[grabby]

I have been here almost a year and have come around and given up many bad selfish habits, the worst is doing whatever i want without thought for others or our world. I have been very selfish and have done extreme damage. So, i would like to say too little too late, sorry. Now, what can i do? Maybe i can make your day. Don't worry be happy!
A very beautiful world is soon coming and i hope we will still be alive to see it. And i hope you will be my neighbor!
I didn't know that 1 gallon of gas is 500 people at farm labor for an hour. Lots of things i didn't know.

And i took that 500 man hours of labor to drag two tons of steel fast (not slow) to the market to get one gallon of milk when i ran out,I lived the american dream
Now i have woken up.
I understand the thought that we must live sustainable.
This is not natures way. Sustainable now is too late.
Nature is now turning things so that we will not be living sustainably, but re-sustainably.
Let me explain.

Biofuels people smell greenbacks so they pretend they want to help the earth. What they really want to do is drive sports cars a bit longer, isn't it true? If we live sustainably now we will all die.
We cannot sustain 84 million barrels a day with biofuels. You say well we start small and work up to massive biofuel total replacement using solar and wiond and ethanol and biodiesel and coal

What you really say, when you buy into this, is: We don't have enough with all the liquid petroleum in the earth, we have to burn even more! Right? Isn't that right? You know it is.
Well, if we start to live 100 percent sustainable now it won't sovle the problem. We have too much co2 in the air.
We have to actually live resustainably.
That means we have to go negative on the co2 production.

Planting a biocrop, using gasoline to pollute the air in harvesting processing and burning it in our tanks is dpoing nothing, we not only re release all the co2 we captured, but spent and burnt an equivalent amount of co2 from precious oil doing the development, harvesting and processing, heating and boiling of that biofuel, so we are living unsustainably.
And co2 is actually increased in the air despite all our grand professions (lies) of helping the environment

If we live sustainably now our planet will warm ever more every day. What needs to be done is live resustainably and fast.
We must plant close spaced trees so the ground cover i close spaced trees, and under the trees swatch grass or whavtever takes co2 out of the air fastest. And we need to cut it regularly and mulch it i think if we do this, the oil used to run the tractors will be out produced by all the tons of grass but it will be close.

Better is never cut it, the winter kills it and it dies, and the next year even more co2 is sequestered. The trees as the grow larger crowd each other. At this time we can harvest some of the crowxed ones allowing the others to get bigger.
This would we can make paper and other non burnable things
(we're going negative here in co2 production). As the trees reclaim their ground co2 is sucked.
Millions of trees can be planted because even i myself can buy a million seeds with my own income.

What is sad, is in the 70's this was seen as a solution and the media made a joke out of it. Calling the only reasonable solution a bunch of "tree huggers" and when they wanted to joke about the fuel shortage they said "plant a tree!"

They were taught it was funny to say these words, and I drove my sports car and felt good about it. I was a part of the problem.
I hope those people who said those slogans realize now they were probably the root cause of the destruction of our planet, turning the majority off to conservation. I was using the slogans too cause i was ignorant and i thought they were funny. Sorry.
It was my fault. What can i do now? Once a word comes out you can never bring it back and the damage is indescribably.
It can destroy a planet.

We have to put the biofuels people in perspective and tell everyone That Biofuel salesmen will not help us, and they want to make money. Follow the money to get the motive. Some don't know, to be fair, but they never checked it out for themselves either.

And lets start getting the treees back where they belong in the rainforest.
The oil problem is already solved. We just haven't realized it yet.
Hubbert saw the solution and that is We cannot burn more than we have. That is a good thing.
A fact of life is this: The world will soon learn to conserve.

You see, natures laws will take care of the oil problem. We will be conserving oil now like it or not. You can't burn more than you got and our production will not increase any more.
Kyoto is solved because we are at A peak already because gas is no longer cheap. Our use rate will now decline. And there is nothing anyone can do about it.

We can have ignorant college professors pushing to cut down all our forests and run a million tractors, but our fuel production willl still decline. They didn't stop to think that it is a drop in a bucket and we are removing our CO2 sink.

I ask, why rape the land for something that will not work, will not ever work and will multiply the co2 effect?
Why not? Because they have subsidies to do it.
There is money to be made.

