Is technology and environmentalism compatible? Is technology neutral?

[auroraglacialis]

HNM, I have to apologize in one point, and that is "that you feel close to the NA'Vi. For them, the choice would be utterly clear" - that was a bit too personal, and I apologize to have written this in a rush.

Originally Posted by Human No More

I completely disagree. A new civilisation wouldn't happen overnight, humans existed for millions of years before developing even the basics of civilisation such as extended communities, the use of metals and development of agriculture.

And who says that agriculture and metals would be the way to go? In fact these are the things that do not work out so well. If a civilization could rise that is not dependent on agriculture and thereby on deforestation and tearing up the soil - now that would be something!

Anyway, 'limited' resources have always been extended - I rememebr when I went to school reading that oil would run out in what was now around 5 years ago.

Not really - The uncertainty may be some years, but for many resource divisions it is actually true. Oil production in the US has already peaked, coal mining in Germany is in decline and so on. The only way that an increase persisted is by finding new resources that play the same role. Like tar sands that can be turned into oil.
Also, the statement that it will "run out" is of course never true - what happens is that production declines and/or investment in energy and ecological devastation rises. It is quite evident - to produce fossil fuel, a few years ago people drilled a hole in the ground and pumped it. Now there is deep sea drilling, tar sands, hydrofracking, mountain top removal and oil shale mining. The area affected is getting larger and the risks greater. That IS peak oil in action.
And take a look at this nice one here: http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/33/33646/33646_1.jpg it is a graph from the IEA, not exactly a treehugging green organization. What you see there is a plateau, that can only slightly grow if there is an increase in "unconventional oil" (=tar sands) and by that nice light blue patch, that is getting bigger each year. What this means is that there would have to be new findings of conventional oil fields at a rather constant rate. This is speculative at best. But I dont want to start on peak oil here, just saying that the famous hubbert curve has a plateau and that this plateau is called "peak oil" and that what can be seen on the graph above is (and they use optimistic esitmates) very much like a plateau.

Sure - there will be oil in 30 years - no doubt. But it may take even bigger chunks out of the forests of Canada to mine it, may involve even higher risks of oil spills or eventually the beginning environmental destruction of Antarctica.

Either way, the appropriate technology is here for the most part, for example fusion reactions can be produced, they just need to improve the stability as the key to creating longer term and more controlled ones. We've had the technology (and knowledge) to reach Mars or the asteroid belt since the 1960s, people are just too scared to use it.

I doubt that. Many of the technologies that were believed to "save us all" turned out to be not very good at that. There are quite definite reasons for why these technologies are not applied. To "cover the Sahara in solar panels" (just to pick one of them at random) for example would require unimaginable investments in energy (from fossil fuels), REEs (a limited mineral resource) - it would also require political stability and protection against sand storms and it would create a dependency of industrial states on countires in Africa.
The technology to travel to Mars are certainly there, but what is the point? Probably you can also send a ship to the asteroids, but what then? Attach a big old rocket drive to an asteroid and haul it back to Earth for mining? That is SciFi.
If civilization continues to exist long enough to deplete Earths resources enough, I guess they will start mining in Space by investing humongous amounts of energy into that. But the economic balance of this is quite devastating. What I mean is that the point at which this is viable equals to an Earth so depleted of resources that the thought alone makes me weep.

Population again? I thought I already explained my point there.

Not exactly. In one post, you say that we need less people on the planet to make it work, in the next you bash me for suggesting a path that will eventually bring down population.... So what - population reduction is good if it involves the remaining people to live in high tech, but bad if they are living with less technology??

Not only do undocumented species go unrecognised - MANY species go extinct naturally, even more so if you are more strict on the definition of species.

still - humans are right now causing the extinction of 1000 times more species daily than the natural rate. Some argue that this is just a natural mass extinction in progress, but with humans having influence on ALL ecosystems on the planet, I think that is completely unlikely (not to mention that there is no other cause that has been found)

Again, by using them responsibly, and ignoring less sustainable ones, so that they can last as long as sentient life inhabiting the planet will.

