Sherwood Forest is gone. All the giant forests of Medieval England are either gone or are midget versions of their former selves. What saved the forests was coal and oil.
If we had not progressed beyond the use of wood for every new industry every tree would have been sacrificed. That is what happened on Easter Island, what became the Sahara Desert, in Central America and in thousands of other places.
In other words, as usual, the Guilt People have it dead wrong. We all took it for granted that a stagnant world destroys itself. As you run out of one resource like wood or oil you develop new ones. But this is not done by stagnation in a world planned for stagnation by some Wordist priest.
The environmentalist establishment today is exactly like the priests who said masses to stop the Plague. We cannot deal with any of the crises they make their living on by shouting out guilt about technology and breeding Ethiopian children. The last people in the world who could deal with global warming are Ethiopians.
#1 by Dave on 08/24/2009 - 11:40 am
Mini-nuclear power plants (smaller than current suburban substations and requiring no maintenance except once each seven years for a fuel change) (providing power for 10,000 homes each) could be in mass production in perhaps five years.
Our problems never have been and never will be economic per se. They are political and racial.
#2 by shari on 08/24/2009 - 12:42 pm
My daughter-in-law works as a book keeper for an enviormental outfit. This summer they took her to Uganda for 10days, for a program. Her job was to keep track of paying out daily stipends to those attendees from Africa. Food and hotel allowances,plus travel to get there. This had to be done on a daily basis because if it wasn’t, they would take the money and leave. Now how’s that for mixing pc with good ideas?
#3 by BoardAd on 08/24/2009 - 1:19 pm
Dave,
Buried reactors are manufactured by Toshiba and are in production now but are on a smaller scale and last longer than seven years.
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html
#4 by Simmons on 08/24/2009 - 6:06 pm
Well for the stressed out kids, consumers and old women of both sexes the fables of Unicorns prancing about fields of Rainbows beats Bob Whitaker anyday.
We’re doing triage here folks, its a grim thankless task, leave the tenderness at home. Its not about quantity, Evolution for the human is now about quality. Quality is not about buying Suburban Suzy another SUV or jetting to Africa to save starving orphans, those two peas in a pod are on the wrong side of Evolution, let them pass.
I think our duty is to prepare the few to make it thru the bottleneck that by many accounts is beginning to appear on our event horizon.
#5 by shari on 08/24/2009 - 7:14 pm
Well Simmons, who are the few to make it? You and who? What’s that going to be worth?
#6 by Simmons on 08/25/2009 - 10:01 am
How would I know who is going to make it. I do know the neolithic bottleneck was very important to European life as for quality. I like quality such as the cave paintings in France, man’s first art. Now the Abos of Australia made some very fine rock paintings, they still use them.
Moving on if anyone wants to take a small break from the rigors of online polemics I can recommend two movies germain to this thread, first is “Idiocracy” and second is “District 9.”