Save the world

[Indigo Violent]

What? Where do you get that idea? We've got absolute scads and scads of space on this planet before we even have to worry about thinking about considering landmass being critical for population growth.

The problem isn't space for people to live in. Sure, we have room for more people - but that's not going to do us much good if we run out of resources to keep them all fed and sheltered. Much of the Canadian prairies have very low population density - because we need that land to grow food on. Turning it all into condos would be a terrible idea.

[ManaUser]

It's amazing how many people believe that stuff. If any of these things worked, there would be one (more like several) in every home already. And no, the oil industry,...

Actually I was watching Red Green and he built a water wheel car, which obviously wouldn't work for more and a few yards. However I was wondering what would happen if you used a tall cylinder drum for water storage and it flowed out of the top into a turbine, in the middle, then flowed down into a tube that flowed back into the holding tank at the bottom, with some sort of valve that pumped the water back into the tank by the rotation of the wheels. Would that even work, some sort of strange gravity engine? Obviously there are speed problems...

People have been trying stuff like that for centuries. The fact is you'll always have to do as much work lifting the water (or water) as you get when ti comes back down. So even if it were perfectly efficient, you can't come out ahead.

[Major Maxillary]

Kill 30% of the world's population off every ten years.

[Orwell]

Do I have to be realistic? No? Then it involves killing off nearly everyone, and leaving nomadism for the rest. From various readings, my current understanding is that this lifestyle is the least harmful to the environment and can produce the most resources instead of using a single spot over and over again.

Semi-realistically: Develop alternatives and place approrpriate reasons to use them while phasing out the harmful stuff, and work on coping with the changes in our environment. Honestly, will we ever have nature as clean as it was a mere couple centuries ago? Not until the nuclear waste is completely gone.

Realistic: Party hard, die young, leave no new generation born.

[AkaneJones]

People have been trying stuff like that for centuries. The fact is you'll always have to do as much work lifting the water (or water) as you get when ti comes back down. So even if it were perfectly efficient, you can't come out ahead.

Hum but if you used the wheels rotation to turn an Archimedes screw, shouldn't the go power used to move the vehicle forward also send the water back to the top. Ofcourse you'd probabley need to run the car on batterys that where charged by the hydroelectric generater, other wise it wouldn't reach a speed to be usefull enought to send the water back at full speed. Thatis unless the screw could be geared up enough.

Although even if you could make it work it isn't really free energy as forward motion is just a byproduct of the effect.

[ManaUser]

Hum but if you used the wheels rotation to turn an Archimedes screw, shouldn't the go power used to move the vehicle forward also send the water back to the top. Ofcourse you'd probabley need to run the car on batterys that where charged by the hydroelectric generater, other wise it wouldn't reach a speed to be usefull enought to send the water back at full speed. Thatis unless the screw could be geared up enough.

Although even if you could make it work it isn't really free energy as forward motion is just a byproduct of the effect.

No, it would be free energy. And you could easily turn that forward motion into any other type of energy.

Not going to work though. If you use the wheel's rotation to do work (lifting water) you necessarily slow the wheels down proportionally.

[Squidflakes]

My solution would be to move all heavy industry in to geosynchronous (or higher) or Lagrange orbit. This includes heavy manufacture, power generation, and dangerous/explosive chemical manufacture.

I would also have several space elevators built, helping to lower the cost of transfering material to and from orbit, and reducing or removing the need for chemical rockets.

Since our power generation is in space and is essentially free, we'd have plenty of incentive (and power) to develop high performance electric personal vehicles, electric trucking, and direct power trains and ships. Commercial flight may become a thing of the past, to be replaced by high speed passenger rail (electric), but that wouldn't be too bad. If development went far enough, I'm sure a jet type engine could be made to run off electricity, maybe some sort of oxygen plasma turbine.

My next step would be to move all mining (except maybe bauxite) off planet and out to the asteroid belts. There are so many resources to be had out there, there is no reason to keep sucking that stuff out of the earth. I say I would exclude bauxite, because I don't know how high a concentration of that stuff exists out in the belts.

