| Toby Hemenway - "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nLKHYHmPbo Notes: He reframes "sustainable" as the midpoint of a spectrum with "degenerative" on one side and "regenerative" on the other and emphasizes regenerative systems. He talks about the length of time we (humans) have been doing "culture" (group activities, pottery, art, singing and music, etc.) and points out that it's roughly a million (1,000,000) years-- and that agriculture has only been happening for about ten thousand years, about 1% of that time. Five culture types based on food getting technology: 1 Foraging; 2 Hunter-gatherer; 3 Agricultural (cities); 5 Pastoral (Animal herding); 5 Industrial Then follows a great deal of the "dirt" on agriculture. Old hat to those who know it, horrifying and challenging to those who don't. Hemenway sums it up, "Agriculture... ...converts ecosystems into people." (Oil => Food => People) x (Peak Oil) = Hoshit! i.e. we made people out of oil for the last few generations and now we are running out of oil. Could be trouble... Holmgrin's scenarios: 1 Techno-fantasy (technology saves the day and we pack ourselves in like sardines until something else gives, or spew forth and colonize the galaxy until we reach the expansion limits of our space-drives... Technology doesn't solve the problem, only postpones it.) 2 Green-tech stable - stabilize population (match growth and death rates) and live within the Solar energy budget while regenerating the Earth. 3 Graceful decline - (growth rate less than death rate for awhile...) "Earth Stewardship" "Permaculture" I don't know where the people are supposed to have gone. 4 "Atlantis" - i.e. doom. Personally I think this is the most likely, but I'm okay with being proven wrong on that. "Peak Wood" - no kidding. Peak Oil seems to have happened before with wood instead of oil, and could be responsible for bringing the Bronze Age to a close. Wow. Last but not least, Horticulture to the rescue! All the great things about Permaculture and a Neo-Horticultural society. The video is excellent and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in these subjects. |
Ok, we have something like 450 nuclear reactors globally. IIRC bumping that number up 10 times would give us roughly two times our current global energy usage (ie fuels and electricity).
That's a margin that could reasonably address energy requirements for synthetic fuel production & delivery, sustain the additional energy we want to use for cleaner but energy demanding electrical processes in industry, and arguably put us on footing to end global poverty. Atomic process heat is wicked-good for desalination, critical to avoid water-related wars. "Next gen" tech (from the 70s...), conceivably could let us think about replenishing continental aquifers, and all round have enough energy to continue exploring space. All without any social engineering or major lifestyle or geopolitical reshaping.
I'm a big fan of solar, but our global solar energy budget has some tricky hurdles before we get to 200% current global energy usage. And I'm not enthused about anything that requires a centrally managed government (that doesn't exist today), managing life and death. It sounds scary and ripe for dystopian outcomes.