'Peak Wood' Offers Parallels For Our Time 604
Harperdog sends in a piece from Miller McCune looking back at the history of mankind's relationship with virgin timber. Again and again, civilizations have faced a condition of "peak wood," and how they handled it (or failed to) illuminates the current situation with regard to oil. The piece ends with a quote from the 19th-century social scientist and communist theorist Friedrich Engels, who is not generally thought of as an environmental seer: "What did the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down the forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained sufficient fertilizer from the ashes for one generation of highly profitable coffee trees, care that the heavy tropical rains later washed away the now unprotected upper stratum of the soil and left only bare rock behind? ... Let us not flatter ourselves on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first."
In other words (Score:1, Insightful)
I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2, Insightful)
Comparing timber to oil is not a valid analogy because timber is a renewable resource. We can plant more and within enough time for it to be economical there is more timber. For oil to be a renewable resource we are going to have to bury a lot of organic material for a long time.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think there's any point being scared of redbaiting - the US right already thinks climate change legislation is a socialist plot. If you're going to be accused of socialism anyway, you might as well see if there's anything useful to be salvaged from the early socialists.
Lessons? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
only to those too stupid to leap ahead with out thinking.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:4, Insightful)
it is only renewable if it is used in such a manor.
One just needs to look at Easter Island to see how "renewable" trees were to the natives.
Arguably, the timber examples are even less (Score:5, Insightful)
Forests, on the other hand, are a population, not a mineral resource. If you are willing to forgo some short-term profit, you can generate modest returns more or less in perpetuity. If you aren't, you'll find yourself with a fancy new lunar resort. Anyone who destroys a biological resource isn't, as with a mineral resource, simply reaching the inevitable sooner rather than later, they are effectively pawning an annuity for pennies on the dollar.
With oil, the only real questions are 1). "Will we invest some of the convenient energy and chemicals in finding another source of the same before the first runs out?" and 2."How far will we go, in terms of sacrificing other resources(ie. drilling in the middle of highly productive fisheries or digging up large chunks of canada and boiling it down for tar) in order to secure that one?" There is no question of whether or not we will be "sustainable"; because, for mineral resources, there is no such thing, only a question of how fast you want to dig up the supply you have.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone came up with a grand unified theory, you'd say, "so, the universe functions a certain way. wow."
and this isn't merely that "shit happens." It's "short-sightedness causes shit that could be prevented from happening."
An earthquake, a volcano, a hurricane, an asteroid strike...these things are "shit that happens." Deforestation, global warming, pollution...these things are made to happen.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2, Insightful)
Almost, but not quite. We use wood as if it were non-renewable. Certainly it will grow back if replanted and properly cultivated, but the "peak" principle of a limited resource still holds.
Add to this that as a species we desperately need land for food cultivation. We don't have enough right now, even with advanced farming techniques, to feed everyone. Not all harvested forests are replanted.
At some point we'll be able to harvest less wood than the year previous. Eventually it will go down and hopefully plateau. It won't be the same shape peak, but it will peak nonetheless.
There have been lots of peaks (Score:4, Insightful)
Peak Whale Oil, for example. Of course, the rising cost of whale oil led to the development of new technologies and new sources of energy - like kerosene.
There are many, many, many examples of people pointing out the impossibility of then-present trends continuing. Of course, if trends can't continue, they won't.
If you want an American patriot as an example instead of Engels (communism! gasp, shock, horror) take a look at Gifford Pinchot. An early leader of the Conservation movement, first Chief of the US Forest Service, quite a guy. Peak timber, peak ore, peak coal - he wrote about 'em all, back in the day.
While it's well and good to be aware of these things, and the market tends to reward those who make some smart bets on that basis - human beings have always found ways to satisfy their wants. Some are more sustainable than others, but necessity is the mother of invention, and sustainability/entropy is really only a concern when faced with a finite "universe." Technology is the key that gets us out of that box, and if we have to consume resources in order to make new ones available to us, well - such is, has been, and will be life.
Re:We are predators (Score:5, Insightful)
by design; we do not conserve, we consume.
Tens of millions of Farmville players would like to disagree.
