Consider this:
In 1950, population was 2.5 billion.
In 2000, 6 billion (i.e: 2.4x in only 50 years)
In 2010, 7 billion (16% growth in only 10 years)
Is this sustainable? clearly not the way things are right now.
Ecological Wealth of Nations
41–50 of 133 posts
Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine is a big advocate of space habitats. Apparently they are far superior to Mars as a place where we could expand in foreseeable future. Maybe someone knowledgeable could chime in?
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.
Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations
#43Consider this: In 1950, population was 2.5 billion. In 2000, 6 billion (i.e: 2.4x in only 50 years) In 2010, 7 billion (16% growth in only 10 years) Is this sustainable? clearly not the way things are right now.
The population growth rate is steadily declining. The last hundred years, is not going to be reflective of the next hundred. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#growthrate As the bigger countries like India get more and more industrialized, they will level off too.
Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations
#44So what are the real options of survival? a) accelerate migration to Mars b) population control? Anything else we can do to prevent "fucked"?
b) You will have to control developing countries mostly, which will righfully trigger discrimination cries.
I 100% personally believe that population control is the best answer. However, I would probably not support it going into law, because I believe it would end up just moving into a form of Eugenics that preys on the poor. Not to mention the international political doors it would open to non-trustworthy nations.
Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations
#45Great visualisation. It's good to focus on the stocks instead of the flows.
"to feed the continued growth in industrial output there must be ever-increasing use of resources. But resources become more expensive to obtain as they are used up. As more and more capital goes towards resource extraction, industrial output per capita starts to fall [...]
As pollution mounts and industrial input into agriculture falls, food production per capita falls. Health and education services are cut back, and that combines to bring about a rise in the death rate" [1]
"Broadly stated, most ecological problems reduce to a single problem of balancing supply and demand." [2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits...
Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations
#46>Singapore: 16000% So the takeaway from this is you should aim for high biocapacity deficit, right? I mean, I live in a deep green country, and it's a filthy dump.
That's my take away too. I won't name names but there are a lot of "ecologically wealthy" countries that nobody in the right mind wants to live. People should aim for maximum human flourishing, not minimising human impact on the planet.
A better way to read this map: countries in the deep red are places where people have tamed this inhuman, unforgiving Earth, and people can lead happy and self-defined lives.
Countries in the deep green are where people are at the mercy of nature and die of 20th century causes.
People in the former complain that it is too "antiseptic" or "artificial", occasionally gawk at the latter and chastise everyone for not living in misery, always from the comfort of a city where the vast infrastructure that supports their lives is perfectly out of sight and out of mind.
Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations
#47Just 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?
They have quite a vast network of turbines. During some of the most windy days of the year, they produce more electricity than they consume. I'd say they also tend to do much less shipping by truck than many other countries.
Not sure where you got that from but 'sustainable energy' production (includes more than just wind, but safe to say that in our country is mostly wind) was only 3.9% in 2009. The government set a goal of 20% by 2020. So no, we are still mostly reliant on other forms of electricity.
Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations
#48So what are the real options of survival? a) accelerate migration to Mars b) population control? Anything else we can do to prevent "fucked"?
Read Plato's Revenge by William Ophuls
Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah that just screams "externalities" to me, and if that's true it undermines the whole dataset.
It is a genuine question, not a rhetorical question putting into question the data, Netherlands has currently a deficit of 4.1 GHA.
Oh I misunderstood GP then without double-checking the website. My apologies.
Re: Ecological Wealth of Nations
#50Earlier 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.
These days people prefer to live either in suburbia in Mediterranean climate or in old capitals (think Paris and London). That's a definite trend - we no longer have colonization of new spaces, we instead have consolidation in known good places.
One can perhaps start a commune in a forest or on an island even today, with handpicked people, but it doesn't happen.
Wanting to flee from Earth with all its problems is understandable, but I fear that we'll repeat a lot of bad stuff in habitats. Think totalitarian cults, slavery, plain old totalitarism.