Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

[trish]

Yet we seem to think that economies cannot survive without growth. It's not enough to make an annual profit, the profits have to increase. Baskin-Robbins closed down the franchise in my town because it's profits weren't large enough. Large enough for what they didn't say. Growing economies require growing markets which consist of more and more consumers using more and more raw materials expelling more and more pollution. We need a whole new economic model. I think the elephant in the room is human greed. Once people are comfortable and secure in their future, they seem to automatically curb their rate of reproduction. But if there's a dollar to be made by exploiting one's fellow man, you can be sure the exploitation will commence. Yes, we need a whole new economic model; not one based on consumption, expansion and greed but one based on sanity, stability and sustainability.

[Kire89]

Yeah, somehow it's considered normal to keep money in the bank and expect there to be more of it after a year through some sort of magical concoction called growth. Similarly, if companies can't hire more people, increase salaries or open in more locations it's problematic? Dr Albert Bartlett said humankind's greatest shortcoming was our inability to understand that growth in a system full of finites cannot go on unchecked and I wholeheartedly agree. However, as this seems to be an inherent trait embedded in our genetic firmware, I doubt we have what it takes to "change". That would entail something different than being human.

I read a fun piece in an American newspaper recently, "lowest holiday spending growth since 20xx". It could've just as well said "Another year of growth", but no, they were disconcerted that it wasn't higher than so and so. Even experts at economics don't pick up on these things, makes you wonder about the state of the world.

[muh_muh]

Yet we seem to think that economies cannot survive without growth. It's not enough to make an annual profit, the profits have to increase.

because thought interest on loans debt grows as well

[trish]

because thought interest on loans debt grows as well

True enough. And so the circle closes.

[muh_muh]

the only logical conclusion is to go back the the middle ages economic model and murder all bankers every few years to clear the debt

[Kire89]

And Then Came Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=FFOkLbe5498

[trish]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/bu...?smid=pl-share

[Kire89]

That oil rig allegedly has 150,000 gallons of diesel. That's 570 thousand litres or about 3500 barrels of oil equivalent.

In comparison, Norway uses 250,000' barrels of oil equivalent daily, the US around 18 million barrels and the world 90 million barrels. This equals 39.75 million litres (10 million gallons), 2.86 billion litres (0.76 billion gallons) and 14.3 billion litres (3.78 billion gallons) in total, respectively. Every single day.

The prospect of Arctic drilling is not opposed by me: we desperately need whatever oil we can find to perpetuate business as usual. However, there may not be any significant quantities of recoverable, high-quality oil there, and the energy invested to get it will be considerable. And let's face, "we're" not going to be rational enough to downsize, downscale and de-complexify our societies for the sake of the environment or the thousands of generations and thus billions of people who could have been.

[trish]

The question is not, "Should we or should we not drill in the Arctic?" We can, for example, implement measures that make drilling in the Arctic more sustaining of the environment. Is a species of Ursidae any less valuable than a gigawatt of power that will be spent and dissipated into the atmosphere never to be used again?

[Kire89]

Anything and everything is meaningless and has no inherent value except what we decide to add to it, I think. Whether the poster child of AGW, the polar bear, is more important than the at-most 30 billion barrels of oil equivalent (a year worth of consumption, which took the Earth 5 million years to turn from dead plant material (and dinosaurs) to hydrocarbons) that might be found in the depths of the Arctic isn't a binary question. Hundreds of species allegedly go extinct every day without so much as a question raised by MSM, who focus more on Brad Pitt's nasal hair or future movie prospects.

"More sustainable" sounds like New-Speak for "slightly less environmentally damaging/unfriendly/hostile". What I've read leads me to believe that whether we cease all hydrocarbon activity now (and thus kill 6 billion ~ people) or keep going at full steam, things have been set in motion that will irrevocably "turn up the heat" for those that inhabit and inherit the planet.

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

These are great times we're living, bros!