This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »
Energy Crisis
Humanity is facing many worldwide and local crisis. Most of them have the same roots - we have the approaches to solve them, but resources are to thin to cover whole of the crisis and all of them together. These resource-based problems are shortages:food, housing, education, healthcare can be resolved with adequate resources. Unfortunately rich nations don't want to lend their own resources as they are facing their own crisis in underemployment, under-education, market instability and social inequality. Most of the problems are resource problems in this sense. In our time of industrial progress it would be natural to expect these issues to be resolved with time, but the industry is facing a serious challenge - energy crisis. The era of liquid fuels is coming to an end and even otherwise plentiful fossil fuel sources (coal & gas) are threatened by Global Warming. There is no other immediate source of power:Nuclear, Renewable's energy sources are still not fully up to the challenge.
Yes there are other issues that don't stem from this source (non-resource based problems), such as social justice, culture-clashes, but they would alleviated by having plentiful resources as haves would be more enabled to share with have-not's.
Discuss?
Thomas Jones 100+
We do not actually have an "energy crisis." There's lots of energy.
It's just that our desires outstrip our ability to access environmentally friendly sources of energy.
We could scale back our usage ... but we don't want to.
Ignas Galvelis
It is the food we eat, it is the water we drink, it is the clothes and the houses, the lights and the internet.
Yes all of this can be "scaled back": we can eat less and we can drink worse, we can have less to wear and we can have less to live in and probably none to talk to. To imagine the world where energy is scarce, we can go back in time where not many had a car, not everyone had access to food or clean drinking water. Or we can look at African/Indian/Chinese people where they live like we did in the beginning of the last century.
I would rather dream of a time where energy is plentiful and cheap, where we can build skyscrapers to city size, flying castles and cars, travel to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Thomas Jones 100+
I live in China, have lived in Africa, and have visited India 15 to 20 times. It is not the food, water, or clothes that take up all the energy we, in "the west" consume.
We would not have to "eat less" or "drink worse" to conserve 80% of the energy we use. We might have to "eat local," walk more, fight less, go to bed earlier, and so on. All things we would rather not do. We would rather find cheap energy - which, I think is a good idea ... but it is not a solution to the "problem." Cheap energy will simply allow us to assault our environment more efficiently.
Ignas Galvelis
The people (or organizations) who assault the environment usually are not those who can afford not to assault it. The rain-forests in Brasil are not demolished by rich billionaires in USA, but rather by poor local farmers who want to feed their family. If organization can afford not to pollute the environment it would do so rather than risking its own reputation. It affects its profitability (like in a resource constrained world), then the environment matters no more.
Yes probably if we would revert the industrialization to middle-ages, let most of the people die-off and make most population to poor to be able to afford a plow then the rain-forest would be safe, but the rain-forests can also be preserved in a industrial paradise where energy is clean, cheap and plentiful by promoting the right incentive's for the industry.
Thomas Jones 100+
Well, you have touched on an interesting distinction: the individual versus the system.
The billionaire in the US may not carry the saw that cuts the tree down in Brazil but he or she (and we) support the system that makes cutting the tree down make sense economically if not ecologically or morally.
I do know how much energy goes into making our clothes (and into the meat we eat) and it would make more sense, ecologically, for us to wear simple clothes and eat a vegetarian diet. But our clothes are not really the problem ... the meat ... well, that might be a bigger deal.
And while I do think each one of us should do what we can to minimize our ecological footprint, I also think the systems we have created are inherently inefficient. They more or less force us to "waste" energy. Take cars, for example, most of us think about "emissions" when we think of internal combustion engines. What about the roads? What about the mining that is required to make billions of cars? What about the rubber for the tires? The scrap when a car no longer functions? Etc. Etc.
Just looking at your picture and based on the forum we are using to discuss this, I can predict, with some certainty, that your ecological footprint is 80% greater than my friend Maurice's who lives in Kenya ... and there is very little you can do about that. The system you live in forces you to be ecologically "irresponsible."
I do think finding "clean energy" is a good idea but I do not think that is the solution to the problem.
Ignas Galvelis
There are a lot of advantages to being able to travel around the world (with the disadvantage of huge ecological footprint) , but probably an average Kenyan could never afford that, nor could he (normally) travel so much with his bicycle.
There are many approaches to each problem and each one can be considered a solution depending on perspective. Maybe some alien race would look down on earth and consider human-cide as a "solution" to its ecological problems, but the human race might disagree.
In my opinion deindustrialization can not be a solution, but a clean industrial revolution can. In case energy would become clean, cheap plentiful prices of goods would fall so much, that industry (and agriculture) would not be able to compete on price basis anymore. So it would have to find other avenues of promoting its products such as providing locally, ecologically and improving quality. Of course probably a lot of those efforts would be misguided at first (like green-wash), but in a free, democratic, resource-rich society they can be criticized and improved upon.
Thomas Jones 100+
I was not evaluating your ecological footprint on the basis of your logic but rather on your probable socioeconomic standing and your geographic location.
I am not suggesting deindustrialization as a solution. Nor do I think a particular economic or political system is the answer.
B. Reynolds
Xavier Smith
Ignas Galvelis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
Still regarding OIL while the resources available are wast, their economic availability becomes more challenging with each extracted drop as you need more and more resources (work-energy, time, technology) invested to get the same return and most predictions of peak are in the past:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PU200611_Fig1.png
While we can argue about peak consumption, peak production should not be controvertible.
B. Reynolds
Ignas Galvelis
David Hamilton 50+
Ignas Galvelis
David Hamilton 50+
Small community groups could do this on their own, and lower consumption. The problem is that Americans think to big, and too rich. We want a giant concentration plant that feeds a city, but enslaves all the people to pay for it. We don't want there to be a one time cost, that gives people free energy... It's not profitable enough.
Check out this video which uses only 3 meters of sunlight, easily available in a backyard.
http://youtu.be/z0_nuvPKIi8
Ignas Galvelis
David Hamilton 50+
Ignas Galvelis
This is not a scale-able solution and it is not a way to quickly address the energy problem.
David Hamilton 50+
Also the real future in large scale power plants that use this technology is even more efficient... Solar desalinization plants. Boil sea water, get sea salt, fresh water, and steam power, 3 profitable products. People aren't being creative enough in implementing these ideas. This is ideal for island communities, and California.
Also, electric motorcycles... If we could actually get people to buy them, we would scale down our need for power so dramatically, that coal, and oil would shit a brick. The problem is that Americans won't buy small things.
Ignas Galvelis