The only reason left to use petroleum is for plastic, and thats easy to fix. The gas giants in our system contain hydrocarbons and other long chain monomers enough to make plastic from here to the freaking end of time (estimated).

Along with all of this industry, space affords us infinite living space. Infinite crop lands (other planets, agricultural space stations, ect). Infinite energy. and Infinite Adventure.

[AkaneJones]

Wait, why not reduce a city's power consumption by building hydroextric plants in to the sewer system, and generate power from flowing crap. Now you would have a new dirty job of sewer turbine matenance.

[Linkara]

Build an infrastructure to support hydrogen cars across the USA. They already exist, it's just not economically feasible at the moment to mass-produce them (especially since we lack the fuel stations necessary for them).

And yay for the folks who brought up how recycling (most things) doesn't work! ^_^

[Toawa]

Saving the planet in 4 easy steps.

Step 1: CALM THE FUCK DOWN. Panicking over the planet is not helping anyone; it just makes people think of desperate measures. And when you're operating on a planetary scale, if you've reached desperate measure time, then it's already too late.

Step 2: Scrap all of the grandiose social engineering embodied in the "tax this" or "force that" talk; it won't work. You start pushing people, they push back. You also end up with situations where moving forward becomes prohibitively expensive because when you do take a step forward, it's not forward enough to satisfy the people pushing these plans, so you just stay where you are. (To wit: Consider the situation where a coal-fired plant could put in an extra, more efficient turbine, and double power output with only, say, 20% increase in emissions.. Nope, can't have that; if you can't do it without reducing emissions, then don't do it at all.)

Step 3: The free market will address many of the problems, if you know which variables to change. And the variables are "demand". No big regulatory requirement schemes on more efficient vehicles; again, you end up with the situation where it becomes so expensive to try and meet those standards, that they simply don't try. After all, the old stuff will always be grandfathered in. And no, you cannot "ungrandfather" stuff; the capital loss would be staggering. It's simply not realistic.

Step 4: How do you push the free market? Education. Development. Want to increase the use of florescent bulbs instead of incandescent (a recent trend)? Don't pass laws banning incandescents (an unfortunate recent trend); advertise. Educate. Many environmentally friendly things are that way because they are more efficient, which means monetary savings.

These "ban cars" type plans simply will not work, and it is a waste of time and energy to discuss them. They won't work, because people will simply ignore them. The economic ramifications are just too great.

The long term solution is more development, not halting development. Look at birthrates in "developed" countries. Many of them are at replacement levels... Barely. If you want the planet's population to stabilize, make the whole planet as developed as the "developed" world. And the developed world might be the most "polluting" by quantity, but compared to the productivity, it is significantly cleaner than both the developing world, and their own past. With development comes improved technology, which decreases pollution per unit production.

It's the same way with Moore's law; transistors keep getting smaller and smaller, and using less and less power. The reason why CPUs keep using more power is because they pack more and more on; but that's because there's always a demand for more computing power. But world macroeconomics is not a CPU chip. Ultimately, production is tied to consumption, and consumption is tied to population. Once the population stabilizes, then consumption stabilizes, and then production stabilizes. Once production stabilizes, net pollution starts going down, because technology will still be progressing, still making cleaner machines. The net pollution per unit production is dropping, and that's a good thing.

Throwing a monkey wrench into that process will help no one, and that's exactly what is proposed in some earlier posts.

[LeftTentacleGreen]

The net pollution per unit production is dropping, and that's a good thing.

Throwing a monkey wrench into that process will help no one, and that's exactly what is proposed in some earlier posts.

Bullshit, sir. Reducing pollution per unit doesn't do squat if there are already too many people on this planet and too many units being produced for each one of them. The other part you so conveniently forget is that pollutions stays around a hell of a lot longer than the person does. When a person dies, the pollution that the individual caused with his irresponsible social and economic demands does not disappear in a puff of smoke. It stays and its poisonous effects on the environment accumulates with each generation. The decomposition rate for plastics, polystyrene and other assorted biohazardous materials is not measured in months, but millenia.

Throwing a monkey wrench into the laissez-faire capitalism that is choking this planet only harms those irresponsible jackasses who believe they can take as much from the world and society as they want without giving anything back. In that regard, the corporate CEOs are no better than the welfare cheats.

