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Proposition: The present policies of tackling environmental problems are madness and doomed to failure.
Opening statement:
In a posting on the e-bike future prospects thread, one posting contained this:
"what happens when energy is treated as a scarce or valuable resource? Then everything changes. Its no good then debating whether e-bikes can compete with cars, because the whole concept of a car no longer makes sense. The whole idea of travelling large distances to work disappears. In fact, even the concept of a road starts coming under scrutiny."
It's a widely held view, and one possible implication of that is a world with a much smaller population, since there could be more dependence on local supplies, only able to sustain smaller concentrations of people, and possibly reduced availability of sophisticated technology.
Present policies of tackling the environmental problem are immensely complex, very difficult to administer or enforce, and accomodate an ever increasing population living an increasingly impoverished life due to many of the current benefits we enjoy being removed or restricted.
This is completely unnecessary, since a reduction in population to what the earth can viably sustain can solve all the environmental problems and many more besides. By moving towards a population of one billion instead of the current rapidly growing 6.5 billion, we will be able to carry on using fossil fuels with our clean burn technologies, gain the space we need in overcrowed areas, fish our seas sustainably without the pollutions of fish farming, be more capable of growing our food needs locally, able to drive whatever we like and jet off on holidays with a clear conscience.
With demand much lower, we will no longer have to disfigure beauty spots and our coastlines with forests of turbines, we will be able to ignore nuclear power for a considerable time, coal can again be the source of electrical energy using clean burn techniques, and we will be able to confine our "green" activities to those which work best, ignoring the measures which come with sting in the tail. The social ills and mental illness problems that result from population density will be greatly reduced or disappear in many cases.
But most importantly, everyone on the planet will be able to fully share in these benefits, and wars for oil, water and space will increasingly disappear with enough of everything to go round for all.
It will take time, and we cannot use the harsher methods that the Chinese used to rapidly reduce their population, but even done slowly, it will achieve more than Kyota will manage on present indications. The concept of one single universal simple to understand policy is crucial to progress in this area, and once achieved, the population size could be used as a single regulator to ensure a permanence of sustainability.
This is a modern future with space and all the benefits of our progress that can be welcomed, infinitely preferable to present policies which include battery farm living densities of 35 homes per acre, proposed to rise to 50 homes per acre. An acre is less than a 70 yards/metres square, a sobering thought at that density.
Discuss, but please don't attempt to reduce the population by fighting.
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Proposition: The present policies of tackling environmental problems are madness and doomed to failure.
Opening statement:
In a posting on the e-bike future prospects thread, one posting contained this:
"what happens when energy is treated as a scarce or valuable resource? Then everything changes. Its no good then debating whether e-bikes can compete with cars, because the whole concept of a car no longer makes sense. The whole idea of travelling large distances to work disappears. In fact, even the concept of a road starts coming under scrutiny."
It's a widely held view, and one possible implication of that is a world with a much smaller population, since there could be more dependence on local supplies, only able to sustain smaller concentrations of people, and possibly reduced availability of sophisticated technology.
Present policies of tackling the environmental problem are immensely complex, very difficult to administer or enforce, and accomodate an ever increasing population living an increasingly impoverished life due to many of the current benefits we enjoy being removed or restricted.
This is completely unnecessary, since a reduction in population to what the earth can viably sustain can solve all the environmental problems and many more besides. By moving towards a population of one billion instead of the current rapidly growing 6.5 billion, we will be able to carry on using fossil fuels with our clean burn technologies, gain the space we need in overcrowed areas, fish our seas sustainably without the pollutions of fish farming, be more capable of growing our food needs locally, able to drive whatever we like and jet off on holidays with a clear conscience.
With demand much lower, we will no longer have to disfigure beauty spots and our coastlines with forests of turbines, we will be able to ignore nuclear power for a considerable time, coal can again be the source of electrical energy using clean burn techniques, and we will be able to confine our "green" activities to those which work best, ignoring the measures which come with sting in the tail. The social ills and mental illness problems that result from population density will be greatly reduced or disappear in many cases.
But most importantly, everyone on the planet will be able to fully share in these benefits, and wars for oil, water and space will increasingly disappear with enough of everything to go round for all.
It will take time, and we cannot use the harsher methods that the Chinese used to rapidly reduce their population, but even done slowly, it will achieve more than Kyota will manage on present indications. The concept of one single universal simple to understand policy is crucial to progress in this area, and once achieved, the population size could be used as a single regulator to ensure a permanence of sustainability.
This is a modern future with space and all the benefits of our progress that can be welcomed, infinitely preferable to present policies which include battery farm living densities of 35 homes per acre, proposed to rise to 50 homes per acre. An acre is less than a 70 yards/metres square, a sobering thought at that density.
Discuss, but please don't attempt to reduce the population by fighting.
.
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