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>massive geo and atmospheric engineering, nuclear/fusion research/dissemination, desalination and water pipelines, and large-scale laboratory meat production fr
by schiffern 12y ago
>massive geo and atmospheric engineering, nuclear/fusion research/dissemination, desalination and water pipelines, and large-scale laboratory meat production from real animal tissue
These "solutions" are merely a continuation of business-as-usual.
Each will inevitably cause problems larger than it solves, because until it does we'll just view that as "headroom" to grow more.
Desalination is particularly nasty, destroying huge amounts of land (at the opportunity cost of the ecosystem services the site could perform were it regenerated) in order to concentrate power and wealth. This is bad for socio-economic sustainability as well.
Proper rainwater harvesting and storage—or as I call it, "lazy desalination"—is quite sustainable both ecologically and socially, but that's the un-sexy problem: decentralized solutions don't make rich people richer. Try tackling that with your start-up. ;)
Continuous growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
- waps 12y agoAnd no growth (or linear growth) is the ideology of the extinct.
- schiffern 12y agoI'm sorry, I don't follow. What do you mean by "growth" in this context? What is growing? I don't think I need to enumerate the counterexamples here, as any long-lived extant species would suffice.
- waps 12y ago1) read this http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/how-populations-grow-the-exponential-and-logistic-13240157 http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/how-populat... 2) realize why populations "stabilize" ... (which for all species but humans and domesticated species means that the rate of die-off is equal to the rate of exponential growth. It does NOT mean that the individual members of the species aren't growing exponentially). There are many examples of species that stopped growing exponentially, or lost the ability to do so. They're all extinct.
- schiffern 12y agoNice read! I'll keep that link as a digestable intro to population dynamics. I now think our misunderstanding is merely semantic. I'm talking about physical growth (the growth of measurable quantities in a system through time, e.g. population counts). This would of course be net growth, as an individual dying off would reduce the count. You seem to using "growth" as "replacement rate". Of course the replacement rate must be non-zero, but that says nothing about the net growth rate. >It does NOT mean that the individual members of the species aren't growing exponentially Wait… individuals grow exponentially? https://what-if.xkcd.com/77/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/77/ :) >There are many examples of species that stopped growing exponentially, or lost the ability to do so. They're all extinct. That's true. It's also true that any element that never stops growing exponentially (again, net growth) is bound for the same fate.
- coldtea 12y ago>There are many examples of species that stopped growing exponentially, or lost the ability to do so. They're all extinct. Those are animal species. We have other talents, and other issues to solve.
- waps 12y agoThe idea that the human population is somehow exempt from the natural laws on population sizes is wholly unsupported by history. The human population follows a population curve near-perfectly, better than many animal species.
- ajcarpy2005 12y agoRainwater is pretty dirty from pollutants in the atmosphere and has a strong pH value in many cases depending upon location. EDITED for spelling and added clarity.
- schiffern 12y agoIt's not that dirty, but you do have to design for those concerns. Acid rain can be buffered by adding seashells (lime) in the tank. You can easily tip off the first N gallons of dirty rain (pollution, roof washing, etc) with a dead-end pipe with a dribble tube.
- pdonis 12y ago> Desalination is particularly nasty, destroying huge amounts of land How does desalinating seawater destroy huge amounts of land?