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Ecological Wealth of Nations

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Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#51

Post by hackeraccount »

badminton1 wrote: post #37
devy wrote: post #7

So what are the real options of survival? a) accelerate migration to Mars b) population control? Anything else we can do to prevent "fucked"?

Venus might be more survivable than Mars, just not on the surface. It is also closer.

Oddly while it's closer I think it takes more energy to get to Venus then Mars. Something to do with orbital dynamics revolving around the relative speeds of Earth and the place you're trying to get to. That said the Venus exploration concepts I've seen look really interesting.

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#52

Post by zardo »

jylam wrote: post #39
miloshadzic wrote: post #34

"Ideal" growth of an economy is 3%. Growth takes resources(fossil fuels, ore, etc). Compound growth takes more and more resources over the whole planet. Free market fundamentalism means we're not investing so heavily into alternative sources but burning what we've got. Compound that 3% and it's just a metter when we'll be fucked unless things change a lot.

> "Ideal" growth of an economy is 3% Would you mind to source and explain that ?

Three percent shall be the number thou shalt grow, and the number of the growing shall be three. Four shalt thou not grow, neither grow thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#53

Post by RGamma »

saalaa wrote: post #19
Loic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at Germany, they are steadily increasing their biocapacity while reducing their ecological footprint (I wonder how they increase the biocapacity so steadily over such long period of time). So, you may not achieve a balance, but maybe at the scale of a region like Europe, we can achieve it.

They have not reduced their ecological footprint. They are relying increasingly on coal, especially as new bioenergy installations are slowing down and demand is only growing. They have never burnt as much coal as nowadays. It accounted to 45% of their power in 2014 (couldn't find a more recent figure). They are still building new coal plants and they need so much coal these days that they raze whole villages to dig…

One of the stupidest things our government did (in my mind) was to introduce the accelerated moratorium of nuclear power (this wasn't planned at first but put into place after Fukushima, except that nuclear power station was built at the coast in an earthquake area, something the middle of Europe is not exactly known for). The short term demand will just be met with coal and a bit of renewables (which might have no local greenhouse gas emissions, but are still dirty to produce/consume rare earths). Oh, and there are lawsuits worth hundreds of millions of euros ([1] says there are estimated damages in double-digit billions of euros overall) in denied profits going on.

I'm really just waiting for fusion power to become viable and solve all of our earthly power consumption problems once and for all...

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/akw-betreiber-m...

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#56

Post by SamBam »

maehwasu wrote: post #54

It's pretty revealing that almost everyone in the world would far prefer to live in the red countries.

Everyone would probably also prefer to spend the weekend with their high-rolling free-spending uncle, who will be bankrupt in a year but will guarantee you a great time in Las Vegas, than with their budget-conscious boring aunt who will reliably save money away for all the kids' college educations.

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#57

Post by ajmurmann »

booli wrote: post #2

Just wondering, how can a small country like for example the Netherlands, with no vast tree wildlife for example, get to a neutral or even positive foot print? A trading nation by roots, is it even possible to get to 0 deficit?

Or worth city states like Singapore and Luxembourg

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#58

Post by ajmurmann »

marcosdumay wrote: post #42
guard-of-terra wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would people want to live in a space habitat? If not many, then how are we going to choose who to shove there? What if it will turn out discriminatory?

Because the habitat can be a great place to live. With all the comfort we are used to have here on Earth, but all the resources collectable at space. And if they are discriminatory, you gather an asteroid and build another one. More than 99% of the difficulty is gone just by the fact that you are not on a planet's surface. We are, of course, far from being able to build such things.

Can you please elaborate on the resources in space? There is better solar energy but what else? I intuitively would have expected resources to be far better on Mars.

Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations

#60

Post by forinti »

amelius wrote: post #16

France seems to be doing a little bit better than the rest of Europe. Is that because of their nuclear plants?

France is also a lot less dense than is neighbours to the east. It stands as 114/km2 when its neighbours have 200/km2 or more.

I guess this is also why South America does so well.

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