Wretched Excess

How many years have you people been yammering about a peak in a finite resource? What do you think is used to make nuclear reactors?

For all the brain power supposedly in cahoots here, you all fall several standard deviations short in common sense. It should be enough to observe the data flowing in from petroleum related activities for light to have dawned on Marblehead. Shoulda could woulda. Here's the crimp note:

The problem is not our activity, it's our proclivity.

You can wank away at alternatives all you want.......

I am not sure that rudeness, name calling and profanity are called for. Personally, "wretched excess", I found this comment offensive.

Human beings can design systems that preserve, restore and regenerate natural capital, while providing services and resources to satisfy human needs. I have personally done so on a small scale, and I can see how it could be done on a large scale, if we choose to do so. All we need to do is accept:
1) That it's a priority, because it's necessary to our survival.
2) That it will slightly diminish short-term returns (in most cases), for the sake of long-term health.
3) That just because we can do something, does not mean we should.

Besides being a Lovins disciple, I guess this would make you a cornucopian as well. From your Live Journal page we come to understand that, beyond your link to the online version of NatCap, "I like technology. A lot. I like the ways it makes my life easier, more effective, more free, and more interesting. I also like the intellectual challenge of creating it, understanding it, and using it. About the only thing I don't like about it, is having to fix it. But I really enjoy figuring out how to design it so that it doesn't need fixing." See here's the thing, have you been able to get all your technology from fully renewable sources? You sure none of them rely on trace elements which are finite in nature? Oh, but don't let that deter your (benighted) enthusiasm.

The original affluent society, see Stone Age Economics by Sahlins, still holds the record for highest cultural EROEI and leisure time. It has been the steady encroachment of technological 'advances' that have required more time of each individual, and increasing reliance upon finite sources of energy, to provide a lifestyle. The early adopters of the sedentary lifestyle also lost their ability to fend against the wilds. Hence their hybrid-domestication of the nomad hunter by providing for his needs in exchange for protection; which is where royalty came from and we have been slaves to them ever since.

Point 1 being priority, score one for the home team. Point 2, that it will slightly diminish is a gross understatement. The only long term health to be had will come at a great decrease in the net amount of per capita energy consumption; barring a rethinking of how many people will live at any given time. History is clear. We went from wood to charcoal to coal to oil to splitting atoms. Unless the Stoernies blow open known physics, there ain't no free lunch on the other side of this feeding frenzy.

Done any math lately? If the latest attempt at solar farming is any indication, it will take the area of Connecticut to power residential use alone in the US. Forget industrial. Not a watt for commercial. Nada for schlepping their carcasses around. How many of these exercises need to be done at the end of the sustainability chapter before the lesson sinks in?

You know what long term was/is? That's the time in which we did not seriously jeopardize the holding capacity of our planet. How long do you seriously think there will be all those nifty metals around to enjoy so that your iPhone can be used to remind you that it's time to turn the compost? Ahhh the life of an engineer.

Aboriginal societies tested the limits of the system long ago. Those that survived came to live within them. Those that did not perished. Too bad about the opposable thumb and incipient desire to overreach. That is why we are here. Hello. We have the capability to manipulate far beyond the sustainable ability of the parent system to provide. Attachment. Bittersweet.

So, have fun. The other side of the century will be the proof in the pudding. Of course only those with a belief system that incorporates an afterlife will get to know the answer. The living will be far less fortunate given the inability of most to deal with reality.

By the way, your point 3? I think that was the main crux of wretched excess' comment. The problem being you are to attached to your technology to see the forest for the trees...

Human beings can design systems that preserve, restore and regenerate natural capital, while providing services and resources to satisfy human needs. I have personally done so on a small scale, and I can see how it could be done on a large scale, if we choose to do so. All we need to do is accept:
1) That it's a priority, because it's necessary to our survival.
2) That it will slightly diminish short-term returns (in most cases), for the sake of long-term health.
3) That just because we can do something, does not mean we should.

Just because we CAN do something, doesn't mean we WILL. Humans are dumber than yeast. Maybe they are inventive, have opposable thumbs and all, but philosophically, they have the wisdom of a starved raccoon. It's amazing to me that more of us aren't found lying on the sides of our own highways.

If we could wrap ourselves around those principles, we could design a technological civilization for the ages. Alas, the discussion seems mostly divided between the "there's-no-problem" cornucopians and the "technology-is-fundamentally-unsustainable" doomers. There seems to be very little room left to consider the middle road.

That's because sitting on the fence means two things:
1. You have to come down to eat.
2. You are an easy target.
3. (I can't count) There isn't much profit in the middle ground unless you are a lawyer who gets paid for not solving problems, or a politician that gets paid by crooks on both sides of the fence.