Okay, seriously: As near as anyone can tell, organised human society became possible with the rise of agrarian societies, so stewardship and resource management are rather central to the human condition.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where the expression, "even a broken clock is right twice a day" comes into play. Just because someone had some other ideas that were bad doesn't mean all their ideas are bad. America's founding fathers, who any true American patriot reveres, weren't exactly correct on the slavery issue, after all, but they were very wise about many other things. No one is right 100% of the time; we all have our failings, or certain ideas or principles that aren't correct.
You're right. It's the floor. (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing timber to oil is not a valid analogy because timber is a renewable resource.
True. The question is -- if we tend not to do well with even renewable resources, how well are we likely to do with exhaustibles... at least, without some greater discipline than we've got now?
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that our economies work on much shorter timescales than trees. If we destroy all the forests, our economies collapse and people starve or relocate. Sure, a couple of generations later the forests may regrow, but that's a lifetime or more to humans. Worse, forests only regrow if you put a lot of effort into planting them properly. Left to their own devices, they don't; a few trees may regrow, but it takes millenia for a whole forest to regrow from a few trees by natural reproduction. Humans have only started replanting forests within the last century at best, and then mainly for business purposes (timber harvesting), using fast-growing trees.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
There was no option for the natives of Easter Island to plant new forests, once the last tree had been felled. There was no potential renewability for them. They couldn't even build seaworthy craft to go in search of seedlings. In a word, they were FUCKED. And they did it to themselves.
So every historical and archaeological record that bears on how we handle the extremes of resource management is instructive, insofar as it tells us about our patterns of past successes and mistakes.
We live with a finite set of resources at the bottom of a massive gravity well isolated by millions of miles of hard vacuum from anything else at all. We are consuming many of those resources at an unsustainable rate. If we don't want to end up like the people of Easter Island, we'd better not take any of it for granted.
Re:Please don't use "peak" with regard to non-oil. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since, (barring extinct species with no DNA on file), one can always, at least in theory, restore a population back to its old levels, or above, and exceed the "peak", we can refer to it as a "local maximum" if you wish.
As for oil, it is actually pretty similar to other minerals. In many respects actually more convenient. Oil is, basically, a very convenient source of energy, and hydrocarbons in chemically convenient configurations. The entire planet is absolutely covered with at least one, often both, of those, just in less economic forms. Solar, wind, tidal, plants, worms, poor people, etc. The problem isn't that we are going to run out of energy, or run out of hydrocarbons; but that we will run out of convenient energy and hydrocarbons. This is pretty much exactly the same game as other minerals, where the problem isn't running out; but having applications that used to be viable being priced out.
"Scarcity" rarely means that there is literally no more of something. It just means that some people can't afford it. More scarce means that more people can't afford it. That's the problem. Supply isn't a binary thing "oil exists = all is well" or "neodymium has disappeared = apocalypse". Supply is a matter of degree. If the cost of the cheapest watt goes from X to X+1, the scope of activity that you can afford just shrank. If the cost of a gram of the element you need goes from Y to Y+1, the same.(worse, since most flavors of mineral extraction require energy, when the cheapest watt goes from X to X+1, the cost of every mineral will increase).
Re:Abiogenic Petroleum (Score:1, Insightful)
If you're going to call something bunk, try to cite a reputable resource.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
Easily, sure. Quickly? I think not. In a time when businesses operate quarter to quarter, it takes decades to grow a tree and a century or more for the most valuable hardwoods. Old growth trees are still being cut. Why do you think this is?
Re:Please don't use "peak" with regard to non-oil. (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that peak refers to production, not reserves. Yes, trees continually replenish themselves (as some argue oil does). However, the cheap trees are gone, and (like fish stocks) the cost of increasing production is extremely high. The fewer trees there are, the less rapidly you can grow more to increase production.
"Peak" is an entirely appropriate term to apply to oil production, timber production, fish production, whale oil production, coal production, natural gas production, and any number of other natural resources that are being harvested at faster than their replenishment rate (at a viable price).
Just because some morons say that there's no such thing as peak oil because there's plenty of oil left sitting around in fields impossible to exploit doesn't mean that we should all change our terminology.
Re:Please don't use "peak" with regard to non-oil. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's exactly the same, at least the comparison of mineral and oil deposits. There's lots of oil deposits that are too costly to exploit at the moment, but will become profitable as oil prices rise. It's the same with metals mining, where it's starting to become profitable to mine the ocean floor. There's all kinds of resources that aren't exploited because they're too costly.
