams, shallow aquifers and lakes. Currently, water is being withdrawn for aquifers and reservoirs faster than it is being replenished by rain. In other words, current global use of fresh water is not sustainable in the long term. Which means that current agricultural practices are not sustainable.
Of course, their are large reservoirs of fresh water that are currently inaccessable either becauuse they are locked in deep aquifers of in polar and glacial ice. Add to that the possibility of desalinating sea water and their is the potential to create much larger supplies of fresh water. The problem is that getting that water will require large expenditures of energy, and our cheap energy reserves are also limited.
At somepoint in the next 20 to 50 years, fossil fuel production will begin to decline as we exaughst the reserves. Although there is disagreement about exactly when this will happen, everyone agrees that it will happen. When production of fossil fuels begins to decline, we can expect the price of energy to skyrocket. This is critical because one of the primary uses of petroleum and natural gas is the production of ammonium fertilizers and pesticides. Right now US and Canadian farms are able to produce 130 bushels of corn per acre. Without ammonium fertilizers derived from fossil fuels, this level would drop to between 16 and 30 bushels per acre, which will in turn lead to a devastating global food shortage.
We are on a collision course with global disaster. We must start addressing overconsumption (i.e. the unwise and gluttonous use of limited resources) along with overpopulation there.
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Actually Rabbit, I disagree that the depletion of fossil fuels is necessarily a bad thing. These reserves will run out, that is a guarantee, but work has been underway for quite some time to provide viable alternatives.
Nuclear power can be a safe alternative for electricity generation. Solar power sadly isn't efficient enough, yet (but getting a bit better every year). Responsible hydro-electric is a good idea, but sadly it has terrible effects on the environment when tackled with the idea of damming rivers. Wind power (my favorite) is notable, but to produce the electricity needed it has heavy start-up costs when talking about providing for modern metropolises.
Now about fresh water -- it isn't a question of access to fresh water ( .0003% of a the water in a world that is 2/3 covered by water is a HUGE amount). It is a question of developing infrastructure to carry that water for civil and agricultural uses. CLEAN water is a much bigger problem, in my opinion.
Nations need to be helped to create better water and sewage treatment systems, as well as to promote protective systems for their natural waterways and reservoirs. Deep-well drilling techniques have made even the deepest pockets of water accessible to humans and their crops.
What has to be addressed immediately is how to best provide for the basic necessities of life (food, water and shelter) to people around the world. I think I know how it can be done (to some degree) with the US help, but I've still got to get the idea completely put down on paper...
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I don't particularly expect nuclear, solar, or wind power to become a viable large-scale energy source in time. I suspect that civilization as we know it will collapse within my lifetime regardless of anything we do. If we are lucky we will avoid blowing ourselves up, but I doubt we will ever get past Renaissance levels again. So we may as well enjoy ourselves while we can--we're doomed regardless.
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Funny because Nuclear and Wind Power are viable large scale energy sources right now. Germany is currently producing ~10% of their electricity from wind and France produces over half of their electricity from nuclear. Wind energy is a cheap as coal. Even solar has been used on large scale and is viable today. The barriers to using renewable energy sources today are not primarily technological, they are economic. Even though new wind power facilities are as cheap as new coal power plants, they will never be as cheap as continueing to use old power plants.
The big barriers are that people aren't willing to invest in the future. People like Macc are willing to destroy the entire planet so that they can live it up now.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Now about fresh water -- it isn't a question of access to fresh water ( .0003% of a the water in a world that is 2/3 covered by water is a HUGE amount). It is a question of developing infrastructure to carry that water for civil and agricultural uses.
On what data do you base this opinion. 75% of our fresh water is being used for agriculture and 20% for industry. The UN reports that I've read indicate that in major portions of the world, fresh water is being pumped from aquifers significantly faster than it is being replenished. Many rivers are already pumped dry before they reach the ocean. Others are so polluted that they can no longer be used for agricultural purposes (and certainly not drinking water). The statis quo is quite obviously not sustainable. People aren't dying because of it yet, but a simple analysis will tell you that once the aquifers are drawn down below a certain level, there will be insufficient water to maintain current agricultural production.
Where is all this fresh water that can easily be diverted into aquaducts and pipes and transported to where it is needed?
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Rabbit> Please don't get the idea that I am a party animal out to blow the world's resources on a last bash. If I really thought we could transfer to a sustainable energy economy without reducing our requirements to levels that medieval Europe would've mourned over, I'd support it.
Wind power takes huge tracts of land that we need for agriculture. Nuclear power produces large amounts of long-lasting waste (and is also based on a nonrenewable resource, though we have enough of that to last a while longer).
