Advertisement
Published: December 7th 2008
Would we believe the truth if it came from a squirrel?
Some believe that Dolphins posses higher intelligence and awareness of their own mortality like humans. They have no hands to create tools and alter their environment. They have no competition for resources to wage Dolphin pod wars. Their ultrasound language of clicks and squeaks might be as complex as our own, but there is no translation for it. Because we can't communicate, we can't be sure of their intelligence. This is the human situation, even the animals that are likely as intelligent as we are can not prove it to us.
Something in the air wont let me breath
all around, birds chirping
Something in your eyes wont let me turn away
in the distance, a river is raging
Something in your voice let me know things were alright
deep inside, my heart is aching
Acting alone in the natural world, we improve our situation by harvesting natural resources and destroying habitat for every other living creature besides ourselves. We multiply like rats and spread like a virus. Our offspring's primal urge to procreate
super exponentially creates more humans that have filled all of the hospitable places on the planet. Even if the remaining
biodiverse landscapes were all designated as wilderness areas, our population would still grow bigger and more complex unless humans self-impose a
one child policy. What good is talking about fossil fuel consumption, recycling waste, and casualties from natural disasters if the
human population numbers continue to spiral upwards out of control?
The cost of sanity, in this society,
is a certain level of alienation. --Terence Mckenna
One thing is certain:
Fossil fuels will run out. It's no longer a question of if we will run out, but when. Who of us can imagine
a world without petroleum? If our future is to become the stuff of science fiction, we will need to find a limitless power source that blesses us with all of
the things we get from Petroleum. This source would be small, pollution free and be available everywhere. It will need to power movement- Mining trucks, Automobiles and Airplanes. It will need to give us plastics and chemicals for fertilizers to grow food. Tar, Sulphuric Acid and Asphalt. There is no question that technology will advance, both mechanically, chemically and biologically. Within our lifetime a
human clone will be created and we will witness
nanotechnology applied to medicine and computing. What is possible without cheap oil?
I love the father above,
his name is sky
I love the mother below,
her name is earth
each an equal,
a prequel to a sequel
neither one is good
neither one is equal
Standards of living are relative-
Among the basic commodities, grain and meat in the food sector, oil and coal in the energy sector, and steel in the industrial sector; China now consumes more than the United States of each of these except for oil. It consumes nearly twice as much meat (67 million tons compared with 39 million tons) and more than twice as much
steel (258 million to 104 million tons).
These numbers are about total consumption. But what if China reaches the U.S. consumption level per person? If China’s economy continues to expand at 8 percent a year, its income per person will reach the current U.S. level in 2031.
If at that point China’s per capita resource consumption were the same as in the United States today, then its projected 1.45 billion people would consume the equivalent of two thirds of the current
world grain harvest. China’s
paper consumption would be double the world’s current production.
There go the world’s forests.
lift me up, tear me down-
it feels good to be loved
hearts, minds, emotions-
nothing but perception
If China one day has three cars for every four people, U.S. style, it will have 1.1 billion cars. The whole world today has
800 million cars. To provide the roads, highways, and parking lots to accommodate such a vast fleet, China would have to pave an area equal to the land it now plants in rice. It would need 99 million barrels of oil a day.
Yet the world currently produces 84 million barrels per day and may never produce much more. The western economic model, the fossil-fuel-based, auto-centered,
throwaway society is only going to work for China at the expense at the rest of the
World's Natural resources. 150 years of this model applied to a few select countries have
already destroyed a majority of the world's habitat already. If it works for China, it will be at the expense of India, which by 2031 is projected to have a population even larger than China’s. It also won't work for the 3 billion other people in developing countries who are also dreaming the “American dream.”
(γ) Are Western Countries prepared to give up their complacency provided by cheap fossil fuels and cheap food? Hardly.
The fact that human beings assemble to live in disaster prone areas by the millions is asking for trouble. In geologic time, 90%!o(MISSING)f most human settlements will disappear based on destruction from
major earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions and
rising sea levels. We can take a recent trend like global warming as an example. No matter what you believe to be the cause of it, the earth is warming faster than ever before. When ocean levels rise a 200 hundred feet hundreds of years from now
95%!o(MISSING)f human civilization will be submerged. If we plunged into another
ice age like the one 20,000 years ago, the earth could not support more than a few hundred million. The bigger our population gets, the more delicate civilizations become and the more disastrous natural events are. Vital knowledge will be lost forever. If population
becomes fragmented and decimated to 5%!o(MISSING)f its current level- we will loose skills passed down from engineers, Doctors and Scientists. This was seen in the Dark Ages, where the sacking of Rome and the burning of the
library of Alexandria destroyed information that was not regained until the Renaissance a millennium later.
"I’ve been thinking about you lately…”
Don’t flatter yourself, I think about a lot of things.
There’s a lot more out there than you think.
Fantasies of glory calm the mind
a temporary relief from this terrible fate
Genetics and Technology will fundamentally change our way of life, petroleum will become more scarce, weather patterns will change and sea levels will rise slowly but surely. What an exciting time to be alive!!!
If a sea urchin or a racoon were to propose to you that it had a viable truth about the universe, the absurdity of that assertion would be self-evident, but in our case we make an exception. --Terence Mckenna
(γ) - Paragraph in italics paraphrased from a book called
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble by
Lester R. Brown Pictures are from a mini-road trip from Vegas in
September of 2008.
Prose and poetry in quotations/ foundation of the blog entry
are here.
--Steve
Advertisement
Tot: 0.088s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 9; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0371s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Ali
Ali Watters
A lot on your mind lately!
I've been thinking a lot about similar dilemmas and problems. Some things that may skew the potentially gloomy outlook. The better educated and better resourced a population the more likely it is to have a stable or declining birth rate - look at the western European countries where growth is attributed to immigration. The US is reliant on imported fossil fuels - which are no longer necessarily cheap - this will provide the impetus for the development of technologies such as fuel cells and renewables. We probably will continue to have a hydrocarbon based economy for a long time - just the source of these will have to change - the energy carried in petrol is just immense. Totally agree that as a species we cannot continue our current consumption and expectations without devastating our planet leaving a nightmare world for our direct descendants.