Wood really is the same; sure, you can regrow it, but it takes a LOT of time to do so, and it takes investment. Forests don't just grow by themselves; it takes millenia without any disturbances for a few trees to reproduce into a forest. To regrow a whole forest in a generation or two requires a fair amount of work by humans (cultivating seedlings, and planting them) which costs money. It also takes up land that can be used for other things, like agriculture. So if you overharvest you run out of wood until a new forest grows 30 years later.
And yes, you can find oil in soil. It's called tar sands and oil shale.
Re:Please don't use "peak" with regard to non-oil. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, the notion of peak production has to do with sustainability: that is, the relative rates of production and consumption. Resource exhaustion is another topic entirely.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't think there's any point being scared of redbaiting - the US right already thinks climate change legislation is a socialist plot.
If it's not, then why do all of the major schemes exempt the "developing world"?
LK
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:4, Insightful)
Then think energy, not oil.
The oil we're using with such wild abandon is valuable to us because it is comprised of densely stored solar energy from millions of years ago.
That's not a lot different from using lumber stored in forests, and when the stored item runs out, we're reduced to using the much less dense renewable versions.
It's not impossible, but it does take more effort than simply collecting the stored versions.
Re:Stockmarket (Score:2, Insightful)
It won't enable green tech. It will just make expensive sources of energy relatively cheap. It will also devastate the poor when it happens too. We have to use whatever energy is the cheapest and most abundant. Not doing so is a death sentence to people who don't make that much money.
Green tech will take off when someone figures out a way to create energy that's more plentiful and cheaper than oil, coal, or gas. Until then it's simply not viable. Our current "green" tech can't even survive on it's own without subsidies. It's nothing more than the stuff of fantasies.
Look around you. I bet you can't find a single thing that was not made with nor shipped with oil. Green tech will never completely replace oil. It's one of the most useful resources we've ever found. It won't be replaced until we invent star trek replicators.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the "developing world" will never buy in. From their perspective, we got where we got by burning our resources; if we don't let them do the same, it's Da Man keeping them down.
Now, could you explain what motivation the "socialist plotters" have to exclude the developing world? I don't see how the evidence you present supports your conclusion.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, rats will push a button that sends an impulse to their pleasure center, and ignore food, sex, etc... Monkeys will easily get addicted to alcohol, some drugs, etc...
I think that the average human is still less likely that the average rat to die of hunger and bed sores because of an addiction. But now my girlfriend has gone to bed, and I better go play Mount & Blade while she cannot object.
Re:Abiogenic Petroleum (Score:1, Insightful)
From alpha decay of radioactive isotopes, same as most helium?
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:1, Insightful)
And how do you know which ideas of your America's founding fathers were right and which were wrong? You're taking the current standards of your place and time as right and wrong which. It's all relative
Re:Arguably, the timber examples are even less (Score:3, Insightful)
Oil is not a mineral resource, it is organic not mineral, there is not a finite supply, and it is renewable. A sustainable oil industry is theoretically possible, though of course largely impractical.
Theoretically new oil is being created all the time and will continue to be created for the rest of eternity. The rub of course is that we've used up the majority of the oil created in the last billion years or so in the last century, so our rate of use is quite a bit faster than the rate of resupply.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
From their perspective, we got where we got by burning our resources; if we don't let them do the same, it's Da Man keeping them down.
So what? They're developing nations. If the rest of the world says so, they have to abide anyway. I say this not because I think that the "world community" should be pressuring sovereign nations on how to conduct their economic business but to prove a point. If it's wrong to force them, it's wrong to force me.
Now, could you explain what motivation the "socialist plotters" have to exclude the developing world?
Fair question. Restricting emissions in the industrialized world will have a negative impact on heavy industry, manufacturing is the biggest example. It will immediately result in leading countries not being able to compete on the world market with "developing" countries. The amount of emissions won't be changed by much in the long term because all of the emissions that are coming from currently industrialized nations will in short order end up coming from developing ones. The clear result will be to depress the economies of developed nations while inflating the economies of developing ones, when the outcome is that clearly predictably it's not unreasonable to think it's the intended one.
China has an enormous capacity for industrial production but somehow China and India were exempt from Kyoto.
LK
Re:Please don't use "peak" with regard to non-oil. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, you're saying we're going to brick the planet?
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually just finished sacrificing a goat to Jefferson. May he grant me a thousand blessings.