Can we survive longer on wind and uranium? Sure, we can _survive_....but it'll be like keeping an elderly guy on a respirator and IV till we can't get his heart jump-started again instead of letting him go home and live a last few happy days with his family.
Posts: 1041 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Uhm, Maccabeus, so you'd prefer the collaps of civilisation and the possible extinction of humanity before you support making reductions in your life style?
I'm with you on the nuclear power, though. Until we solve the problem on how to handle the waste in another way than burying it for 100 000 years and hoping for the best, I prefer other solutions. Besides, uranium is a finite resource, too.
But your notion that wind power would use up land necessary for agriculture is just silly. Firstly, there is plenty of land unsuitable for agriculture that could be used. Secondly, the most efficient wind power plants will be those placed far out to in the sea anyway and thirdly, even if some wind power is placed upon arable land, a tower really does not take up that much space and there would be nothing to prevent us from growing crops around and beneath it.
The biggest obstacles we have had here in Sweden when working on increasing our wind power production are two: 1) even with government subsidies wind power is only marginally economically viable (something that will probably change once the technology becomes more efficient and prices on oil energy rise) and 2) public complaint that proposed wind power plants would be aesthetically displeasing (something which is being addressed by placing the bigger plants so far out in the sea as to be invisible from land).
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Tristan> Not _any and all_ reductions to my life style. But I expect the required reductions will be extremely radical if they are to work, which is the point I was trying to make with the comparisons--they would for all practical purposes be a collapse of civilization themselves.
You've got me on wind power, I suppose. I'm not sure how it can be made more efficient, but I don't know many technical details on it. I was referring to some texts I had read stating that wind power was impractical for generating large scale power because it took up too much land and damaged local ecologies; I don't remember how old they are so perhaps their estimates are wrong. There may even be some SimCity experience thrown in unconsciously; wind power plants sure aren't cost-effective in the game! (Yes, I know--consciously--that it's a game.)
Anyway, maybe if we're lucky wind power will do the job. Maybe. I wouldn't count on it myself.
Addited: Maybe it's worth mentioning that my lifestyle is kind of anomalous. Since having to quit college for a time, I have been struggling to pay the bills with menial jobs. I am a lousy cook who survives mostly on cheap microwavables and fast food. I do not care about aesthetics, so my apartment is bare and messy. But I have certain physical problems that make many kinds of active, low-tech recreation unpleasant for me. (I like to read and write and sometimes take long walks; that's about it.) Instead I engage in pursuits like watching TV, playing computer games, and chatting online, which require relatively high technologies and a lot of electricity. Also, because public transportation is hard to come by and my jobs are strenuous, at least for me, I really need a car to get around; I can walk across town and I can work all night, but I can't do both. I was never able to learn to bike, being rather uncoordinated; the memories of my attempts are quite painful.
In short, almost the only enjoyment I really get would be eliminated by significant reductions in electrical consumption and I would probably be out of work _again_ without a personal car. It'd be better for me personally to get killed in the collapse, so my viewpoint may well be skewed.
My mother wishes she lived in the American colonial or frontier era. Even if my life hadn't required modern surgery, I find her preferences incomprehensible. I would be nothing and nobody; it would hardly be life at all. When I hear "reductions in lifestyle", that kind of roughing it is what I think of.
Maybe I should've written this as a separate post...it's pretty long.
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Well, personally I'd put up with almost ANY reduction in life style including living in a wee hut in the forest growing my own potatoes if the alternative was humanity being wiped out as a species. But I suspect that won't be necessary.
The alternative methods of producing energy are already here, the problem being only that it is still cheaper relying on fossil fuel and that we need some initially expensive reconstruction of our energy infra structure. Most importantly, we need something to replace the oil as an energy carrier for e.g. our transport systems, and I have high hopes that hydrogen will eventually fill that function. Once that is accomplished, hydrogen could be produced and exported from those places where the alternative production means are most efficient, i.e. geothermal from Iceland or Hawaii, solar from Sahara or Gobi, biological from Siberia, water from where the big rivers are (and we may have to accept some local destruction of environment here) and wind from countries with huge costal areas, etc.
There might be need to save energy in addition to this, but much can be accomplished by non life-style threatening solutions like better isolation in housing, better public transportation and more efficient technology.
Edited to say that this post was written before I saw your addendum (and to add water, which I for some inexplicable reason forgot).
