[vision-master]

Better watch this..... ->Forbidden Archeology - Secret Discoveries of Early Man

Lucy wuz cooked up to 'fit' the theory.

[scas]

Better watch this..... ->Forbidden Archeology - Secret Discoveries of Early Man

Lucy wuz cooked up to 'fit' the theory.

I think you're cooked...

[vision-master]

You mean as in lighten one up.......... lsol

[scas]

You mean as in lighten one up.......... lsol

That video has a man wearing a suit. Never trust a man in a suit.

[mos6507]

Maintain stability through the famine and the few that live will be able to go on sustainably.

Considering that we have NK, Pakistan, probably Iran, maybe Venezueala, Saudi Arabia, and other countries going nuclear in the end, I'm not sure the losers in the game of overshoot will just kick up their heels and die.

Near the end of this clip there are a series of fictionalized newspapers, some of them mentioning talk about resource wars and WWIII starting up, but it ends with a proverbial deus ex machina, that a global protest (sort of like what Live Earth was supposed to be) will somehow solve everything. Then you have an odd cut to a guy doing Minority Report moves on a globe from some presumably post-transition utopia. There is no way we get from here to there unless there actually IS enough for everyone to bridge the gap. It all rests on the assumption that what we have is really a class (i.e. banksters) and per capita overconsumption problem, but NOT overshoot. And that MIGHT be true today, in 2011, with our existing inventories of fossil fuels to back up phantom carrying capacity. Will it also be true in a future ravaged by peak everything, even if money is invalidated and everybody attempts to hold hands and work together? I have my doubts.

For instance, at one point someone says that all the famines in recent memory were caused by bad government. Well, was the failed wheat crop in Russia caused by bad government? The failed wheat crop that (arguably) is now being implicated as a factor in the turmoil in Egypt?

There seems to be a focus on a resource-based economy but an aversion to dealing headlong with ecology, namely the stark truth of carrying capacity. The documentary pays lipservice to carrying capacity because it presents no solution for population control. There is even some veiled insult against "Club of Rome" guys. So obviously there is a certain disdain held against those who feel that we're already in overshoot.

You see, no matter how good a documentary such as this is, it has a certain agenda and it carries with it certain prejudices.

I listened to a CD a while back that was totally new age, and it presented a very similar thesis, which was that our problems were all a state of mind and that by transforming how we think about the world, everything would be fine, that there is "enough for everyone" and that we can actually reprogram our genetics with our state of mind (epigenetics, similar to what is presented here).

Since anyone postulating a better future would be hard-pressed to present one if the future will be one of a game of resource musical chairs, the entire premise MUST succeed or fail based on the accounting of the worlds resources.

It's like all of the people who say that the US is functionally bankrupt, that it can not possibly hope to service its debt going forward, that it's got a zombie economy, whatever. Well, why isn't this also true of population as it faces a future of MORE people and LESS carrying capacity (phantom or otherwise)?

I'm all for changing state of mind and all that, but the documentary itself says that nature is a dictatorship and it doesn't care what we believe or not. The basic needs of people for food and fresh water, as it says, are a constant. If those needs can not be met even with all the optimizations in the world, then there will be a violent struggle between haves and have nots.

Also, even IF those needs can be met, they will not be met long-term unless population goes down, and the documentary, while saying we need to abandon the cult of growth, doesn't explain how people are supposed to somehow also connect the dots with their own reproductive habits, otherwise even all those technocopian cities, should they actually be feasible, will also not be enough down the road.

So it's really frustrating because it's so close to being something I might wrap my arms around and embrace (at least as a fantasy unlikely to ever become a reality), but it isn't really willing to wrestle with the biggest elephant in the room, just as Earth 2100's ecotopian ending seemed to undo all the buildup, or the 11th hour, or any of those other documentaries that bring us to the precipice of doom and then explode in an improbable orgy of deus ex machina if we all get in single file and march to the same tune.

[Ludi]

if we all get in single file and march to the same tune.

BINGO!

http://anticultist.wordpress.com/about/

[TWilliam]

Good commentary mos. Thank's for acknowledging some of the film's and overall project's merits. Only place I feel you dropped the ball was with your concluding caveat:

if we all get in single file and march to the same tune.

Once again we have this false implication that unified action is either predicated upon, or unavoidably precipitates, loss or at least severe curtailment of individuality. Sorry but that's bunk.

Anyway, I would like to mention that Peter Joseph (the creator of the Zeitgeist films) has stated his intention to produce further installments due to the overwhelmingly positive response to the completed pieces. Presumably additional relevant issues would be addressed in these subsequent chapters. I would actually be quite surprised if population wasn't one of them. On the other hand, perhaps they're already aware of the inverse relationship between birth rates and living standards and understand that an equitable and abundant society would have a natural tendency toward a stable population.

