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This is my primary concern with fusion. I have a gut feeling that fusion existing could actually accelerate consumption and thus climate and environmental chang
by bmitc 4y ago
This is my primary concern with fusion. I have a gut feeling that fusion existing could actually accelerate consumption and thus climate and environmental change. I have been trying to find research about this. I recently found the book Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism by Ozzie Zehner, which I think may be interesting.
I should note that I am not against fusion and absolutely think we should be doing it. However, it's my feeling and something that I'm trying to learn about that we should also be doing many other things. For example, conservation of land and habitats is no longer viable. We have got to be restoring these things as best we can if we have a chance against climate change. I think it should be renamed environmental change, because that's more accurate and paints the more serious picture. Climate change seems to phrase it in very human-centric terms. We also need another economic system whose end goal isn't corporate world domination. We need an economic model that drives innovation but also redistributes and is sustainable. What's interesting is that this is exactly what nature accomplishes. But humans have gone off the rails in terms of consumption. However, with our adaptability and technology, we have been able to continually consume more and more, whereas other animals (e.g., rabbit populations) cannot continually exist outside of some bounds and are checked. What's interesting is trying to understand where our bound or what our check is going to be. I have a feeling that our destruction will eclipse our adaptability and technology at some point. It will not be pretty when that happens.
- akelly 4y agoIf fusion creates clean power for significantly cheaper than fossil fuels, causing power usage to accelerate, so what?
- rodun 4y agoI think more power usage = doing more things, and although the power was generated cleanly, it won't necessarily be spent similarly
- animal_spirits 4y agoIt's not just the usage of fossil fuels that causes damage to the environment. More energy from fusion will allow more precious resources to be mined, more wasteful stuff to be made, more trash to throw out. I'm not against fusion at all, but it is important to remember that carbon dioxide isn't the only problem harming the planet.
- bmitc 4y agoAs other commenters have pointed out, it's not just power usage that will increase. Because there is a huge amount of material and processes that will be mined, disposed of, exhausted, pollute, etc. in addition to drawing all that power. There has got to be a nice graph that correlates power usage with these things, but I have yet to find it.
- thereisnospork 4y ago> As other commenters have pointed out, it's not just power usage that will increase. Because there is a huge amount of material and processes that will be mined, disposed of, exhausted, pollute, etc. in addition to drawing all that power. These are all the things which allow us to live in a modern society with a high quality of life. More power is a more modern higher quality of life for more people, citing the last few hundred years.
- bmitc 4y agoI'm not sure I agree with that because it assumes quality of life is improving. > More power is a more modern higher quality of life for more people, citing the last few hundred years. Nor do I think that is a given fact. More people starve today than there were people alive a few hundred years ago.
- thereisnospork 4y agoDo you really intend to argue that the quality of life in just about anytime before the 1960's is better than it is now? Quite a lot of people were still stuck on the subsistence farming treadmill. >Nor do I think that is a given fact. More people starve today than there were people alive a few hundred years ago So no credit for feeding the billions who eat on the back of modern, energy intensive, fertilizer production?
- bmitc 4y ago> on the back of modern, energy intensive, fertilizer production One of the very things destroying the environment and negatively affecting public health? > So no credit for feeding the billions This isn't school and human lives and people are not statistics. The question to ask is "at what cost?". Does feeding those billions suddenly do anything to help the 800 million or so starving in a world that has enough to feed them? What about the illions of animals and plants humans have destroyed over the past few hundred years? Again, at what cost? A related aside: when humans originally started to utilize agriculture in the beginning of human history, the overall affect was a net negative in health, life expectancy, and efficiency (i.e., time spent working).
- imtringued 4y ago>We also need another economic system whose end goal isn't corporate world domination. We have economic democracy, participatory economics and good old Freiwirtschaft (can be translated as free (as in freedom) economics by Silvio Gesell. >What's interesting is that this is exactly what nature accomplishes Capitalism only allows for growth, whenever the economy isn't growing, people get fired and you have an economic recession or depression. Freiwirtschaft simply allows for both growth and decay. There is no discontinuity i.e. recession and no unemployment when the economy isn't growing. People will keep working to maintain their existing capital, that includes restoring nature.