Why don't you try to realize what society's role in society is before you start handing out garbage about what government's role in society is. Here's a hint: Its not to make a fast buck.

[Lowky]

Do I have to be realistic? No? Then it involves killing off nearly everyone, and leaving nomadism for the rest. From various readings, my current understanding is that this lifestyle is the least harmful to the environment and can produce the most resources instead of using a single spot over and over again.

Semi-realistically: Develop alternatives and place approrpriate reasons to use them while phasing out the harmful stuff, and work on coping with the changes in our environment. Honestly, will we ever have nature as clean as it was a mere couple centuries ago? Not until the nuclear waste is completely gone.

Realistic: Party hard, die young, leave no new generation born.

If your throwing realism out the door, take your first option to its true logical conclusion. It's time to come up with a human specific biological weapon, and let some other species see how well they fare as "The Man".

I am doing my part for the realistic, I don't plan on having any children, and as an only child myself, that means I kill off one more family line. (Not to mention all the potentials children I kill reading the sexy thread fap fap fap.

[JohnnyTwoEyes]

I am doing my part for the realistic, I don't plan on having any children, and as an only child myself, that means I kill off one more family line. (Not to mention all the potentials children I kill reading the sexy thread fap fap fap.

Well, I'm dating the same gender. I'll just walk by an abortion clinic and pay somebody 20 grand if they'll let me keep their baby.

[Churba]

Well, I'm dating the same gender. I'll just walk by an abortion clinic and pay somebody 20 grand if they'll let me keep their baby.

I just had a horrible vision in my head of you walking out of an abortion clinic holding a Jar. Don't ask.

[Fnyunj]

. . . . And when you're operating on a planetary scale, if you've reached desperate measure time, then it's already too late.

. . . most likely.

. . . it won't work. You start pushing people, they push back.

Even if you don't push people, they push back. It's what they (we) do.

To wit: the problem is simple. Many of us have already said it. Too many people, too few resources for sustainable living. The problem is that people push back. You regulate them, they push back. You leave them alone, they destroy themselves - eventually. All of our great civilizations have, except for the ones we're in now. Why should we be different? We're not. It's naive - but perhaps comforting to believe otherwise.

The one thing that is different about our civilization that could make a difference, is that we have developed technology. Specifically, technologies that are adept at mass-population control. Propaganda. Mechanized slaughter. Biological warfare. And now, we have computers, chip implantation, mass eavesdropping and wiretapping, and databases. If there is one lesson we can learn from our own recent past, is that these new capabilities are always used for control.

If we don't destroy ourselves, eventually, some fascist dictator somewhere is going to get his hands on the perfect set of tools for controlling people, and use them. Maybe then we can be stopped from destroying our own world. But will we still be what any of us could call human? None of us, today, would want to live in such a world, I don't think.

. . . The free market will address many of the problems, . . .

OMFG. The cult of the Invisible Hand is among one of the most ridiculous brand of religious wingnuttery there is.
The Free Market Fundamentalists don't seem to understand that what they are advocating is unleashing a natural force. The earliest human civilizations started for the very purpose of controlling natural forces - (example: ancient Egyptian priests learned to predict the seasons, and the flow of the floodwaters of the Nile river. Same with the Mesopotamians with the Tigris and Euphrates )allowing the prosperity and collective safety of the ability of large groups of people working together for mutual benefit, and shelter from the natural forces).
We are civilized specifically because we chose not to subject ourselves to the tender mercies of "invisible hands".

There is NO natural market force that will cause people living today, to sacrifice potential prosperity for potentially making our world unable to support life 500 years from now. Particularly when the loudest voices in our newsmedia, all corporate-owned and tightly controlled by a very small minority of monied interests, devote a great deal of effort to trying to confuse and confound matters by spreading deception about the reality of Global Warming (and other environmental degradation).

How do you push the free market? Education. Development. Want to increase the use of florescent bulbs instead of incandescent (a recent trend)? Don't pass laws banning incandescents (an unfortunate recent trend); advertise. Educate. Many environmentally friendly things are that way because they are more efficient, which means monetary savings.