[Narz]

I'd certainly root for it over BAU, but I think there would ultimately be a rude awakening when we discover there just isn't enough to go around and some central authority has to decide who lives and who dies (lifeboat ethics).

Sounds like someone asked a question about that (what if the computer decided people had to die) at their confrence in NYC. I wonder how they answered.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/nyreg ... geist.html

The audience — white, black, young, old, baseball caps and business suits alike — received such words like a tonic, and the questions kept coming: What would family life be like in the future? What would happen if the automated system decided that a person had to die? Mr. Fresco and Ms. Meadows are planning the production of a major feature film to bring the Venus Project to a wider, global audience. Before the night began, Mr. Fresco, a small man with a V-neck sweater and a hearing aid, sat signing books and answering questions from a dozen or so college students gathered like acolytes at his feet.

As the evening came to a close, someone finally asked: So what would it take to actually put such a program into action? A grassroots movement, Mr. Joseph said.

“We already have a quarter-million members,” he insisted from the stage. “At the rate things are going, this will be at Madison Square Garden next year.”

And just to comment on the article & Joesph's comment : A quarter-million non-commited members on the Net doesn't amount to much.

Near the end of this clip there are a series of fictionalized newspapers, some of them mentioning talk about resource wars and WWIII starting up, but it ends with a proverbial deus ex machina, that a global protest (sort of like what Live Earth was supposed to be) will somehow solve everything. Then you have an odd cut to a guy doing Minority Report moves on a globe from some presumably post-transition utopia. There is no way we get from here to there unless there actually IS enough for everyone to bridge the gap. It all rests on the assumption that what we have is really a class (i.e. banksters) and per capita overconsumption problem, but NOT overshoot. And that MIGHT be true today, in 2011, with our existing inventories of fossil fuels to back up phantom carrying capacity. Will it also be true in a future ravaged by peak everything, even if money is invalidated and everybody attempts to hold hands and work together? I have my doubts.

I also have my doubts too (and hated the ending). But we don't really know what's possible if humanity's priorities change.

The documentary pays lipservice to carrying capacity because it presents no solution for population control. There is even some veiled insult against "Club of Rome" guys. So obviously there is a certain disdain held against those who feel that we're already in overshoot.

The Club of Rome & The Population Bomb & similar books are easy to pick on. There being wrong for so long tends to give doomers a bad name even if they're right in the end. Population is a touchy subject because people often take it as "you're saying I don't have the right to exist?" or some variation thereof (subconsciously). That reminds me of one of the first threads I read on peakoil (or posted in anyway), something like "Prove you deserve to survive" or something like that.

[mos6507]

perhaps they're already aware of the inverse relationship between birth rates and living standards and understand that an equitable and abundant society would have a natural tendency toward a stable population.

You'd think he wouldn't gloss over it in a two and a half hour documentary and leaving us to speculate.

[TWilliam]

Over population is such a negative force and does not contribute to solutions. If one is to visualize a positive place, it is imperative to clear ones mind (and lower intestine) of impure, unproductive thoughts that block the free-flow of Chi Energy. I mean, Gaia! Isn't that obvious?

Apparently the fact that belief in the possibility of a thing is a prerequisite to its actualization seems to keep getting missed...

[mos6507]

Apparently the fact that belief in the possibility of a thing is a prerequisite to its actualization seems to keep getting missed...

Hope must know limits otherwise it's just a lie you tell yourself to get out of bed in the morning.

[TWilliam]

Hope must know limits otherwise it's just a lie you tell yourself to get out of bed in the morning.

Yep. And I can think of no better way to discover those limits than to test them. Certainly provides greater opportunity for discovery than sitting around bemoaning the impossibility...

[mos6507]

Yep. And I can think of no better way to discover those limits than to test them. Certainly provides greater opportunity for discovery than sitting around bemoaning the impossibility...

Let's try to avoid talking past each other, so we know exactly where we stand.

Here are some things I feel very strong about:

1) We don't have much time left try to engineer a soft landing. After we miss all those milestones, collapse becomes the agent of change.

2) Because of issue 1, we don't have the luxury of going down any dead-ends.

So when you propose that we "test" those limits, all I can see is the possibility that we will lose valuable time chasing a technofix dream when our energies might be better spent doing things we know will be beneficial.

That leads me to:

3) Our main problem is not an energy crisis, it's ecological imbalance.

Our main responsibility is not to keep the lights on for our big screen TVs. Our main responsibility should be to try to arrest or at least ameliorate the great mass extinction before us because we know that one way or another we'll be in the casualty basket.

This is the main reason I have trouble with bright green environmentalism. It envisions a future in which we can have it all. True equality, no dealing with population limits, all the creature comforts we have today, and somehow do that without wrecking the planet.