Ok, that is an interesting suggestion. People use only very sustainable technologies, low population and voluntarily not use the technologies that destroy the planet. The question is how likely this is? If there is a short and dirty way to create something marvellous, people are just too likely to take it. If one can use biotechnology, genetic alteration, stem cells plus a bit of untested nanotechnology to create an Ikran within 20 years - could you resist the temptation, even if you know that the technology behind it was not thoroughly tested ("but it looks harmless enough") and that doing so would delay the development by 60 years?
You said it yourself actually - for some people a rapid development is part of the things they define as basic desires...

Isn't diacounting things as ineffective just as bad? Particularly lights, as lighting is a HUGE use of energy worldwide

I am not saying that one should not do these. Heck, I am using them, I am using low temperatures in the washing machine, dry the clothes on the balcony and not in a dryer, heat my room in winter to just 14-16°C, do not use air conditioning and so on - but I do not fall to the illusion that this is anywhere near enough. Your estimate is about right - if all people switch to lower energy light bulbs, it will save about 1% of the energy. I doubt that this would even offset the increase in energy consumption of a single year.

Despite knowing how to build one and having everything available

A safe storage for nuclear power for 1.000.000 years? Where?

Another species could have done the same and likely eventually would have if they hadn't been beaten to it - possibly even reached sentience.

So what? Then they would sit here and talk. No difference - and "others would have done it, too" is really not an argument.
If it would be, China (and in a few years Africa) can rightfully claim to be eligible to poison the oceans a bit more and produce some more CO2, as they are only doing what Europe did before.

And that would happen how?

it is called climate collapse (or more PC these days "global change").

The truth is, yes, not everything exists to make life easier, but to make it HAPPIER. If there was nothing new to do, nothing to experience, then most people would probably just feel they might as well give up.

That is true - if that would be the case. But it is not - it only is, because we are used to a certain way of experiencing. Things do not make us happier - not in the long run. And honestly - look for it - is a Michael Jackson happier than a Hadza hunter? Do the members of the Amazonian tribes opposing the Bela Monte Dam look incredibly sad and bored to death and would surely be much better off if they just had TVs and cellphones and internet (and the Belamonte Dam to power them)?
Some things make us happy, but these do not have to be material. And all too often, that happiness is achieved by a later, much bigger sorrow. People just love cars - they are so grerat - you just go in and drive anywhere you want. They are great freedom and fun and make people happy - just 40 years later it turns out that they are poisoning the air, spreading cancer, heating the atmosphere and make life harder in the long term. Was the rush of freedom for one generation worth the burden they and their children have to pay?

The Na'vi don't have what is on Earth, but they have OTHER things, things humans will likely never have. Those are what make it worth it for them. We don't have those. Would the Na'vi want to regress to before they rode ikran?

Well the difference is obvious - Ikran are not made by the NA'Vi at the expense of Pandora. You can fly Ikran forever. You cannot fly oil powered airplanes forever and you cannot build them without creating a little hells gate mine here and there. The NA'Vi lifestyle is sustainable - the present civilization is not.

But to give you an offer - I think if humans somehow would manage to live in a very different way and be all responsible and caring and looking out for sustainability and prolonging the availability of their resources for a looong time, this would be really nice. As I said - I am not at all for "regressing", but I fear a bit, that this change will not come by itself if ever.

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Sure - there will be oil in 30 years - no doubt. But it may take even bigger chunks out of the forests of Canada to mine it, may involve even higher risks of oil spills or eventually the beginning environmental destruction of Antarctica.

I never said that was the answer - indeed, I oppose the extraction of oil instead of investment in longer lasting and much lower energy technology - this doesn't change the fact that, like 99% of past estimates of the future, they have proved incorrect though.