Re:Have to laugh (bitterly) (Score:4, Insightful)
The main problem is not the growing population, but rather the growing demands of a small segment of the population.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right in terms of the politics, but Slashdot isn't a political lobby. Can we readers not distinguish ideas from a communist that have merit from those that do not?
After all, Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner and rapist, and Wagner was an anti-semite, but it doesn't stop most of us from selectively enjoying the portion of their contributions that weren't abhorrent.
Re:Have to laugh (bitterly) (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine in a few generations a single great grandchild will have to support his parents and their parents and considering life expectancy
That would be 6-10 people plus him/her self.
To add to that, it is western society that desperately needs more youth. Third world countries are having population problems.
Finally the earth has ample resources to go on if only we where fair and efficient. Australia can support 200 million on the coast alone. 2 billion if you green the desert. You can green the deset if you have energy. You can get clean energy from nuclear fuel. This at the cost of the natural environment, but then the aboriginees changed that ahead of us as well.
The above is oversimplifying it, but the solution will find us do not worry. We will probably damadge the environment before we do so
PS: I may be guilty of what I accuse you
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
There's not much Socialism of a form Marx would recognise in Europe. There's a lot more Social Democracy. [wikipedia.org]
I also dislike this argument "Oh, but we've never had true Socialism, just every single time someone tried to establish it it led to military dictatorship and starvation". It has a faint ring of no true Scotsman [wikipedia.org] to it.
Re:Lessons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because every single time our ass is in danger, miracle/breaktrough will happen. Right.
In related news, Easter Island had quite a lot of success with "new resource will come along that made all the worrying about the dwindling resource irrelevant." strategy.
Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think there's any point being scared of redbaiting - the US right already thinks climate change legislation is a socialist plot.
If it's not, then why do all of the major schemes exempt the "developing world"?
LK
I know that die-hard capitalists will shirk at this word, but basically fairness. Is it really fair to say that an Indian family can't have a refrigerator to keep their food fresh, unless rich Westerners can have an equivalent percentage increase like a bigger SUV, swimming pool, or equivalent?
Re:In other words (Score:4, Insightful)
Gimme a break. That's because there's no such thing as a "cocaine lever" in the wild. If you did have piles of cocaine around (very small ones so it didn't kill them immediately), rats or any other animals would probably get addicted too. As someone else has pointed out, pets can become addicted to alcohol.
Well here's the thing (Score:4, Insightful)
While it is somewhat true to say that the USSR was never a true communism, that is more or less the same as the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. You are right in that it didn't function precisely how it should on paper. However, it is in fact how all communisms implemented in the real world have ended up.
The reason is because communism does not take real people in to account. Real people are lazy and greedy. There are exceptions to this in various circumstances and for various people but over all, yo find this is true. As such, any economic/social system has to take this in to account. If you give everyone free choice to do whatever they want, and have all their needs met, well then many will choose to do nothing.
The only solution in a communist system is to force people to do what is needed. You tell them "You must work or the state punishes you." Then, to make them work hard you tell them "You must meet these quotas or the state punishes you." Net effect? Low personal liberty, low motivation, and the perfect environment for a police state to grow in. The government has to be involved in everything since the state owns everything and has to keep tabs on people. In that controlling environment, a dictatorship/police state is easy to grow.
So sorry, communism may sound nice on paper but it has never worked in the real world on a large scale. As such, without evidence to the contrary, I'd say it is pretty safe to say it won't work. Capitalism, at least when subject to some regulation and control, works. It allows for societies with high individual liberties and where most people have their needs met. It's not perfect, but no endeavor involving humans will ever be.
Also if you really think that social class per Marx exists in America today, it tells me you spend far too much time absorbed in a philosophy you want to be true, and not enough time examining the evidence. The biggest difference is that there is complete class mobility. Nobody tells you that you are limited to the class in which you are born. Doesn't mean you can move up the economic ladder with ease, but it does mean you can. There are countless examples. This is far different from the system of nobility you saw in places like Czarist Russia where if you were born a noble, you were one and could more or less do nothing to lose it, and if you were born a peasant, you could never rise above that. In the US people can move up and down depending on what they do in their life. You can go from living on welfare to super rich, and indeed it has happened.
