thought for the day... again... capitalism? dying? dead?

[worm]

The answer is to accept that our (western) lifestyles - the pursuit of the consumption of more and more "stuff" - is unsustainable

[eFestivals]

You haven't answered my question. I asked what those natural resources are?

I don't have my lifetime to list nearly everything in the world, sorry.

You talk about efficiency, but you aren't incorporating discrete events and the efficiency that increases over a period of evolution.

however efficient a sea-water purifying plant might get, it will never match the efficiency of collecting rain in a bucket (or the large-scale equivalents that most of the world rely on currently).

Similarly, there are distinct limits to the efficiency that can be got from wind-powered devices (no different to the burn efficiency of oil-based energy). It will never match oil.

As resources get scarcer, the costs of getting the resources that are accessible increase. A fact like this is a reality that cannot be wished away.

We agree that the economy is fucked, but this has not slowed down the expanse of science and technology.

If you're working off the made-up, then anything you say is right.

If you're working from the reality, then that's utterly wrong. Investors invest for the return they get, and they have less belief that they'll make a return in times of economic turmoil, because any factor could change at any moment and so change the economics of what they're doing.

We might personally be seeing more technology in our pockets, but that's old hat. Developments happening now have slowed.

As for the new technology we are seeing, much of that is economically pointless and in no way technologically progressive anyway. It's technology used to 'fix' a problem that didn't exist, marketing over substance.

[eFestivals]

looking at a worst case scenario, I suppose 'our' saving grace might be that we're an island

a two-sided coin.

Cos we can only produce food for about 70% of us.

[abdoujaparov]

I hope for a world where we don't have to lower ourselves to the world view of abdoujaparov of us all living in slums fighting over food...

I want a world where we raise the standards in other countries to some where around our level. Ok, maybe we have to give up some of what we have but I don't buy it has to be to the level where the world pretty much reverts a 1000 years.

Technology is the key...

I don't think people like abdoujaparov, with their negative condemning attitudes, are any help at all...

[fred quimby]

the pursuit of the consumption of more and more "stuff" - is unsustainable

[eFestivals]

While any numb nuts can point out about having a TV too many, or not switching off lights, recharging cameras etc...

I think the idea that cutting down on this stuff alone is enough alone to protect the worlds resource is total madness. And to disregard technology like he does is even more madness...

With the population growing as it is... You ever keep giving things up, ok it starts with the extra TV but ends up being living in a tin shack, or we use technology to sustain some sort of reasonable life...

All I see on this thread is a lot of scaremongering (and doing a bad job at it) and wild moaning... Very little in the way of REAL practical solutions...

The problem is that the "REAL practical solutions" are the solutions that people like you don't want to hear and so they cease to be solutions to the likes of you.

You believe that the answer is something like "we use technology to sustain some sort of reasonable life", and yet your very demand for that for yourself means that someone else can't have it, no matter how much harder then you they might work. There simply isn't enough of the material things to go around in any sort of fair way, and never will be without a reduction in our material standards.

Quite simply, the west is living off the backs of the developing world.

The solution is a recognition of this fact and an acceptance of a large reduction in living standards. Are you ready for the solution?

[abdoujaparov]

While any numb nuts can point out about having a TV too many, or not switching off lights, recharging cameras etc...

I think the idea that cutting down on this stuff alone is enough alone to protect the worlds resource is total madness. And to disregard technology like he does is even more madness...

With the population growing as it is... You ever keep giving things up, ok it starts with the extra TV but ends up being living in a tin shack, or we use technology to sustain some sort of reasonable life...

All I see on this thread is a lot of scaremongering (and doing a bad job at it) and wild moaning... Very little in the way of REAL practical solutions...

[abdoujaparov]

Heard a strange quote the other day that we consume 30% less on products now than in the 70s

I raised my eyebrows when I heard it

[abdoujaparov]

oh yeah... and a lot of two faced people in ivory towers posting from power consuming devices like laptops, in their heated homes, eating food from the fridge freezers...

[fred quimby]

Hmmmm .... I reckon you're under-estimating just how quickly things could break down in society.

