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> The priority should be sustainable development. What does sustainable mean? It sounds like the implication is that if we go backwards technologically that wo
by oceanplexian 3y ago
> The priority should be sustainable development.
What does sustainable mean? It sounds like the implication is that if we go backwards technologically that would somehow be sustainable.
If we doubled down on renewable energy or even nuclear energy and desalination maybe we could increase water consumption and reduce our impact on the environment without any compromises. It’s easy to be a cynic and say we should reduce agricultural output or tell people to have a worse quality of life while giving up on finding solutions, because that viewpoint requires no problem solving or innovation. That isn’t sustainability, it’s the exact opposite.
- darth_avocado 3y agoDesalination increases your environmental footprint because it is ecologically very damaging. It won’t allow you to reduce your impact on the environment.
- piva00 3y agoIt's also easy to wave a magical wand technological solution like desalination instead of looking into the issue more holistically: what is currently wasteful that we could make more efficient? Desalination is just more waste of energy, it can be part of a solution but shouldn't be the solution. We really need to look into the natural systems we modified/interfered and figure out ways to be much more efficient with them. And that is what usually gets called "sustainable". It's not being a mennonite, much rather the opposite: be smarter about what we use, extract more from less.