Not at all true. The "Free Market" gave us a country where the automakers got together, and systematically bought up and dismantled public transportation systems throughout the US. The "Free Market" consolidated some 50 separate owners of a regulated mass-media, to down to 4 owners of approximately 80% of the mass media - most of those owners being large, horizontally-integrated multinational corporations, like GE, MSNBC, etc. Educate? How? Who controls the message?

The long term solution is more development, not halting development. Look at birthrates in "developed" countries. Many of them are at replacement levels... Barely.

There is not enough oil production capacity to provide the energy for our current population of 6.7 Billion to live the lifestyle that a few of us in the industrialized world enjoy. And if there were, I guarantee you, it would be much more difficult to spin away the obvious growing impact of global climate change. Of course, give it another 20-30 years. . .

As far as birthrates go - the most effective birth control known to man, statistically speaking, is college degrees for women. I have no argument against that. But you also have to give these women careers when they're done with school. Otherwise it's just an "Mrs. degree". We can't even keep 10% of people in impoverished countries gainfully employed - and you're proposing we give women something better to do than spit out babies? It would be nice - but I don't see your Invisible Hand thumbing through resumes.

And the developed world might be the most "polluting" by quantity, but compared to the productivity, it is significantly cleaner than both the developing world, and their own past. With development comes improved technology, which decreases pollution per unit production.

This is absolutely true. I totally agree with this.
But look at the level of improvement in the US, as far as efficiency and pollution controls goes, we're at a standstill. Since the 1970's. The US is probably the best-positioned country in the world to develop cleaner technologies. But they're not doing it. Not because it's not feasible, or more expensive. But because of the ideology of the Free Market Fundamentalist nutbags, who fight tooth and nail against - not only subsidized initiatives, but actual free-market attempts at making things better. (see the movie "who killed the electric car" and you'll see what I mean)

Throwing a monkey wrench into that process will help no one, and that's exactly what is proposed in some earlier posts.

Nobody's proposing throwing a monkey wrench into anything. Most of what's being proposed is akin to asking to build a levy to control floodwaters.

[Toawa]

Even if you don't push people, they push back. It's what they (we) do.

To wit: the problem is simple. Many of us have already said it. Too many people, too few resources for sustainable living. The problem is that people push back. You regulate them, they push back. You leave them alone, they destroy themselves - eventually. All of our great civilizations have, except for the ones we're in now. Why should we be different? We're not. It's naive - but perhaps comforting to believe otherwise.

The one thing that is different about our civilization that could make a difference, is that we have developed technology. Specifically, technologies that are adept at mass-population control. Propaganda. Mechanized slaughter. Biological warfare. And now, we have computers, chip implantation, mass eavesdropping and wiretapping, and databases. If there is one lesson we can learn from our own recent past, is that these new capabilities are always used for control.

If we don't destroy ourselves, eventually, some fascist dictator somewhere is going to get his hands on the perfect set of tools for controlling people, and use them. Maybe then we can be stopped from destroying our own world. But will we still be what any of us could call human? None of us, today, would want to live in such a world, I don't think.

Unfortunately, I'm a bit disturbed by the fact that, while half of the suggestions in this thread have been of the aforementioned grandiose social engineering, the other half have tended toward "assisted" population reduction. Some through voluntarily not having children, which I might not necessarily agree with, fundamentally, but is certainly well within one's rights. Others through... not so voluntary means. Now, I know that no one has seriously suggested anything of the sort; but such suggestions rarely arrive to the table in a serious fashion.

OMFG. The cult of the Invisible Hand is among one of the most ridiculous brand of religious wingnuttery there is.
The Free Market Fundamentalists don't seem to understand that what they are advocating is unleashing a natural force. The earliest human civilizations started for the very purpose of controlling natural forces - (example: ancient Egyptian priests learned to predict the seasons, and the flow of the floodwaters of the Nile river. Same with the Mesopotamians with the Tigris and Euphrates )allowing the prosperity and collective safety of the ability of large groups of people working together for mutual benefit, and shelter from the natural forces).
We are civilized specifically because we chose not to subject ourselves to the tender mercies of "invisible hands".