Remember those fuel protests about a decade ago? The govt was less than a week from calling in the army, because we were very definitely less than 2 weeks away from food riots. And that took a while, cos there was still fuel available for just about everything to carry on much as normal in reality. If the banks collapsed tomorrow, then everything would come to a grinding halt before the end of the next day. Everything!!

[eFestivals]

And you maybe over egging the cake

Were we really "definitely" 2 weeks away from food riots, Really. Were you ready to get on the streets and go for it, I know I wasn't. There was still loads of stuff around, people would have got on. Yes there may have been a percentage of people who went on the rob and rioted but I'm not so sure of your Daily Express headline.

Was I ready for it? Nope. But that's the thing ab0out food riots, you don't get a choice about them. You join in or you starve.

"There was still loads of stuff around" only because people hadn't quite got the point of panicking fully - they'd started on bread, milk, and the like tho. It only takes people to notice empty shelves on a couple of days to start to wonder if food'll be there tomorrow.

What do you think would happen if people couldn't buy food? They'd sit there quietly and hope it'd arrive?

Supermarkets and shops in general hold naff-all stocks nowadays, so it only takes them to stop being replenished, which can come to a stop quicker than you might think.

[fred quimby]

we consume 30% less on products...?

do you mean we spend less money on them?

[fred quimby]

Was I ready for it? Nope. But that's the thing ab0out food riots, you don't get a choice about them. You join in or you starve.

"There was still loads of stuff around" only because people hadn't quite got the point of panicking fully - they'd started on bread, milk, and the like tho. It only takes people to notice empty shelves on a couple of days to start to wonder if food'll be there tomorrow.

What do you think would happen if people couldn't buy food? They'd sit there quietly and hope it'd arrive?

Supermarkets and shops in general hold naff-all stocks nowadays, so it only takes them to stop being replenished, which can come to a stop quicker than you might think.

[Rufus Gwertigan]

I'm sure it was products as I stopped in my tracks when I heard it (radio 4). I'll try and remeber the time as it confused me. I always assumed we are consuming more. Maybe it's just us lot

[fred quimby]

I don't know anyone who actually has less now than an equivalent person/family would have had in the 70's

and there's more of us

[fred quimby]

I did hear that our products consume about 30% less energy.. But it I wonder if we are consuming less raw materials per person as our technology is getting smaller

[fred quimby]

whatever good Steve Jobs did for the world (debatable for me), every time he'd be announcing the next i-phone or i-pad or whatever, I wanted to cry. How many people who were happy with what they had, would suddenly have to go out and replace it with the latest model?

[kaosmark2]

Everyone who's been talking about science not being able to provide...

The technology for nearly everything is there. Self-sufficient energy, mass food production, mass desalination, mass fertiliser production.

There are very very few materials that could not be reused. Phosphates don't disappear when they get used for fertiliser, they go into the plants, which we eat, then shit out. Water doesn't stop being water when we piss/sweat it out. Hydrocarbons don't stop being hydrocarbons when we make them into plastics. About the only thing that isn't sustainable is burning coal, oil and gas for energy.

The problem though, is investment and demand. In order to safely provide nuclear technology, or to mass-produce and network solar/wind/water power, it would need investment. Major investment. Investment from the people who are currently gaining from oil sales, whether directly or indirectly. To produce food, cheaply, en masse, worldwide, it could be done. There isn't the demand from the rich to develop the industry. African families can't pay for it, so why should they?

The science is there, just not the investment to turn it into industry. Those with the money to implement it on an affordable mass scale don't have any personal reason to invest though. It comes back to the selfishness of bankers, executives and governments.

[eFestivals]

Yes I can understand that if the food ran out we would be at each others throats. But that really wasn't going to happen was it.

that time, perhaps not (tho the govt had plans ready to implement if it started to get close, they'd blown the dust off them - and they include shooting civilians when necessary).

My point wasn't particularly about that time (I mentioned it cos it's the only time in my lifetime I'm aware of anything like that happening), my point was that it could happen easily and easier than it would have happened then.

The whole of the world is continually teetering on the brink because everything is so inter-dependent now. It needs only a gentle shove for the whole thing to come tumbling down all around the world.