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Tristan, I don't know what you will think of this, but while individual deaths trouble me, the end of a species, even a sapient species like humanity, doesn't trouble me much except for the individuals involved. If I thought it were possible to go out quietly dwindling until there were one peaceful potato farmer who died and left the world empty, as opposed to blowing ourselves up in a war or triggering an ecocollapse that killed us suddenly and violently, I'd opt for the former. I'd rather we survived as a people, yes. I just don't anticipate it.
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I want to say that fossil fuels and internal combustion engines really are a much better technical solution than their alternatives right now. Electric cars are tiny, slow, don't have heaters, are incredibly expensive to run, and create a LOT of extremely toxic waste in the form of old batteries. I think if they caught on they would be a worse ecological disaster than the standard automobile by far.
Gasoline is a high energy density, easily transportable source of power. Internal combustion engines have a very high horsepower to weight ratio and are cheap, reliable, and durable. They rule! Okay, okay, so they are noisy and stinky! I still love them.
Fuel cells might work. Hydrogen is very clean burning fuel though you will always get NOx when you burn stuff in air. It's also quite explosive, of course, which is why you need a fuel cell to stabilize it. Nobody wants the ordinary fender bender to turn into the Hindenburg disaster.
Nuclear power plants are excellent because they don't emit greenhouse gasses. The well-meaning people who killed the nuclear power industry in the U.S. did us all a great disservice.
The most efficient and cost effective solar collection will be in space after we colonize space. There is no problem with cloudy days, the structures to hold the collectors can be very light since the whole thing is weightless, and there's no effective limit on the surface area you can present to the sun. (Well, not til we get to the Dyson Sphere stage, but that's quite a ways off.)
People who are talking about using 100% of the earth's land for the human species have forgotten that we aren't the only species in the ecosystem, and that we can't surive without an ecosystem. We don't know how yet. Colonizing space will teach us this, so we need to get busy for that reason as well. But I'm not willing to sacrifice all those other species for the sake of a few more humans. Let's lower our collective birthrate instead, and keep them. The quality of life on the planet as a whole is not served by adding another 10 billion members of one species at the expense of all the others.
Those of us who can see how things are going, and where we're headed, have a responsibility to work out how we need to change and put it into effect. Figuring out how we need to change is not a simple exercise, though.
I don't think draconian restrictions on consumption are good or would work. Economics is not a zero sum game. I believe the thought that there are X amount of resources and some people are taking more than their share is not correct. Most of the resources that first world people consume didn't exist until they made them. A silicon chip is just a bit of sand transformed, after all.
[ August 14, 2003, 08:04 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
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Maccabeus, I believe there is a difference in perspective here. While I, too, see much that is wrong and threatening in the world around, the state of affairs appear far from so desperate as to justify watching everything go to hell with apathy. And since you, despite your bleak outlook, seem to prefer the survival of humanity from its extinction; and since a violent end at present seems far more likely than your peaceful scenario; and since, when you look closely, it is impossible to separate the human species from the individuals which make it up, I'd say get off your but and do something .
Posts: 896 | Registered: Feb 2001
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Wow, this a thread that teeters back and forth from the desperately depressed to the equally desperate optimism. Me, I'm going to side with optimism.
On the water equation: Water is a naturally renewing resource, unlike petroleum. Water poured onto agricultural fields isn't consumed and lost, but processed, evaporated, etc. The same for the water you drink or use to wash your car. A bigger threat is polluting water resources and that is something we need to address better in the human race. But, still, I've always found the overconsumption of water argument a bit spurious and not backed up by common sense or science.
Electrical generation is a bigger question, of course, and there are a lot of alternatives out there, some better than others. Me, I love wind power and actually have family ties to it (my uncle helped design the world's largest electrical generating windmill -- it used two reinforced 747 wings for blades, sadly the thing was dismantled, though).
Solar power using the solar cell technology we have isn't going to cut the mustard, sadly. There is an alternative, however. Folks are working hard to develop better methods at catching and focusing sunlight to turn into heat to fire boilers to create steam for electricity generating turbines. This, I feel, will be great and only requires moderate refitting of many of our standard power plants.
Hydroelectric power simply has too many potential damages to the environment and people living along rivers. Remember, most civilizations develop along rivers and populations in those areas are generally immense. Also the damage downstream from a hydro-electric dam project is immense and long-lasting.
Hydrogen based electricity is going to be a big one, too, if we can get it off the ground. Someday you could drive your hydrogen-powered car to work and then plug it into the grid system while parked at work to provide electricity. You'd then be rebated for the amount of juice you put in which could then be used to buy more water/hydrogen for fuel. Heady stuff this is and perhaps someday...
Until then, I agree that the internal combustion engine is the way to go. Efficiency versus pollutants make this the number one power source we have, and for good reason.
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