[pstarr]

China succeeded in the face of Western dogma, economic isolation and military aggression. Man is capable of saving itself. But American corporations and its media lapdog are too stupid to allow it to happen worldwide.

We will all die.

[Ibon]

Our children, our future generations are going to align themselves ideologically to where the physical limits lead us. However culture and ideologies evolve they will be governed by physical limits. As physical limits set the biological carrying capacity they also as well define the strength and endurance of cultural and ideological orientations.

In biology when an organism suffers trauma and goes into shock the body retreats protecting the core, blood flow to the extremities recedes.

Are we slowly but surely entering a new cultural era that resembles the biological state of shock? Whereby the dawning awareness of global constraints turns on its head many many sacred cows.

One of them is this temporal blindness that Dohboi has demonstrated and he is not an anomaly, he represents actually an ideological position that has a lot of company but one that unfortunately can not be maintained by the growing physical constraints due to human overshoot. And I am not by any means here singling out the ideological political left.

When you see a trend that threatens across the ideological spectrum then you know you are tapping into something real.

This is the case increasingly with human overshoot.

You know, what I mentioned up thread about Dick Cheney stating emphatically that American lifestyles do not come into question regarding any sacrifices to be made to mitigate climate change. That is another example of a temporal blindness similar to Dohboi but of an opposite ideological position. As if Americans are going to be immune to adapting their lifestyles to climate change or human overshoot!

40 years ago the Ideological orientation of abundance was resilient when lets say Ronald Reagan's speaches on the global stage espousing the spread of liberty and capitalism promising abundance to all those who lived under tyranny.

Today 40 years later, with China and India all the others having stepped up to the trough, the ideological carrying capacity is shifting. You don't hear any world leader espousing this kind of "abundance for all" rhetoric. We are retrenching, becoming more nationalistic, becoming more tribal. It is adaptive.

We are witnessing the ideological carrying capacity of abundance for all becoming undermined as the physical constraints start becoming cognizant more and more in the collective conscious.

Richard Heinberg once said years ago at one of the first peak oil conferences I ever attended that real revolutions happen when the physical underpinnings that hold cultures become undermined.

I had a huge light bulb moment go off in my head at that moment for I realized that what RIchard stated even undermined his very own ideological orientation. And mine. And Dohboi's. And all of ours.

None of us are free of this temporal blindness.

[dohboi]

Well, I guess I have 'temporal blindness' which presumably y'all are all really well sighted, temporally speaking, that is!

Best wishes to all in an uncertain future, and thanks to all for keeping this thread at or near the top of the queue!

[Newfie]

XXXXXX are Killing the Planet!

You can pretty much anything you like and be somewhat correct.

Car drivers are KTP
People living in temperate zones need heat and are KTP
Republicans aren KTP
Donald Trump is single handedly KTP
Obama’s selling the silly Paris Accords as a meaningful action Killed The Planet
Young women who want to have kids are KTP
Silly professors who blame old white guys and don’t answer insightful questions are KTP
Sailors who disrupt the wave patterns and use Dacron sail are KTP
Retired folks who no longer contribute to the economy but who use resources are KTP
Etc, etc, etc....

[KaiserJeep]

It's too bad dohboi refuses to answer simple questions, in this his own thread.

I would suggest that Vegans are killing the planet when they enable more humans to exist on the globe, in place of domestic meat animals. Meanwhile every meat eater is saving a little piece of the world by consuming red meats from animals with faces.

This is what veal looks like when it's really fresh:

[dohboi]

Newf, false equivalence much?

I really don't know what 'simple question' it is that you want me to answer. So far, everything KJ and you seem to write is just bloviations, rationalizations, and various false assumptions about my positions, peppered with plenty of our own unsupported assumptions about how the world or humans work.

But if you want to just keep hitting that one note samba because it gives you some kind of thrill or makes you feel superior or something, knock yourselves out!

[KaiserJeep]

I want you to explain why meat eaters are "killing the planet". I do get the fact that a Vegan diet uses less resources than an omnivore diet. I do get the fact that half the GHG's are the result of domestic livestock. Obviously, if all 7.6+ billion humans ate Vegan, we could cram a lot more humans into the world and feed them, before some other vital resource ran short.

So explain why all those extra humans is a good thing. Why is 10 Billion or 20 Billion on Planet Earth better than 7.6+ Billion?

[dohboi]

"I do get the fact that a Vegan diet uses less resources than an omnivore diet"

Then you get it.

No more to say, really.

(The rest is false assumptions, not really worthy of more of a reply than I have already given above.)

Thanks.

Have a good day.

Ciao.

[KaiserJeep]

I have the feeling of having stepped in a puddle that I expected to be deep, and finding it quite shallow.

[dohboi]

Whatever that is supposed to mean. You are the one who can't even recognize the false assumptions behind your statements and questions, even after they have been pointed out to you repeatedly.

But thanks for reminding me of this song :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDl3bdE3YQA

[KaiserJeep]

The simple relationship of food availability and birth rates is useless. Think about it for a minute. The USA with it's less-than-replacement birth rate, also exports huge amounts of foods, mostly as dry grains such as wheat and rice, to China, India, Africa, and other parts of Asia. We also export huge amounts of coal, natural gas, and refined petroleum products.

Several unsustainable practices contribute to this. These would include mechanized, petroleum-powered agriculture, the pumping of deep fossil water aquifers such as the Ogalalla, and petroleum-powered transport of foods via truck/rail/ship.