Another difference is that there is not a "rich/poor" divide. For sure there are rich people, who can have a kind of life normal people cannot, and there are poor people, who lack basic necessities. However most people are neither, they are somewhere in the middle. They have their needs met, have some autonomy and independence, but still work for a living. The middle class is where most of America is. You can also further divide that middle class in terms of how stable someone is in it, how many assets they have and so on. It is not a bourgeoisie / proletariat divide.
Finally there is the simple issue of definitions of rich, middle, and poor. What they talked about when they talked about poor was abject poverty, lacking in even the barest essentials. That is exceedingly rare in the US. Our poor are not, by the standards of much of the world and history. They do not have everything we consider essential, and they must rely on help, but they are not attempting to live through subsistence farming (which happens in much of the world).
To me, it sounds like you've spent far too much time reading philosophy and not enough time looking at the world, and its people. Communism is a neat idea, but it is not a better system.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:1, Insightful)
Only if you ignore what's really going on and strain all the analogies you can. The Marxist interpretation is trapped in the 19th Century. Social classes of that time no longer make sense now.
Really? Ever hear of something called "the widening gap between rich and poor" which even my father, a lifelong Republican, has come to recognise?
Private ownership of capital has been proven time and time again to work.
Yes, it's been shown to work quite well... for those who own the capital.
There hasn't been a series of revolutions by the perpetually disaffected.
Are you sure about that? Revolutions aren't necessarily all of the Molotov-cocktails-and-barricades variety, you know.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Have to laugh (bitterly) (Score:1, Insightful)
Probably not, it would just mean that the nations that didn't control their population would control the nations that did.
Exactly. Just like Africa is totally dominating the world economy right now.
Population growth as a strategy for dominance worked a lot better some centuries ago. Knowledge, weapons, machinery and resources is much more important.
Re:We are predators (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:1, Insightful)
Private ownership of capital has been proven time and time again to work.
And things like the recent economic crash, what's currently going on in the Gulf, the mass extinctions unfolding on around the world, the wholesale destruction of wilderness around the world, the massive overfishing of practically every species of sea creature humans can eat, (the list goes on)... are among the best examples of this are they?
Re:Have to laugh (bitterly) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
Who's this "we" you're talking about? I am not exploiting anyone; it's the corporate overlords who are abusing both first- and third-world workers and future generations to increase their profits.
Re:In other words (Score:2, Insightful)
Except they aren't countries.
P.S. why do you leave that space before question mark? It's fucking retarded.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
Add to this that as a species we desperately need land for food cultivation. We don't have enough right now, even with advanced farming techniques, to feed everyone.
This is utter nonsense. There is enough food for everyone, people in developing countries are starving because their dictators are diverting that food to fuel their petty armies.
Re:We are predators (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what I'm saying - agriculture is a necessary precursor to city building.
A: because it breaks the flow of a message (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in an area surrounded by forests that are planted and cleared for use by lumber companies and paper mills. We fear the closing of lumber companies because it will mean our forests will start shrinking... The really sad part about it, is the huge number of enviro-nutbags that want lumber companies out of business in a completely backwards effort to "save the forests."
I'd suggest every time you feel an urge to assert an absolute of some sort, you take a few seconds and reconsider.
The "forests" your favourite lumber company has planted (so full of form and colour from afar), is a forest only in the loosest definition of one. I'd suggest "a collection of trees". The enviro-nutbags have a point, one that's easily recognised by someone who's been in a forest, or otherwise knows what the term "monoculture" means and what its implications are.
Not just Easter Island either (Score:2, Insightful)
Not just Easter Island either. Scotland USED to have quite a dense pine forest until it was cleared for farming by humans. That meant the soil got poorer and now many places are UNABLE to support trees where there used to be loads of them.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:4, Insightful)
You're going to have a lot of trouble getting buy-in from the people you need it from if you're telling them that they're the only ones who are going to take a hit on this thing....
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
Comparing timber to oil is not a valid analogy because timber is a renewable resource.
To be pedantic, petroleum *is* a renewable resource, only on a time-scale much larger than the human life span :)
Wood vs. Oil - Bad Analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
You can plant trees and reap the timber in just a few decades. You can plan to create new oil, but the process takes 50 million years. There's a slight difference in practicality between the two.
We've become exceedingly good at forest management (except in California where they're so concerned about saving the poor underbrush that they'd rather burn down the entire forest, along with San Diego, than properly manage their forests). Timber is a renewable resource, whereas we are pretty sure oil is not.