[Ed209]

While it is a very nice ideal scenario that everyone in the west starts consuming less, the reality is that this is only inevitably going to be offset by the rampant uprising of the emerging economies. If you think the west consumes a lot, you ain't seen anything yet. Just as the west is starting to think about the consequences of their consuming, China, India, Brazil etc .. are just starting to learn the joys of it.

Unless these countries are going to say ... "you know what, its fine, the west had all our fun for us, we are going to chill for the sake of humanity" then we need to look for the alternatives. And you can be sure as hell that they're not going to say that, so ensuring the techonology can keep up with it is our only option.

As Kaosmark2 said, the science is there, it just needs major investment to see it through. Nuclear fusion for example is the future of the human races energy needs. Its not a matter of if, its a matter of when, and when is dictated by investment.

I'd love for the world to chill out, consume less, become more sustainable. The reality is with the emerging economies, and the economies that will then emerge after that, this is not going to happen for a loooooong time.

We need to wake up to this, stop umming and erring about whether we should invest in technology R&D, and actually do it. I firmly believe technology can keep pace with humanity, but only if we commit to it. As i see it, we don't have much choice

[abdoujaparov]

I know what you are saying there. My brother knows one of the chaps that worked close to Jobs in marketing and their main break through (well one anyway) was making it that fashion item, which just got people buying the next one without thinking.

Edited October 11, 2011 by abdoujaparov

[abdoujaparov]

Everyone who's been talking about science not being able to provide...

The technology for nearly everything is there. Self-sufficient energy, mass food production, mass desalination, mass fertiliser production.

There are very very few materials that could not be reused. Phosphates don't disappear when they get used for fertiliser, they go into the plants, which we eat, then shit out. Water doesn't stop being water when we piss/sweat it out. Hydrocarbons don't stop being hydrocarbons when we make them into plastics. About the only thing that isn't sustainable is burning coal, oil and gas for energy.

The problem though, is investment and demand. In order to safely provide nuclear technology, or to mass-produce and network solar/wind/water power, it would need investment. Major investment. Investment from the people who are currently gaining from oil sales, whether directly or indirectly. To produce food, cheaply, en masse, worldwide, it could be done. There isn't the demand from the rich to develop the industry. African families can't pay for it, so why should they?

The science is there, just not the investment to turn it into industry. Those with the money to implement it on an affordable mass scale don't have any personal reason to invest though. It comes back to the selfishness of bankers, executives and governments.

[abdoujaparov]

While it is a very nice ideal scenario that everyone in the west starts consuming less, the reality is that this is only inevitably going to be offset by the rampant uprising of the emerging economies. If you think the west consumes a lot, you ain't seen anything yet. Just as the west is starting to think about the consequences of their consuming, China, India, Brazil etc .. are just starting to learn the joys of it.

Unless these countries are going to say ... "you know what, its fine, the west had all our fun for us, we are going to chill for the sake of humanity" then we need to look for the alternatives. And you can be sure as hell that they're not going to say that, so ensuring the techonology can keep up with it is our only option.

As Kaosmark2 said, the science is there, it just needs major investment to see it through. Nuclear fusion for example is the future of the human races energy needs. Its not a matter of if, its a matter of when, and when is dictated by investment.

I'd love for the world to chill out, consume less, become more sustainable. The reality is with the emerging economies, and the economies that will then emerge after that, this is not going to happen for a loooooong time.

We need to wake up to this, stop umming and erring about whether we should invest in technology R&D, and actually do it. I firmly believe technology can keep pace with humanity, but only if we commit to it. As i see it, we don't have much choice

[fred quimby]

everytime someone produces a new phone which the sheep go out to buy (and iphones are the perfect example for this) it increases global demand for tantalum, which is used to make capacitors. Most of the world's tantalum comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo - and it is officially recognised by the UN and others that the illegal trade in tantalum helped to finance and prolong the civil was in DRC which killed around 5.5 million people

so not only are we stripping the plant clean of finiate natural resources, but people are dying in their millions to put your silly toys in your hands...isnt capitalism great?

[abdoujaparov]

And several other Minerals and the war still continues, which we look the other way at, we are both great and evil .

Not sure capitalism is at the heart of people wanting computers and mobile phones but I know where you are coming from. I assume you typed your reply on a computer that helped kill thousands. As consumers we are able to stop it happening but as I say we all turn a blind eye. It's not just the money men