'Thought' seems a bit strong. I get that sensory stimuli created some sort of reaction in your brain - but that's not necessarily thought. Thought, I would suggest, is a process of challenging those autonomic mental reactions - and I see no evidence of that here. What I see is the stubborn post-rationalisation of an automonic reaction. Thought would have altrered your position by now. Were you actually thinking you would be forced to accept that the energy is there, and that the fossil fuel industry has extensive knowledge about drilling holes deep into the earth, 40 years in advance of anything NASA had available. You would be forced to accept that "experimentally proven by NASA" - while a blatant appeal to authority, is a credible basis upon which to claim it's a viable technology. Instead, what I see is a dismissive use of the term 'theorectical' - as an opening slavo, and what that suggests is that you are arguing from an attitude - reacting; not thinking, for thinking is to be aware, and sceptical of one's attitude. — karl stone
Raise the standard of living and the people having so many children will rapidly diminish. — ssu
And the interesting fact: Japan hasn't had an economic crash or societal collapse. So a World with a diminishing global population might not be so bad after all.
Why?In order to maintain the relatively high standard of living for some people, many other people have to live a relatively low standard. So that's not really a solution. — baker
:up:The idea that sustainability requires sacrifice of human and economic welfare is very widely believed, but I think it is untrue; and is in fact an artefact of the anti-capitalist politics of the green movement since the 1960's. It's now so ingrained an idea it goes unquestioned by left and right; but there's a sound basis in physics to say that resources are a function of the energy available to create them. — karl stone
Marxism wanted to replace the market mechanism with central planning. In a way, it is a belief in the human intelligence and our technocratic ability to plan. Yet the fact is that we cannot plan what the next technological (or scientific) breakthrough will be. And we cannot assume to know what technology will be the most cost-effective, productive decades from now.Also Marx was all for industrialization, It was the reason the bourgeois historically could have taken over from nobility, which ultimately paved the way for the proletariat to take over. It's a question of distribution and who controls the means of production for Marxists, wealth and prosperity an sich are fine. — ChatteringMonkey
The romantic "nature guy" opposition is even more ideological or should I say religious. — ssu
I like nature guy, I'm nature guy to some extent, but we can't return to some previous more innocent state of being without facing the consequences that entails. Back-to-nature should own up to the consequences, and in a world of 7, 8 billion people those aren't pretty I'd say. — ChatteringMonkey
And those consequences aren't usually then thought through. Because the idea goes that we simply are consuming too much, hence let's consume dramatically less. The problem with this is that we need that scientific and technological improvements, because otherwise we are truly prisoners of our present carbon based energy production ...or society in general. A huge economic depression will surely our planet greener (as we saw during the Covid lockdown), but it will also cease any desire to make investments and will cause political crises. The idea that we could just put then investments could be put towards R&D (by central planning) simply doesn't understand how complex the world is.I like nature guy, I'm nature guy to some extent, but we can't return to some previous more innocent state of being without facing the consequences that entails. Back-to-nature should own up to the consequences, and in a world of 7, 8 billion people those aren't pretty I'd say. — ChatteringMonkey
They don't seem that devoted — karl stone
frack with one hand and carbon tax with the other; how could such obviously contradictory policies be enacted, and be accepted by lawmakers, scientists, protest groups, businesses and individuals. — karl stone
it's the dumbest thing you've ever written — karl stone
addicted to carbon! This is the reason why we're unable to effect a transition, smooth/bumpy, from fossil fuels to (say) electricity. — Agent Smith
Wrong. I've explained over and over how to transition from fossil fuels — karl stone
I beg to differ. I've written dumber things. — Bitter Crank
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