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> Musk and Tesla aren't our saviours. 'Less' is. Agree on the first, but the second is hardly likely. We would have to devise some miraculous means of global
by crispinb 9y ago
> Musk and Tesla aren't our saviours. 'Less' is.
Agree on the first, but the second is hardly likely. We would have to devise some miraculous means of global collective decision-making, with an eye to long-term consequences. Not even the most Panglossian UN weeny could imagine we're within decades of this (millennia is more likely).
The moment evolution tossed up a creature with the cognitive flexibility to invade all niches, and evade population-scale threats to fitness, universal overrun was a biological inevitability. Next time perhaps.
- oldcynic 9y agoI would not be at all surprised if the second will come within most of our lifetimes. Probably under something akin to a wartime economy. It will come when climate change is obvious even to the most arrogant denier troll. It won't be pretty, for anyone. We'll get to watch governments trying to force things whilst our major infrastructures are still built for economics of short term growth and ignoring externalities.
- crispinb 9y agoI can't see a route from here to there. If such a thing were to come about, it would obviously have to happen via some form of (hopefully transitional) authoritarianism, since a century (give or take) of assiduous cultivation of a culture of greed has left our citizenries largely too enfeebled to willingly and/or competently participate in such a change. Going from a couple of hundred very disparate nation States to a global benevolent & rational authoritarian regime isn't something I can imagine happening in the next 50 years or so without nukes getting involved. Admittedly predicting the future outside of immediate trends is a mug's game.