Anarchist!

(sorry, you forgot one. :) )

Derrick Jensen makes the point people will defend to the death the systems that bring them food and water. If your food comes from the forest and your water comes from the river, you'll do whatever it takes to protect it. However, if your food comes from the supermarket and your water comes in a plastic bottle...

Your idea is correct. I have a degree in physics and worked for a Nobel Prize winning experiment.

High price of technology has nothing to do with social good. Rather, it is a liability.

hero

First off, special thanks to greenish & Roger K for offering an eloquent defense and added context for the ideas I was trying to convey.

RE; the "Luddite" charge, anyone who has followed my posts here or elsewhere knows I am no science-hating Luddite. Nor did I say I wanted "all technological advances stopped". That is a complete fabrication and strawman argument. Far from it, I am a champion of science, and am what the devoutly religious would probably describe as a "secular humanist". I believe (contrary to some regulars here) that nuclear power --along with renewables (solar, wind, wave, geothermal, etc.) can, and probably will, be ramped up to offset most of the decline in FFs... eventually. However, there will be very real costs and unintended consequences of that scale of ramp-up. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Heading Out, you seem to be conflating "technological progress" with "population increases", as though one cannot advance without the other. You also seem to subscribe to the common misperception that technology is the ONLY solution to the problems being caused by overpopulation: soaring food/NRG costs, environmental destruction, and resource depletion. I fundamentally disagree with this view.

I believe we can actually have *more*, not less, technological progress with fewer people than more. In fact, the pace of technological progress can actually *increase* when we are not desperately devoting most of our resources and R&D in a vain attempt to keep up with ever-increasing population growth. Take a look at the most technologically adavnced nations on earth right now. How many of them have a sharply rising population growth rate? No/flat population growth? Falling population growth? Now look at the population growth rates for the *least* advanced nations? See a pattern here?

I am strongly in favor of a higher QUALITY of life, not QUANTITY.

Certainly population growth is a problem, but it is not one that can be resolved, I suspect, in the next two decades. Thus we have to find ways of resolving issues of food, fuel and shelter as the populace grows.

Heading Out, I agree with you here. At this late stage in the game, population growth will not be curtailed in many parts of the world. At least not via the cultural carrot.

Environmental impact is one of the factors that are discussed as technology moves forward, and while it is not always possible to cover all the problems that a new technology might bring, it is not a sustainable argument for stopping technical advances.

A real conundrum. Take efforts to ramp up nuclear, for example. Because of long-term security issues (e.g., terrorism) in a post-peak world, I've long been ambivalent towards nuclear: should a Mad-Max scenario come to pass, the planet could be damaged for a long, long time.

However, in the absence of nuclear, the shortfall in power/electricity would only be that much worse. This shortfall probably increases the odds of major nuclear war considerably. And a large-scale nuclear war would also wreak havoc on the biota and biosphere for a very long time.

I'm curious, what do others think about these tradeoffs?

HO, you've been taking a bit of a beating for stating your point of view (notice how I avoided the use of the word opinion). And, we are all entitled; furthermore, that is part of the scientific process to defend one's position against criticism. A last man standing survival of the fittest Darwinian approach to scientific consensus as it were.

However, I see one glaring omission in the general scientific presumption, and that is thermodynamics. I postulate the aggregate of the peak phenomena is in fact "peak entropy". Peak Entropy is a function of human activity combined with technology. We may have hit our limit for the time being.

That being said, I do agree with your pragmatic approach to using what we know now to solve our immediate issues. We hear a few analogies about the end of the stone age, or the transition from whale oil to petroleum. The difference between then and now was all these alternative energy dense resources existed but lacked knowledge of exploitation. So tell me cornucopians, what is ready and waiting and bubbling out of the ground now?

There is a revolutionary break through waiting to take us into the next era of the peak entropy cycle, however, it doesn't necessarily derive from the lab. (And no, it has nothing to do with bare little bottoms ascending to heaven). Nor does it mean that the path into our evolution will be without pain and loss. There are no guarantees in this universe, and even entire galaxies can be consumed.

In closing, I caution about the "techno-genie" and he may not be able to deliver all three wishes. We may only get one. As a species to date we have done some remarkable things - and some deplorable. However, we should not misconstrue our role in the universe as it stands now. Can the species continue with the entropy rate we are currently in? I highly doubt it.

It doesn't matter if the issue is dressed up in environmental concerns or energy crisis, the problem is still the same. We have met the natural energy transformation rate for the ecosystem for which we depend and that's it folks. That's all she wrote.

We aren't even beginning to try to cut population growth. Pregnancies are starting every day. We could distribute birth control, fund education campaigns, even offer to pay women to get tubes tied after they've had 2, 3, 4 kids.