Well we need to vote this election and we will loose and then we still have the facts of life.
We are still going to start conserving anyway despite the biofuels ignorants who want to cut our trees down, makes no diff. The drop in oil use will actually decrease our acceleration , because even a miniscule drop in oil use is a lot of trees in equivalencs of hydrocarbon scavenging.

So sit back and smile. Nature has it all under control.
If (and when) the ignorants cut down all the trees, to be green and biofuelish, to make a large world wide central yeast plant, still do not worry.We will be burning less oil each year,
And we will learn to conserve, there is no other way.
We still are all going to learn to conserve very shortly like it or not.

I really wished we could end on a cheerful note, but there is a major flaw here. People will fight for scarce resources, this is our real problem. And the worse it gets the more dangerous the situation will become.

And all i can say is, nature's rules were made for even this eventuality. knows how to sterilize a plague and soon the forests will be back one way or another, i promise.
helping our neighbor's and never hurting anyone willfully is the way to live sustainably. Violent activism is wrong, spiking trees is wrong, it shows hatred. It won't help solve peak oil since it is unsolvable, it is just a milestone in our lives.

In the end, the last hand, the "nature card" will trump all the jokers, and it won't be solved through politics.

[TT]

the trees as the grow larger crowd each other.
at this time we can harvest some of the crowxed ones allowing the others to get bigger.
this would we can make paper and other NON BURNABLE THINGS
(We're going negative here in CO2 production)
as the trees reclaim their ground CO2 is sucked.
Millions of trees can be planted because even I MYSELF can buy a million seeds with my own income.

Paper making - at least the way it's done today - is a terrible pollutant. Definately not a good thing to do with trees.

Why but seeds when you can collect them off the trees for free?

[Heineken]

Yes, I'm irritated, Grabby (though not as irritated as by TT's spelling of "definitely" as "definately").
Your comments are way too long and have a "raving" quality. Not an effective way to try to persuade people. Most folks take one glance at a post like that and move on, or just skim it.
Nevertheless, I agree with virtually everything you wrote. "Sustainability" is a ridiculous term.

[grabby]

the trees as the grow larger crowd each other. at this time we can harvest some of the crowxed ones allowing the others to get bigger.
this would we can make paper and other NON BURNABLE THINGS
(We're going negative here in CO2 production)
as the trees reclaim their ground CO2 is sucked.
Millions of trees can be planted because even I MYSELF can buy a million seeds with my own income.

Paper making - at least the way it's done today - is a terrible pollutant. Definately not a good thing to do with trees.
Why but seeds when you can collect them off the trees for free?

Sorry, you are right
I have much to unlearn, but I just meant dont use it for fuel or the effect is gone.
Yes the post was long and I know my posts draw IRe now, but I just had to apologize and put it into a final perspective, I will try hard to make it my last thought.
Thats it in a nutshell everything I learned here in a year, I just want to say thanks, PO is great, I really don't have any answers so I probably will try to move on and let the milder folk teach and answer questions, keep up the good work, everyone has a talent and your's is nurturing this site.

[TommyJefferson]

The concept of "Living for Sustainability" is stupid.
Sustainabilty is imposed by nature by force.
You have no choice in the matter.

[grabby]

Maybe
Don't borrow or Live within your means
or
If you don't have the money, don't buy it or Never take out loans
or
Don't use what you can't replace.
or
Stop being so selfish. or "Living life to prevent a giant die off.
We have lived the Amrican dream, credit living, high living, excess living nad charge it, well pay in the future.
Now its time to wake up and pay the piper. We are the children that our parents borrowed on. Now we are the cosigners responsible for the debt. Don't worry about what our children will live like, we are the children that got stuck with the bill.

[Waterthrush]

I'm curious though, what term would be better used for "hoping to muddle through and bring most of the planet's species, alive, with us."

I suppose this thread is meant to say that it is hopeless and that we are doomed to die out along with most planetary higher species, but if that is the case, why is anyone on this website - it's eat, drink, and be merry time.

[grabby]

It will be informative to see how this dawning realization changes society.

[aflurry]

as per tommy's remark, your use of the word sustainability is a little off. the point is more that these things, biofuels, etc. are not actually sustainable.
sales people will prey on and distort your noble impulses to make a buck.
watch out.