We can manage timber to avoid "peak wood," but we cannot manage oil to avoid "peak oil," if such a thing exists.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not exploiting anyone;
So I guess you're a fruitarian, living in a self-built log cabin on public land utilising only sustainable, natural, locally sourced products and self-generated power. O is that a computer you're posting from . . . ?
We in the west can't help but be exploiters by dint of our wealth . . .
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:3, Insightful)
Haha - I Just saw Keynes's comment on "Das Kapital" - he calls it "an obsolete textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world."
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but that's just not true. Up until about 1945, things were looking pretty good for Marx's theories: increasing alienation and exploitation of the urban proletariat, a falling rate of profit, militant mass movements among the working class; but since 1945 we've seen a series of developments in capitalism that Marx failed to predict. That's not so say that Marx was an idiot, or that his methods were wrong - clearly, many of his predictions were correct - but if Marxist economics wants to call itself a science, it needs to accept that some of its predictions were wrong and that its theories need to be revised.
Here are some of the things a modern Marxist economic theory needs to deal with:
None of this should be read
Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
Exploitation by itself is not a problem.
Even wild animals "exploit" nature. Hunting and foraging both take away resources, and animals breathe out CO2 all the time.
Ever seen a beaver dam?
Nature was designed to be exploited, within reason, since she has mechanisms for restoration and recovery.
The problem comes when we exploit too much and hamper recovery efforts.
Similiar to how you start having cash flow problems when you raid revenue-generating capital.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? Ever hear of something called "the widening gap between rich and poor" which even my father, a lifelong Republican, has come to recognise?
Yes, doesn't imply the existence of Marx's class system though. Especially given that "poor" is pretty cushy these days in the developed world.
Yes, it's been shown to work quite well... for those who own the capital.
And a lot of people own capital, including the "poor".
Are you sure about that? Revolutions aren't necessarily all of the Molotov-cocktails-and-barricades variety, you know.
The Marxist kind are.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I'm one of those "nutbags" who hikes regularly through some of those replanted forests. There's a lot of difference between a healthy forest composed of a variety of trees, and a monoculture stand of genetically selected fast growing softwoods.
One supports a variety of life and is a pleasant experience with animals and the sound of birds; the other is a wasteland with mostly insects to keep you company.
Taking out a large sitka spruce that may be 600 years old and replanting three seedlings is not an equivalence.
If our forests are "growing" why is the timber industry pushing to get at the few remaining stands of old growth forest? Just harvest the three trees you planted last harvest season. After all, that's 3 times the trees you will find in the old growth forest.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
That quote reveals much about the author. Much like the "exploitation of nature" comments above.
The anthropomorphism of "nature" and placing in it an adversarial role with humans is very... Disneyesque.
And much like Creationism, it is a not a good vector from which to deal with management of natural resources and legislation.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:3, Insightful)
The developing world has a right to use their (remaining) resources as they see fit. If the developed world is concerned about damage from use of these resources or wants access to them, they should be ready to pay fairly for the privilege. There are appropriate development paths which include education, health, renewable energy, etc. that could lead to sustainable development but these are not favored because it would cost the rich world in direct development aid and also loss of power to exploit the developing world. An educated, healthy, economically sustainable "third world" is a great threat to the current rich world corporate and military powers so it will not happen.
Re:Wood vs. Oil - Bad Analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
"You can plan to create new oil, but the process takes 50 million years."
Why would it take that long? How inefficient is your oil production plant?
Hydrocarbons is still the best way to move energy around. And the molecule is basically carbon and hydrogen. No crazy elements needed. Why not make our own?
The reason this hasn't been looked into, is because it's far cheaper to mine it out of the ground or extract it from coal and shale. Assuming those processes become impossibly expensive, then making our own using production plants powered by renewable energy, or even nuclear, is a distinct possibility.
Re:Have to laugh (bitterly) (Score:3, Insightful)
Amm ... a society with one child per family may not be sustainable. You are making the same mistake everybody that thinks that there is an obvious solution.
Imagine in a few generations a single great grandchild will have to support his parents and their parents and considering life expectancy ... maybe some of his great grand parents.
No, you, sir, are making the mistake everyone makes. In game theory, it's called the Horizon Effect: where you fail to make the move that produces the best long-term result, because you aren't looking far enough ahead to see the disaster that will ensue if you keep on minimizing short-term losses.
