101 comments on Canadian Oil Sands Production Update
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101 comments on Canadian Oil Sands Production Update
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GAIA Host Collective
Homo sapiens is no different from yeast or any other organism, it will reproduce and consume its environment to the point of overshoot and collapse. If space aliens had beamed all the inhabitants of the OECD (developed) nations away, the end result would be the same. If all monotheists were raptured away, it would make no difference. The great majority of people everywhere love having children and love a motor. On Rarotonga, where it never drops below 20C, and the only road is just 32km in circumference (no place is more than 16km away), no adult will walk or ride a bicycle. In Shanghai, bicycles are banned from the CBD to make room for cars.
People will not powerdown willingly. Only collapse and dieoff can humble humanity. Therefore, both are inevitable because people will keep on with their monkey business (tar sands, oil palm plantations) until Gaia stops them.
Here I think a mini-collapse and a mini-dieoff might cause people to be aware of the situation in time to mitigate a total collapse and dieoff, and choose a better path. Then they will choose the powerdown path because they will have internalized (by learning) that that path is better for them. Powering down, and being happy and healthy about it, will be a new target for relative fitness. But not from being told that, only from experiencing it. At our DC conference Governor Schweitzer offered the challenge to be 'cool' about energy conservation with the slogan "How low can you go?" This might work in the framework of our evolved neural pathways, but not while profligate energy users still have more access to better mates and more stuff.
Hard times for sure, but end of times I doubt.
Of note, Niue and the Cook Islands have only avoided collapse by exporting their excess population growth to New Zealand and importing food. If the planes and boats stopped coming, they would have to revert to the old method of sustainability - warfare.
As long as someone is allowed to make money mining tar sands or destroying rainforests to grow biofuels, it will continue. I just can't see nature lovers ever outnumbering auto lovers or becoming more powerful.
Of course, just by being alive I am part of the problem. How else could it be? I am a self serving yeast just as is Jay Hanson, James Lovelock, Al Gore, and David Suzuki, none of them has committed suicide either. The only non yeasty thing I ever did was decide not to have children. Beyond that, I am following the AMPOD path of not trying to save the world, but just trying to use the mechanisms of our society to build a lifeboat for extended family and friends so I can finish my days as a (relatively) comfortable yeast while the world continues to burn up.
= www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net