[Aaron]

sales people will prey on and distort your noble impulses to make a buck.

Just so...
I would summarize your this post as follows:
"How many people are you folks planning to invite to our little hydrocarbon party anyway?"
And I take exception to the rant on sustainability.
I assure everyone that our bioshpere is sustainable, self-sufficient & able to enforce these limits with prejudice.
Some individual species of life have proven sustainable over long time-spans... sharks for example.
It remains to be seen just how sustainable homosapien really is.

[Fergus]

But see, that shark does not care where he lives, what his car looks like, what joeshark over ther has that he does not have. In other words, Sharks, and other animals have no ability to reason. They can not know someone has it better then them, they can not feel like they are discrimminated against cause someone can do something they cant, has something they dont.

In other words, any animal with cognitive reasoning without an overriding morality factor or a conscience that has any intelligence can not live a sustainable lifestyle. Due largely to greed, pride and envy. Why do we build bigger houses then our neighbors, why do we have to have 2 SUVs when the Jones only have 1. Why do we need to take a vacation every year to the other side of the world.

When our conscience kicks in and directs our actions. When we move out of concern for others rather then wants for ourselves, then we will devise a system that allows sustainable living. Till then, we are fighting off each other to get the last (whatever it is we are fighting for) and to hell with anyone thats in the way, to hell with the environment (that we need to sustain ourselves).

As Mr Smith once said, the human animal is a virus. A plauge upon the land. Till we remedy our ways, we have no hope of a long term soicety without huge ups and killer downs.

Argue all you want about what a sustainable lifestyle would be, bottom line, it is not what we are living now. Its gunna call for huge sacrifices and losing a LOT of material and creature comforts. We as a society are not ready or willing to give these up yet. So instead of stopping digging now we find ourselves in a hole, what do we (the smartest animal that ever lived) do. We go get a bigger shovel to dig the hole deeper faster. Pride will be our downfall. Intelligence will be the catalyst that brought us down. Greed will be the driving force behind the fall.

Long live intelligence. If you want the answers to this PO situation, look in the mirror. Your the problem. We are all the problem. How do you fix something when your the reason its all happening. Hmmm......Humans dont want to know the answer to this one either.

Saddest thing is, we are gunna take out with us, them same sharks that have lived for billions of years, unchanged. Till Man came along and screwed every thing up. Yeah Intelligence.

[KingM]

The 500 hours is silly. For one, humans have been multiplying our strength for millenia, through animal power, wind, etc. We're not going to return to muscle power no matter how Peak Oil plays out. For another, there is a burning hydrogen furnace in the sky; most of this energy input is not currently used. It may prove too expensive to capture that energy source to maintain our current lifestyle, but let's not get too carried away with the "using up all our energy" meme.

Saddest thing is, we are gunna take out with us, them same sharks that have lived for billions of years, unchanged. Till Man came along and screwed every thing up. Yeah Intelligence.

If you think in the big picture, if we do manage to take out a good chunk of the biodiversity as we go down in flames, it will be a temporary setback for the Earth. There will be a good base from which to start on the next explosion of life. We may not be around to see it, but the Earth will be just as fecund and filled with species within a few million years, thanks to evolution, as it was before humans came around. That would be a small fraction of the minimum billion years that the Earth has left to develop and sustain life.

The Earth will be fine in the long run. In the short, we may just poison our own species out of existence.

http://blog.theopinionator.com

[Heineken]

There will be a good base from which to start on the next explosion of life. We may not be around to see it, but the Earth will be just as fecund and filled with species within a few million years, thanks to evolution, as it was before humans came around.

I know, but I sure will miss the polar bears.

[rogerhb]

but the Earth will be just as fecund and filled with species within a few million years, thanks to evolution, as it was before humans came around.

I know, but I sure will miss the polar bears.

Will the cockroaches miss us?

[KhanCEO]

It remains to be seen just how sustainable homosapien really is.

My bets are on the homosapiens that print the money in the world and as for everyone esle.......your ass is toast for sure. I doubt the human race will ever die, however I'm more than certain that many humans will die as a direct result of energy/resource scarcity. On a more sinister note, if 95% of the people are murdered, energy/resource problem solved.

[katkinkate]

Will the cockroaches miss us?

The pest species will. They've never had it so good.