It's one thing to talk about systems theory, as the documentary does, and it's another to actually prove that you can have the world's billions rise out of poverty and live a 21st century life of ease and convenience without the unfortunate externality of wrecking the planet.

Zeitgeist seems to imply that it's the "elite" that prevent this from happening, but if we have a resource economy, I think you'd realize that much of the wealth of elites is nothing but imaginary bits and bytes. We can't fool ourselves into thinking that because the rich own such a large portion of the world's wealth that this equates to an ownership of energy or carrying capacity. There really isn't enough natural capital (at least if you exclude the remaining stores of fossil fuels which we shouldn't use) to hold as collateral against all the existing paper out there. So eliminating the rich will merely illuminate the math I was talking about earlier, where everybody in the 1st world needs to descend to Bangladeshi conditions in order to equalize everybody's share of the earth's resources.

Now back to externalities. Even the process of all the mining and industrial manufacturing required to construct all the solar panels and windmills required to be a 1:1 replacement for fossil fuels would incur a huge burden on the environment. When we have large numbers of factories powered solely with renewables, then maybe we can revisit it, but right now you're talking about bootstrapping renewables with fossil fuels. A necessary evil, perhaps, but something that must be factored into the equation. The way I see it, the only way to handle that responsibly is to make sure you minimize your energy needs so you don't have to cover every square inch of the planet with solar panels and windmills. That's not really what the Venus project emphasizes.

It seems to me that Zeitgeist raises issues and then doesn't truly address them, as if it's kind of brushing against doomer concepts kind of late to the party but not really embracing them.

So sure, it talks about how we need to stop the addiction to growth and for more, and how happiness shouldn't be predicated on money and "more" but then the baseline that it establishes for our future is something straight out of the Jetsons, a standard of living that most scientists say can not be achieved sustainably for the number of people alive on the planet today. And I don't think a big rollout of renewables will significantly alter that formula.

So to me, Zeitgeist, no matter how it might want you think otherwise, is an anthropocentric view of the world in which the #1 priority is human standard of living and high technology. Nature comes second.

So you want to talk about bold ideas?

Considering that nature has (in my estimation) suffered a critical wound at our hand, due to our fixation on technology, then I think our primary responsibility should be to save the patient, our host, and to do this involves nothing less than to terraform it block by block, homestead by homestead, using permaculture principles, just as Geoff Lawton shows in his greening the desert clip. We should apply all that computer technology to map out how we can alter hydrological cycles and build brand new multilevel ecosystems where they are currently "degraded" by human exploitation. We should rapidly rebuild the topsoil of the great plains through Joel Salatin or other techniques. We should recycle all our municipal solid waste, pharmaceuticals or no pharmaceuticals. We need to stop the phosphorous and nitrogen from just running off into the ocean and causing dead-zones.

This stuff just isn't considered sexy. Bringing back the american chestnut isn't sexy. That's what pisses me off. People get a rise out of renderings that look like EPCOT center. They don't get turned on by forest succession.

It's funny how people can approach the problem but they can't help but see it through a filter and therefore they make recommendations that reflect those blind-spots.



The general theme of late (mostly spearheaded by Greer) is for activists to start turning the knives on themselves, perhaps because instead of making headway, we're actually regressing (i.e. tea party). So while we argue about bright or dark green environmentalism, the republicans are licking their chops over gutting the EPA.

That's why I keep looping back to issue 1) and 2). We are really hitting crunch time here. If we don't start doing something, like now, then all of these discussions will be academic and we'll be left with nothing but bunkers and gunslits.

I just think you can't address our problems without including powerdown in the mix. We've got to flatten growth and then go negative. No approach, however better some of them maybe to pure BAU, will work unless it has a roadmap that reduces our load on the planet across the board. That's per capita energy use, pollution, and our sheer numbers. Increasing energy availability and efficiency alone is not enough.

[Ludi]

"The Question (ID Number 726)...

In an article titled "Comprehension by Crucible" (which was originally published in ILLUSIONS magazine in A.D. 1996 and can now be read at http://mshadow.com/illusions/vol1pp6.ht ... BYCRUCIBLE) you are quoted as having written the following: "Our task is indeed not to be like Leaver people but rather to be Leaver people. We must be Leavers who drive cars and build skyscrapers and use computers--because if we don't learn to be such then we're going to become extinct." Assuming those are your words, do you still think this is the case after nine more years of thought? Do you still think we can both have those technologies and be Leavers--which is to say, live sustainably? If so, why?