Yes, lowering birthrates will mean that the generation that decided to have only one child per couple will have fewer children and grandchildren to take care of them. *Not* lowering birthrates leads to a world where natural resources are so depleted that your large number of grandchildren will have nothing to support you with.
We're already collectively screwed; the longer we stay in denial about this, the worse the pain will be when starvation forces population growth to zero or less.
Re:Wood vs. Oil - Bad Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes and no.
The mistake you're making is treating all timber the same. The timber that 'peaked' in the 19th century (and is now nearly vanished) took centuries to grow. The timber we harvest every few decades today, well it took only a few decades to grow.
The differences between the woods are immense. Wood from virgin forests (as opposed to modern managed farms) is extremely dense, with many more growth rings per inch. Wood from such forests, both hardwoods and softwoods, are much stronger and longer lasting. (Even taking into account selection bias, this is the key reason we still see wooden structures from decades and centuries ago still standing.) Not to mention the wood varieties that take centuries to grow in the forest aren't available from managed tree farms at any price.
This mattered a great deal back then, when wood filled so many niches that steel, concrete, and plastic fill today.
So yes, it's a valid analogy. Don't be mislead by how we take poor quality wood as the norm today.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:3, Insightful)
Fiddling while Rome burns (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of things here:
Every day we delay fixing our energy problems, the consequences get worse. But hey, at least ExxonMobil, et al, are making a lot of money, so there's that.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially given that "poor" is pretty cushy these days in the developed world.
Tin shacks are the new McMansion?
Starvation the new cleansing regime?
Chronic illness the new cool way to get that heroin chic look?
I think you and the idiot(s) who modded you insightful don't have a clue what it's like to have to choose between eating and keeping a roof over your head. One or the other. Not a little of both. Not pay the rent late when you get paid next week. No free money from the Bank of Mom and Dad to hold you over. One or the other.
I think that kind of decision would change your ridiculous opinion.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:4, Insightful)
Communism and Capitalism are two sides of the same Materialist historical-dialectic coin. They are the same god damned thing in spirit, basing all measure of the value of human endeavor on material wealth production. That's why they both kind of suck.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:3, Insightful)
"the US right already thinks climate change legislation is a socialist plot."
The proponents of such legislation haven't done a very good job of selling it, or selling the idea of local sacrifice while law-free zones of the world do what they will.
There is the problem of climate change, and there is the problem of addressing it in ways that are not and are not perceived as "lawfare" against the US.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
A great many of the things today that we cannot think of doing without were once considered luxuries.
EVERYTHING but food was once considered a luxury. Sanitation, indoor plumbing, electricity, telephones, transportation... but the fact is you can't make a living or even stay alive in today's world without those things.
Re:In other words (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, I find it pathetic that people actually waste their time going out and polluting the environment with their cars, when they could be staying at home watching the walls melt! What's wrong with those people, that they have to seek enjoyment from the filthy, disease-ridden outdoors?
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure that the Easter Island native who cut down the LAST TREE on Easter Island jealously fought for his God Given Right to cut that tree down. It was HIS tree damn it. Who the hell had any right to tell him he could not cut that tree down? Besides. He also had the last axe.
Re:I Hate to Be the One to Point This Out (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the reason the American Revolution didn't end up as badly as it could have, is because the commanders of the Continental Army were trained and educated former British Officers, who were trusted by the peasants, because they knew how to fight the occupying Red Coats. And the peasants knew that, implicitly. They acted as a rather civilizing force, and that's largely why US law is based on British "Common Law" - even if our governmental structure is not based on the British hybrid royal/parlimentary system.
Now - on the OTHER side - there are numerous accounts of extreme brutality by British troops, on the rebelling colonials. Extrajudicial executions, rapes, property seizures, etc. All the typical mistakes that imperial powers make while they're arrogantly failing at "winning hearts and minds" because they're in a "we can win by force" mindset.
True: Democracy, as implemented in 1776, was designed to prevent subversion. Loyal Torries had faith in the Crown, and the Magna Carta, and perhaps also feared British power. But they were blinding themselves the the fact that their fellow colonists were being subject to arbitrary abuses, contrary to the letter and spirit of the Magna Carta - (just as modern Americans have blinded themselves, post 9/11. . . ).
NO Document, or system of law can protect against Psychological Denial.