 | Oil Closes above $93 today...in the next month, CLZ07/CLF08 will... | The Oil Drum | Oil (CLZ07) settles above $93...and in the next month...? |  |
| Avoiding Harmful Solutions (to Our Climate and Energy Problems) | The Oil Drum: Local | Linking Promises to Funding | |
33 comments on Wanted: Hard Data on Local Sustainability
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
User login
Personnel
Classic posts
Archives
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
PONYC Archives
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
Idea: Talk to the Amish.
Data: The Lehman's catalog.
I'm sorry, but my optimism gland is malfunctioning due to car accidents. (See New Scientist, October 22)
The problem with 'hard data' is that it is not useful at the local level. Anything that involves importation of resources is not sustainable. Period. Cities are not sustainable, cellphones, computers, windmills built from anything but wood and brass (things that can be smelted with wood fires) are not sustainable. The problem with being 'rational' about everything is that our value systems have all been co-opted by money. You cannot put a price on your great great grandchildren's birth defects, or their need for tantalum for semiconductors or their desires for diamonds, yet our accountants do just that. They compare the high profits of today to the low return on investment of leaving resources in the ground, and our offspring ALWAYS lose.
Before you can even BEGIN to use data to make these decisions, you first must decide the value of human beings to the future of the universe. What are people FOR, and HOW MANY do we need to do it?
THEN you can start to say we can use 'x' number of boobaroo-brazed,diamond-pointed drill bits to remove 'x' barrels of oil from the ground for 'x' number of years. Or that we can build 'x' number of windmills and solar panels with 'x' tons of 'x' elements from the periodic table, taken from lands in the Third World at the expense of their lifestyles.
Oh, did you mean 'economically' sustainable? In other words, NOT human or natural?
Sorry about the sarcasm, but I've been reading too much of Derrick Jensen's work. http://www.endgamethebook.org/
"Sustainable" means that what you do either is neutral with the environment, or has a Net Creative output for the future usefulness of the human race in the eyes of the universe. Our current cultures all are simply fabrications which allow us to rationalize simple existence, with no caveat that we are supposed to contribute something to nature in exchange for our consumption (Worshiping God for His Gift of Life? Talk about a marketing coup! "Pay me ten percent of everything you make and I will make your soul sustainable.").
'Sucking fewer resources for a longer time' is not sustainability. It's just denial that we are yeast in the petri dish, and the dish is already overflowing with our dying species.
Perhaps it will buy us more time to POSSIBLY figure out a purpose, but if nobody is looking for one, how, exactly, is that going to come about, and WHO is going to listen if someone DOES figure out useful purposes for the humans? Almost all of our religions teach people not to question such things, to 'have faith' that some magical sky buddy will guide us to the future like a 30 second commercial for a travel agent. If you don't know where you need to go, the travel agent can't help you.
The same applies to engineering and research and infrastructure for sustainability. If you don't know where sustainability is, you just end up going in circles, especially if everything is determined by profit and moneychangers. They are happy to watch you spin your wheels because every revolution pays them interest on the money you (and the government) borrow to spin your wheels.
"If you want Change, keep it in your pocket. Spending money just votes for the money."
"You get the picture. We need to find some consistent data at the local level beyond US Census data."
Yeah, especially because the US is only a small part of the world. To me the important question is where your "Local" Location is located and who are your "Locals" there and what is their world view.
BTW, no offense but I'm just so freaking tired of everybody being so obsessed about cars it really makes me want to scream bloody murder! The very first question should be not about cars but access to affordable non fossil fuel dependent mass transportation. I'm not even sure there are many real world examples of such systems. Maybe someone can point me to one?
If your location is Scandinavia?
http://www.n55.dk/NEWS/AUG_News.html
Oh and try not to get brainwashed by mass media.
http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/DISCUSSIONS/N55_TEXTS/AB_media.html
Maybe you are in South America or Asia and have access to alternative building materials?
Wonderful bamboo: grow your own house—Simon Velez and bamboo architecture - Reviews:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3575/is_1279_213/ai_111105947
Brazil is where you are? I've lived with this one personally and even though it still revolves around the automobile it is a very interesting experiment:
http://www.biofuelsnow.com/
I'm sure that there are people who read TOD from all over the world who could contribute their own perspectives and lists which would be very different from each other. I'm very interested in what we can learn from each other, cultural nuances notwithstanding.
Oh and Auntiegrave, "'Sucking fewer resources for a longer time' is not sustainability. It's just denial that we are yeast in the petri dish, and the dish is already overflowing with our dying species." Hopefully that yeast will be Saccharomyces cerevisiae and someone somewhere will brew some good beer with it.
"Sucking fewer resources for a longer time" in a manner that preserves our ability to innovate new resources is the best we can do.
And autarky is not sustainability. Trade is a perfectly valid phenomena, necessary to civilization long before we discovered oil. The larger the trading bloc and the easier transporation, the easier it is to use trade for resources.
Just because the current political atmosphere assumes that transportation costs don't matter, there should be no restrictions on trade, trade balance doesn't matter, currency stability doesn't matter, there is always a military backup, et cetera, et cetera... doesn't mean that the falsity of those things invalidate trade in general.
If need be, we'll mount sails, batteries, and solar panels on our freighters before we stop using them altogether due to environmental reasons or fuel scarcity.
If that's the best we can do.....fine, but don't be surprised if it isn't enough.
There is nothing wrong with fair trade, cooperative behaviors, and currency PER SE, but allowing them to become the unrestricted competitive mores of our existence was what killed us.
And the banks will loan you the money to do so, and you will waste even more resources to pay them interest so that you can feel like you've 'accomplished' something 'technological' while Nature uses her technology to decay your solar panels, to decay your body with the poisons you put into the atmosphere, to cause defects in the stem cells of your children because you thought pesticides and plastics were a 'fair' tradeoff in order that you could make a 'profit' or be entertained by a better TV.
It all comes around, and now it's coming around now, so go ahead and build your electric cars, your solar sailing ships, your solar powered aircraft carriers and missile-firing drones, and your satellites to watch us all f>>king die in hand-to-hand combat with the solar powered wolves (or in detention camps at the rate our voters are going).
Optimism disgusts me, my chickens, and my longevity-limited children.