Re:Bill Gates: My Plan to Improve Our World, and How You Can...
by Double_Cast on Tuesday November 12, 2013 @11:56PM
(#6723432)
> but it's not just because we keep finding new pockets of resources to exploit, it's because we are getting more efficient at using those resources.
There's something called "Jevon's Paradox". It asserts that increases in efficiency (via technology) increases consumption rather than decreases.
Re:Bill Gates: My Plan to Improve Our World, and How You Can...
by specialist on Tuesday November 12, 2013 @11:50PM
(#6723412)
As I said, we're in a bear race. Can we switch to renewaable energies, and mitigate the atmospheric CO2 buildup, before catastrophe wipes the current era's slate clean?
And no, I'm not a Luddite. The only way is forward. Full speed. Any hesitation means humanity loses.
* Earth is not a closed system, it receives an enormous influx of energy from the sun
* We are no where close to using even a fraction of that potential, or using too much of it, most of our energy use is in the form of digging up time-compressed solar energy.
* We are enormously wasteful in manufacturing, no where close to what can be achieved according to the laws of physics
* Life itself shows you that you can manufacture or an enormous quantity of material and continue to recycle it sustainable over eons. So while our current manufacturing techniques cannot sustainably scale forever, there's no fundamental reason why we can't have a manufacturing ecosystem that works more like a biological one
* Matter is neither created nor destroyed by our industrial processes, only rearranged. We benefitted by digging up low-entropy material filtered and concentrated by slow geological/biological processors, but again, there is no proof that we cannot, in an energy efficient manner, recover the used material. Whether through bio-technology or nanotechnology.
The basic premise that man is clever and keeps finding ways to postpone the Malthusian bombs is correct, but it's not just because we keep finding new pockets of resources to exploit, it's because we are getting more efficient at using those resources.
Not to mention the fact that the assumption that GDP growth is equal to manufacturing or population growth is wrong. The math allows value of goods and services to go up even as amount of energy, people, or raw materials used goes down.
We have clear challenges, and we should be scared enough to invest in them heavily. But if you're not a techno-optimist, that we will find ways to address and improve these issues without throwing away our entire style of life, and instead thing the world is going to renounce the last 300 years in favor of a return to life before the industrial revolution, you're backing a set of policies that will never succeed.
As I see it, if collapse is coming, only our smarts are going to save us, not a retreat.