I doubt that. Many of the technologies that were believed to "save us all" turned out to be not very good at that. There are quite definite reasons for why these technologies are not applied. To "cover the Sahara in solar panels" (just to pick one of them at random) for example would require unimaginable investments in energy (from fossil fuels), REEs (a limited mineral resource) - it would also require political stability and protection against sand storms and it would create a dependency of industrial states on countires in Africa.

Solar panels in general are a placebo, with the huge amount of energy and resource use required and a short lifetime. Other energy methods (nuclear, wind, wave, hydroelectric) are not.

The technology to travel to Mars are certainly there, but what is the point? Probably you can also send a ship to the asteroids, but what then? Attach a big old rocket drive to an asteroid and haul it back to Earth for mining? That is SciFi.

For now. If we had focused on actually creating it, it could be a regular occurrence by now.

If civilization continues to exist long enough to deplete Earths resources enough, I guess they will start mining in Space by investing humongous amounts of energy into that. But the economic balance of this is quite devastating. What I mean is that the point at which this is viable equals to an Earth so depleted of resources that the thought alone makes me weep.

Again, I agree - but it can be used as a method to PREVENT that.

Not exactly. In one post, you say that we need less people on the planet to make it work, in the next you bash me for suggesting a path that will eventually bring down population.... So what - population reduction is good if it involves the remaining people to live in high tech, but bad if they are living with less technology??

Yet again, people should have the choice of how they intend to live. If someone wants to abandon civilisation, they can, but that should not be forced on them.

still - humans are right now causing the extinction of 1000 times more species daily than the natural rate. Some argue that this is just a natural mass extinction in progress, but with humans having influence on ALL ecosystems on the planet, I think that is completely unlikely (not to mention that there is no other cause that has been found)

I never said I disagree with you, just that it is is naive to claim that extinctions are only human-related.

I am not saying that one should not do these. Heck, I am using them, I am using low temperatures in the washing machine, dry the clothes on the balcony and not in a dryer, heat my room in winter to just 14-16°C, do not use air conditioning and so on - but I do not fall to the illusion that this is anywhere near enough. Your estimate is about right - if all people switch to lower energy light bulbs, it will save about 1% of the energy. I doubt that this would even offset the increase in energy consumption of a single year.

A safe storage for nuclear power for 1.000.000 years? Where?

Massive exaggeration of the length of activity aside, the amount of actual waste produced is small enough to be safely encapsulated in concrete. Modern designs reuse the higher activity waste to produce smaller isotopes which have a much shorter half-life. Yes, it is a problem still, but the truth is, when it comes down to which has less impact, a single site capable of supporting the entire population has far less impact that large mining operations (plus the ironic fact that use of coal and oil actually releases more radioactive isotopes into the environment), plus the physical need for fewer, smaller actual sites. Yes, it's still only a temporary measure until development of actual clean energy (either fusion, or solar satellites (which we could easily have by now if we'd concentrated on a proper space programme)




As the actual topic says (before we got so sidetracked by this ) , that allows people to exist with development with minimal impact.
This thread was not originally about whether or not we SHOULD live like this, just whether or not it is possible to develop technology responsibly.
I support the environment wherever possible, I'm just not ready to give up on everything ELSE I care about for it, because the things we have DO make me happy, there is relatively little I truly care about, one of those things is my family here .

That is true - if that would be the case. But it is not - it only is, because we are used to a certain way of experiencing. Things do not make us happier - not in the long run. And honestly - look for it - is a Michael Jackson happier than a Hadza hunter? Do the members of the Amazonian tribes opposing the Bela Monte Dam look incredibly sad and bored to death and would surely be much better off if they just had TVs and cellphones and internet (and the Belamonte Dam to power them)?

Is it really that foreign to you that BOTH might be happy?
People DO develop technology sustainably. Just because they haven't always (or indeed, have hardly at all, I will admit) in the past doesn't change the situation in the present and future.