Doomers like me see the long term problems as the immediate need, because we've tried to see where compromise leads, and it leads to the status quo. Things have to change. One way or another, especially how decisions are made based upon the profit motive alone. The only thing wrong with the busload of lawyers going over the cliff is that it doesn't have their accountants strapped to the roof.
We can argue about the numbers all day, but if the plan to use nuclear is only compared to using coal, then there really isn't any choice. The real question is still this: "What are we using the energy FOR?" All the talk about current consumption, reducing consumption by 'x' percent, and finding sources to 'fulfill the demands of customers' never questions the actual results of what humans are doing. It's one thing to say "we have freedom", or "we will live in harmony with our environment", but you have to ask yourself, and others, "Then what?"
What is the Net Creativity of the human race going to be, when all is said and done? What do we contribute to the universe that makes it a better place for children to grow up in? Are they really growing up, or have we created a perpetual game zone for them to exist like yeast in a petri dish?

If the petri dish is going to be contaminated anyway, then let's just burn it up now and enjoy ourselves, right?
The petri dish has existed for hundreds of millions of years, with many Net Creative species (Perhaps that includes ourselves before our 200 years of industrial toys).
Are you trying to make a better petri dish or just minimize how fast we drain it (coal) or destroy it (nuclear)? To someone who is a cornucopian or windmill salesman, my rants sound anti-technology. I am not. I am against wrongheaded technology or technology being used for the sake of the technology, not for the sake of Net Creativeness. Any technology we adapt should provide more potential(to our grandchildren) usefulness than it uses up in resources. That's a pretty simple theory. See how the things you do add up in your own mind. Rationalize any way you want, because Nature will decide in the end, not us, unless we change.
Last one out of the dish, please turn off the lights (if they still work).

I see no shame in it at all. I agree with just about everything he wrote, nor does it diminish what you wrote.

That we are not doing as you wisely think we should is one fact that better supports wretched excess's post than your ready dismissal of it. Until we do as you suggest and do so Big Time we'll be left hanging on the "If we could wrap ourselves around those principles" problem!

Right there is a Big Time problem, as exemplified by most of this nuclear rehash to solve problems that are at root ones of human excess. What's really telling is that your "middle road" concepts are no where on the publicly acceptable radar screen of what we can and should be doing. It's all mostly more of the same stupidity that got us where we are now.

There is no shame at all in pointing this out. Especially with respect to how nuclear power is getting trotted out for another look. What's to see that wasn't there the first time? It stunk then and it stinks now! Chasing after it just goes to prove how totally incapable we are at wrapping ourselves around the sane principles you wrote of to resolve our problems.

It's all about: Grab another mop & bucket, boys! The taps are on and we can't turn them off!

Insane.

I took some calculations that Robert and Nick started and polished (well at least sanded) them a little. Getting sustainable is pretty easy and saves money all along the way. Here is the link.

Chris

One of the problems with many nuclear proponents is an almost blind refusal to accept that we are part of a greater set of interrelated systems - not separate from the world. Anyone advocating anything close to current lifestyles is a psychopath.

We like to pretend we are separate from the world, because we've had the cheap energy to set aside normal constraints for a while... but all that ignorance will catch up with us, and if some things do not catch up with us, they will end up affecting our children or their children. Nuclear may stretch our current lifestyles out a bit, while making a few wealthy, but it'll come back and bite us later.

So we can choose. Do we take some responsibility for what we are doing or not? If yes, then ask serious questions:

The available productive area of the earth is 1.9ha per person. How much are we using? What is really sustainable?

We share that area with most other land-based organisms, and some of that area with non-organic resources. Whatever we extract from the earth that will not be replaced in the near (geological) future is a drawdown on mineral (and other) savings that future generations will not have the benefit of (except for the few enduring things we create).

So what level of energy use is sustainable?
What level of fresh water use?
Soil use at rates required to feed 6.5 billion and growing?
Plant and animal husbandry/natural ecosystems?
Mineral use?
Pollution?
Etc...

Why give lip service to sustainability? It will only drag things out... which answers the question - many of us will kid ourselves that we are doing something and just hope to leave it to our grandkids to suffer the worst of it.

And the answer is not in NO technology. Technology will always have its place. I just don't believe nuclear technology is part of the non-lip-service sustainable equation.

Solutions? Ideally, I think it starts with voluntary population reduction, coupled with uncensored education of the problems we are causing, looking at truly sustainable practices, and encouragement by government and citizens to reject our economic, consumer, money obsessed society... how do we do these things? That's the real question?

"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein

The difference is that renewable solutions are solutions while depletable solutions are just postponing the actual solution. The renewable sourcing is getting permanently set now. There will be very little oportunity to change the future market because "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Oil, gas, coal and nuclear are all, by nature, temporary, and thus broken so they'll get fixed. Renewables are permanent and they won't.

Exxon, Peabody, and Excelon will continue to exist, but as supliers of lubricants, christmas novelties and smoke detector parts respectively. Most of their shareholders will have migrated. Even BP is going to end up with a small market share because they are trying to be incremental in an exponential market. They are trying to balance competing interests rather than committing to what the market can do.

Ruth, if you are reading this, please tell me I'm wrong about BP. We need you.

Chris