As oil increases in price and natural gas supplies dwindle, food gets more expensive and eventually food exports will cease. The hardship-stimulated birth rates in less food secure places ensure massive and sudden famines. Nor will there be any relief, as the First World falls back to self-sufficient food production, less any exports. The USA will still be exporting coal, and for a short while, dwindling amounts of natural gas - but in the absence of cheap petroleum fuels, not much food.

I am convinced of the correctness of my analysis, regardless of the (correct) current linkage between food security and birthrates you pointed out. Your analysis assumes steady state energy resources, mine assumes an end to cheap petroleum.

That after all, is what is meant by Peak Oil.

[Ibon]

I think we have bled this topic to death!

[Newfie]

Agreed.

I’d just as soon see all these “XXX are Killing the Planet” threads locked.

We need a “fork” emoticon so we can “Put a fork in it.”

[Tanada]

Agreed.

I’d just as soon see all these “XXX are Killing the Planet” threads locked.

We need a “fork” emoticon so we can “Put a fork in it.”

While I find these type of topics rather silly and self serving I just did a search of the site and there are only three active topics with 'Killing The Planet' in the title. It is more a case of we lack traffic in the broad spectrum of topics since AdamB dropped out, we really need another volunteer to do as he was doing and broaden the base of conversation.

[onlooker]

we really need another volunteer to do as he was doing and broaden the base of conversation.

I think T, this site has a wide array of topics and threads which attracted me. It just seems membership and participation remains stagnant. Perhaps this may be due to the rather limited exposure of the concept of Peak oil among the masses and limited interest in the theory

[Newfie]

Not sure where to put this info, but I’ll stick it here since this is an active thread.

Just a little number crunching and rumination

Arable land (million). Population (million). Hectare/person
USA. 175 hectare. 327. 0.54
India. 160 hectare. 1,354. 0.12
China. 103 hectare. 1,415. 0.07
Russia. 122 hectare. 144. 0.85
Canada. 46 hectare. 37. 1.2
Mexico. 25 hectare. 131. 0.2
UK. 6. Hectare. 67. 0.09

[Ibon]

Not sure where to put this info, but I’ll stick it here since this is an active thread.

Just a little number crunching and rumination

Arable land (million). Population (million). Hectare/person
USA. 175 hectare. 327. 0.54
India. 160 hectare. 1,354. 0.12
China. 103 hectare. 1,415. 0.07
Russia. 122 hectare. 144. 0.85
Canada. 46 hectare. 37. 1.2
Mexico. 25 hectare. 131. 0.2
UK. 6. Hectare. 67. 0.09

Underscores how dependent countries like India , China and Mexico are on imported meat and grains. If one day constraints severely restrict grain exports these countries will not be eating much meat.

Will they then be saving the planet?

[Newfie]

Tanada,

I think the reason thes “Xxx are killing the planet” and similar themed threads get under my skin is because they are specifically aimed at segregating a portion of the population for blame. These are the bad guys, let’s shame them. I’m pretty sensitive to that kind of attack.

What I find useful about this site is that is a place where some aware folks gather to talk about some pretty dark subjects that are not lightly entertained in polite company, or politics. The back and forth helps each of us through increasing awareness, following developing trends, sharing technical information, forcing us to think through our positions and providing emotional support. The process is not always smooth and can be painful. But it is generally positive and helpful. To abandon that positive thrust and give into blantant anger and blame is counterproductive to the what’s best at this site. It why I object to folks using epithets such as “repug” for republican. There is nonneed for that except to jab someone in the eye. I find it as offensive as using “nigger”, more-so when it is attached to an attitude of moral high ground.

[Newfie]

Not sure where to put this info, but I’ll stick it here since this is an active thread.

Just a little number crunching and rumination

Arable land (million). Population (million). Hectare/person
USA. 175 hectare. 327. 0.54
India. 160 hectare. 1,354. 0.12
China. 103 hectare. 1,415. 0.07
Russia. 122 hectare. 144. 0.85
Canada. 46 hectare. 37. 1.2
Mexico. 25 hectare. 131. 0.2
UK. 6. Hectare. 67. 0.09

Underscores how dependent countries like India , China and Mexico are on imported meat and grains. If one day constraints severely restrict grain exports these countries will not be eating much meat.

Will they then be saving the planet?

Not to mention the U.K.

I think part of why we consume meat is because we can.

China is, I think, trying hard to make meat and dairy more widely available. To improve the living standard.

But if eshewing beef was such a panacea then why does India, where many folks diner eat beef, have such a large population? Unless the goal is to have a large population. But if the goal is sustainability then it would seem to be a poor strategy.

We are humans, we are omnivours. We need to adjust our population numbers so that we can sustain our population given renewable resources at the level of comfort and development we demand. That makes for a pretty low population number.

[Ibon]

The back and forth helps each of us through increasing awareness, following developing trends, sharing technical information, forcing us to think through our positions and providing emotional support. The process is not always smooth and can be painful. But it is generally positive and helpful. To abandon that positive thrust and give into blantant anger and blame is counterproductive to the what’s best at this site.

Somewhat related to this on a macro level the big limiting factor going forward is not so much the technology or the science or even the geology but rather how humanity begins to work through these emotional and collective psychological impediments. This touches on politics and education and cultural trends. That is the reason it is so very important that we continue to have these kinds of threads. Since really at this point, cultural, economics and political issues far outweigh in importance the science and technology as causal factors of mitigation going forward.