I fail to see the similarity between Free Market capitalism and the Nile Floods. Please explain.

There is NO natural market force that will cause people living today, to sacrifice potential prosperity for potentially making our world unable to support life 500 years from now. Particularly when the loudest voices in our newsmedia, all corporate-owned and tightly controlled by a very small minority of monied interests, devote a great deal of effort to trying to confuse and confound matters by spreading deception about the reality of Global Warming (and other environmental degradation).

The Internet may disagree with you on the control point. It has proven quite active and vocal on any number of subjects, with almost innumerable viewpoints, and a spectacularly low barrier of entry, unlike TV or Radio... Whose barriers largely artificial anyway. Our TV and Radio stations do not operate in a Free Market.

Not at all true. The "Free Market" gave us a country where the automakers got together, and systematically bought up and dismantled public transportation systems throughout the US. The "Free Market" consolidated some 50 separate owners of a regulated mass-media, to down to 4 owners of approximately 80% of the mass media - most of those owners being large, horizontally-integrated multinational corporations, like GE, MSNBC, etc. Educate? How? Who controls the message?

Again, the TV and Radio market is not free. The barriers to entry are kept artificially high, with the government's help. The Internet is quite a bit freer a market, and it shows.

There is not enough oil production capacity to provide the energy for our current population of 6.7 Billion to live the lifestyle that a few of us in the industrialized world enjoy. And if there were, I guarantee you, it would be much more difficult to spin away the obvious growing impact of global climate change. Of course, give it another 20-30 years. . .

By which point we should be back to the "Upcoming Global Ice Age!" panic, if history is any guide. It is true that we can't produce enough oil to meet the demands of 6.7 billion people, and developed rates. However, that is not an overnight transition. Not by a longshot. And over the time from now till then, we'll have improved production, for more oil, improved energy sources, for an alternative, and more efficient usage of energy. And rising oil prices will shift more attention to all three, by making drilling more profitable, by making it economically feasible to use other sources, and by giving incentive to use oil more efficiently.

As far as birthrates go - the most effective birth control known to man, statistically speaking, is college degrees for women. I have no argument against that. But you also have to give these women careers when they're done with school. Otherwise it's just an "Mrs. degree". We can't even keep 10% of people in impoverished countries gainfully employed - and you're proposing we give women something better to do than spit out babies? It would be nice - but I don't see your Invisible Hand thumbing through resumes.

That is because, unfortunately, where most of them live are woefully under-developed, both socially and economically. There's no resumes because there are no jobs to be had. And more often than not, it's because the market is controlled by the government or militias, which keep all but the well-favored from gaining anything. That is not Free Market capitalism. It is not a Free Market when your competitors can burn your shop or kill your workers or chop off competitors' hands with impunity. Why bother trying to set up any kind of business when you could be killed for it? That's why the unemployment rate, as you've cited, is 90%; because in many places, trying to form a business without getting killed in the process is a Herculean task. And that's not even beginning to touch the continuing problem of forced labor. That's most definitely not the Free Market.

Once those areas actually start developing, they will need plenty of resumes.

And the developed world might be the most "polluting" by quantity, but compared to the productivity, it is significantly cleaner than both the developing world, and their own past. With development comes improved technology, which decreases pollution per unit production.

This is absolutely true. I totally agree with this.
But look at the level of improvement in the US, as far as efficiency and pollution controls goes, we're at a standstill. Since the 1970's. The US is probably the best-positioned country in the world to develop cleaner technologies. But they're not doing it. Not because it's not feasible, or more expensive. But because of the ideology of the Free Market Fundamentalist nutbags, who fight tooth and nail against - not only subsidized initiatives, but actual free-market attempts at making things better. (see the movie "who killed the electric car" and you'll see what I mean)

It's not quite dead yet; I saw an interesting article on a new nano-scale lithium ion battery with quite an impressive charge profile, with suggestions that it could be the basis for better hybrids or even all-electric cars. Unfortunately, the first generation of electric cars really weren't all that great; as is usually the case with the first generation of any new technology. My understanding of the ultimate demise of the car was over safety concerns. They were recalled because parts would not be available to properly maintain them, and the company did not want to open itself up to liability lawsuits. But despite the paranoid rhetoric, the electric car is not "dead," and there is no grand conspiracy trying to keep it down. Though I would be interested in how, specifically, the "Free Market Fundamentalist nutbags" fought against the electric car.