...and the response:
The question can't be dealt with as a simple either/or. As I've said in many different places, if we go on as we're going right now, we're going to become extinct. But flipping a switch that turns off all the technologies we've developed is not the only alternative to "going on as we're going right now." I wrote Beyond Civilization to propose another alternative, and there I addressed the matter this way: "The world can support a few million pharaohs, but it can't support six billion pharaohs." At the moment, "going on as we're going right now" means working to produce a world in which every inhabitant is a pharaoh, and this is what must be abandoned. I feel sure than anyone who hopes for a voluntary global abandonment of all our technologies will hope in vain." - Daniel Quinn http://www.ishmael.org/Interaction/Qand ... Record=726

[scas]

mos - you need to make a movie. It should be realistic, including a massive die off, a sudden release of methane hydrates from the ESAS at least 10 times faster than any natural event, a sudden disintegration of the ice sheets, a shutdown of the Atlantic and circum-Antarctic circulation, a massive release of seafloor clathrates when the Pacific deep water circulation starts up, a hydrogen sulfide event, and a runaway greenhouse process that turns Mother Earth into Venus II.

That is our future, people just don't realize it yet, and most never will. It would be the most accurate documentary made, and would give no illusions as to a techno-fix.

The sun is hotter than its ever been, were injecting GHGs faster than any natural event, and there's more built up clathrates than at any past extinction event. The pace of change is too fast for negative buffers to slow or reverse the process. People also aren't intelligent enough to understand the science, nor able to work together for a common good. Peak Oil is child's play.

With regards to energy, the development of 4th gen nuclear power could provide for some sort of electric society. We have 1000s of years worth of spent fuel to use. It is plausible that we could synthesize basic carbohydrates and proteins using electric power. Too bad Clinton ditched the research.

[mos6507]

mos - you need to make a movie.

This is the movie I'd like to make.

The beneficial impact of 7 billion humans at least trying to tend to nature's needs instead of always extracting from nature might be just as dramatic as the Genesis effect. It's not that I think 7+ billion people living on this planet is sustainable longterm, but it's the biggest resource we have to work with. You've got to make lemons into lemonade. 7 billion autonomous humans with opposable thumbs, currently fueled by fossil fuels, who, in a decentralized fashion, can willingly terraform the planet in a beneficial way (while we're also simultaneously planning to downsize our numbers to a billion or less). Maybe we could do this if we gave a crap rather than just zoning out in front of American Idol with a bag of cheetos.

So AFTER we throw our breifcases melodramatically and make a big trash heap of dollar bills, we should go out there and plant some trees, capture humanure, and all that other unglamorous stuff that won't sell to Joe Sixpack and the soccer moms.

Look at the pyramids and the great wall of china. Individual human muscle power has created huge monuments even in antiquity at a fraction of our energy use and populations. They did it by banding together with a common purpose, and sticking with it straight through to the end.

That to me is what our "sputnik moment" should be. You get millions of people together and they say "hmm, why don't we transform the mojave desert into a rainforest". I bet you it could be done if people were unified enough and patient enough.

Call it a global barn-raising.

We are terraforming the planet into a desert by default. By virtue of unintended consequences we're already showing the impact of our numbers. The trick is to redirect it in a constructive way. It's a force that could be harnessed.

Do I think it's gonna happen? No. But that's as far as I can visualize "utopia", and it's part of the "message" that I'm planning to deliver through my silly little Xtranormal characters.

[scas]

Getting 7 billion people to work together? To me, that is a pipe dream and less plausible than an island country that transforms to a nuclear-electric sustainable society, for a few hundred years until extinction anyway.

Either way...this is what we would have to do in order to survive:

-Cease all burning of fossil fuels. This will prevent further ocean acidification.
-Cease all agriculture that involves tilling or oxidizes soil carbon. Develop synthetic food so reforestation can begin.
-Cease all manufacturing.
-Cease all deforestation.
-Engage all 7 billion people in producing and burying biochar, and reforestation. Accept that there won't be enough food for everyone, and accept death as a necessary individual sacrifice for the survival of Earth.
-Install flare devices at all methane hotspots so they oxidize to CO2.
-Bioengineer trees to grow rapidly, reforest areas and convert it to biochar.
-Fund 4th gen nuclear power even if we don't succeed.
-Fund a space program to reduce and diffuse the sunlight Earth receives, should Earth turn to a snowy slushball, that's better for life than Venus.
-Fund all possible geo-engineering programs, regardless of conceived difficulties. Focus on sequestration and diffusing sunlight, rather than poisoning Earth further.
-Construct nuclear powered sequestration facilities whose sole purpose is rapidly reducing CO2.
-Accept that there's no easy road, and that our lives will be a tragedy.

Somehow I don't see this happening.

It may be that Global Heating is a terminal point for intelligent technological planets.

[Ludi]

-Accept that there's no easy road, and that our lives will be a tragedy an adventure.