Recommended Viewing: Free to Choose series, by Milton Friedman. Unfortunately, Google Video took down their copies.

Recommended Reading: I, Pencil

They Clapped, though it is only tangentially relevant to the topic at hand, but it does demonstrate the harm of one blockage of the Free Market in action; by demonstrating how anti-gouging laws can actually harm disaster recovery efforts.

[Ce6]

....

... (see the movie "who killed the electric car" and you'll see what I mean)

It's not quite dead yet;

True that. If I had the money, and the garage to install the charging station, I'd so be on the waiting list for one of these babies:
http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1

Though something built off of GM's new concept hybrid platform seems like it'd be a bit more practical:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18042/

Yeah, we're still years off from everyone having flying cars that fold up into briefcases and run on happythoughts*, but it's a start.

*patent pending

[WangyJohn]

The Australian goverment has banned lightbulbs, they will no longer be sold there, and by 2010, they should be replaced with energy saving ones.

When we're talking the oil peak and other pending crisis', I seriously doubt that the 'invisible hand' would sort it out in time. Because all that hippie stuff is hard to market and lowers the profits as compared to the traditional versions of the products, so selling them would be economical suicide (while the old versions are ecological suicide), and the whole point of the free market is to profit.

Also, everyone, thanks for the info about recycling. I'll refrase that part.

Throwing away usable stuff would be made harder, by raising the trash payments. Though, electronics should be recycled, instead of throwing them away. Organic waste would go to methane plants.

[Toawa]

The Australian goverment has banned lightbulbs, they will no longer be sold there, and by 2010, they should be replaced with energy saving ones.

I know; that's why I mentioned it, and how I thought it was a bad idea.

When we're talking the oil peak and other pending crisis', I seriously doubt that the 'invisible hand' would sort it out in time. Because all that hippie stuff is hard to market and lowers the profits as compared to the traditional versions of the products, so selling them would be economical suicide (while the old versions are ecological suicide), and the whole point of the free market is to profit.

The thing is, while it is true that the supply of in-the-ground oil is finite, there is still quite a lot of it, so when this peak condition will occur is still very much in debate. Furthermore, it's called an oil peak, not an oil cliff. We won't wake up one morning to find that all of the oil wells have dried up simultaneously and there's none left. As oil supplies dwindle, it will become harder and take longer to find new sources, causing a decrease in supply, which increases price, which shifts research and capital development toward other sources of energy.

And I wouldn't say that hippie stuff is necessarily hard to market; though it might be better off if it weren't marketed as hippie stuff.

Also, everyone, thanks for the info about recycling. I'll refrase that part.

Throwing away usable stuff would be made harder, by raising the trash payments. Though, electronics should be recycled, instead of throwing them away. Organic waste would go to methane plants.

Raise the cost of throwing stuff away, and the level of illegal dumping and trash burning will go up, possibly more so than any consumption drop or recycling increase. Unless, of course, you have a good infrastructure in place to cheaply haul out, sort, and process recycling.

[ManaUser]

Throwing away usable stuff would be made harder, by raising the trash payments. Though, electronics should be recycled, instead of throwing them away. Organic waste would go to methane plants.

Raise the cost of throwing stuff away, and the level of illegal dumping and trash burning will go up, possibly more so than any consumption drop or recycling increase. Unless, of course, you have a good infrastructure in place to cheaply haul out, sort, and process recycling.

I have to agree with you there. I've heard this suggestion a few times and always thought it would was poorly thought out.

In fact I'll agree with you on another point. Puting taxes on wasteful/polluting things may not be the best way to go, it makes people mad. It's better to give incentives to do clean/effisient things. Of course the net result is much the same in the long run since taxes are paying for the incentives, but it's alot sneakier and people won't complain as much.

Though if you pointed out very clearly that the raw materials tax or whatever was companied by drasting reduction in other taxs, you might be able to sell that idea to the public.