Renewable Revolution

May 27, 2017, 03:49:13 AM

Agelbert Note: Quote from the above article:

Innovation does not solve problems, it creates them.

The above is an excellent example of a half-truth. The author is focusing, without mentioning it, on Dilworth's  idea that humans are too smart for their own good, as discussed in his the peer reviewed book Dilworth wrote showing how we-the-people had to pay about $468 a barrel    (effective price to police the middle east for oil) in the FIRST Gulf war instead of using that money to become independent of Middle East oil. He showed how TPTB "justified"  that stupidity in the quote below:

Dilworth (2010-03-12). Too Smart for our Own Good (pp. 399-400). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

"As suggested earlier, war, for example, which represents a cost for society, is a source of profit to capitalists. In this way we can partly understand e.g. the American military expenditures in the Persian Gulf area. Already before the first Gulf War, i.e. in 1985, the United States spent $47 billion projecting power into the region. If seen as being spent to obtain Gulf oil, It AMOUNTED TO $468 PER BARREL, or 18 TIMES the $27 or so that at that time was paid for the oil itself.

In fact, if Americans had spent as much to make buildings heat-tight as they spent in ONE YEAR at the end of the 1980s on the military forces meant to protect the Middle Eastern oil fields, THEY COULD HAVE ELIMINATED THE NEED TO IMPORT OIL from the Middle East.

So why have they not done so? Because, while the $468 per barrel may be seen as being a cost the American taxpayers had to bear, and a negative social effect those living in the Gulf area had to bear, it meant only profits for American capitalists.
 

Note: I added the bold caps emphasis on the barrel of oil price, money spent in one year and the need to import oil from the Middle East.


Yes, making we-the-people pay for war and other polluter fun and games IS a form of INNOVATION that CREATES problems and certainly DOES NOT solve problems; it exacerbated TWO problems: 1) the pollution problem AND 2) the concentration of wealth in fewer hands democracy destroying problem.

But it continues to be a half truth. From Dilworth's point of view, the innovation in human medicine of washing our hands and other other methods of antisepsis CREATES a bigger problem than it solves, simply because that boosts the human population beyond the available resources. (see: bacteria consuming agar n a petri dish quicker as the population increases, thereby hastening their demise - despite the instinctive ring circling delay attempt).

To take that argument to its logical end, the "innovation" of a large brain that gave us tool making created more problems than it solved for our ancestors, who proceeded to kill and eat anything or anybody that was either in their way, was edible, or both.


However, despite the above logic, which boils down to "Humans, like T-Rex, just DO WHAT THEY DO",  the argument is flawed.

HOW SO ?
 

The argument ignores the FACT that at each and every innovation event in human history, a bifurcation of he future viability level of the species, projected just before that innovation, occurred. The ASS-U-MEption that a more stable biosphere would have been obtained had our population been kept in check by disease, dumbness or whatever cannot be proven because we didn't go that route. It's just an assumption, like the deep ecologists have that humans are a disease on earth and the biosphere will be better off without us.

True, innovations SEEM to increase the rate we use up available resources in a fixed biosphere area, which temporarily increases the species footprint on the biosphere while decreasing the long term viability of that species as its increasingly bigger footprint crowds out the other species it needs to survive.

They way things look NOW, the trajectory is extinction for humans, of course. That cannot be denied by any person with critical thinking skills (unless they work for the fossil fuel industry - they don't hire people with those skills  ).

BUT, at each and every bifurcation brought by innovation, an ETHICS BASED QUESTION WAS ASKED AND ANSWERED BY TPTB. Consistently, corrupt leaders with short term horizons ignored the Precautionary Principle of Science. And as specialization in human fields of endeavor increased, less and less people in decision making authority at the top had the skills or the inclination to look at the total biosphere cause and effect picture to determine if the human innovation was deleterious to it, to our eventual detriment. And EVEN when an obvious detriment to life was evidenced, profit over people and planet prevailed.

So, the PROBLEM is NOT the INNOVATION itself, but LACK OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR by TPTB.

So, are we doomed if we CONTINUE to allow TPTB to refuse to make ETHICAL BEHAVIOR sine qua non in our society?

Absolutely. But we are not doomed because we are self aware, can innovate and do stupid things. WE are doomed because we made a conscious CHOICE to do so. It's called SIN (missing the mark). We DO have free will, despite what many, like the deep ecologists, claim to the contrary. But all these modern Darwin worshiping "highly evolved" intelliburros out there want to eschew, demean, disdain, ridicule and reject forget all concepts of ethics, right and wrong, morality, the concept of SIN or absolutely anything that gets in the way of them doing their selfish thing.

So much do the intelliburros fastidiously cling to to their relativist and rebellious mindset, that rather than ADMIT humanity made mistakes, and needs to correct them through ethical behavior, they claim that we rigidly just DO WHAT WE DO and throw up their hands, as the author of the article is doing.

I wrote some time ago, when discussing Dilworth's information about the Fossil Fuel Industry Capitalists:

The Fracking, pollution and GW we are being assaulted with are SYMPTOMS of the DISEASE killing our biosphere, not the disease itself.

If we don't seriously address this DISEASE of Sh it Canned Ethics for Short Term Profits of the fossil fuel FOOLS that are despoiling our biosphere and accelerating planetary pollution, the big die offs (including large segments of the human population) begin at 2030.

This totally unjustified profit, never mind the needless lose of lives, then increases the power of the fossil fuel corporations to perpetuate a biosphere harming dirty fuel status quo. How? By "funding" politicians with rather large "donations" to keep renewable energy from competing with dirty energy.

If all this was just about power politics, I might not be that concerned. Humans, particularly the overly ambitious and aggressive ones, have always fought and schemed to control and fleece the population at large.
 
But now we know the future of our biosphere is at stake. Now we know the entire edifice of dirty energy is a knife in the back of the biosphere that will destroy our species and many others.

The system, as defined by the fossil fuel fascist dystopia that currently runs most of the human affairs among the 1 billion population in the developed world that is saddling the other 6 billion, who are totally free of guilt for causing it, with this climate horror we are beginning to experience, IS quite stubborn and does not wish to change the status quo.

Mother nature will force it to do so.

Whether it is done within the next two decades or not (i.e. a switch to 100% PLUS bioremediation Renewable Energy steady state economy) will dictate the size of the consequent die off, not only of humans but thousands of other species as well.




We are now in a climate cake that has been baked for about 1,000 years according to atmospheric, objective, proven with experimental data, science.

If the crash program to switch to renewable energy is to begin soon, I expect the trigger for the crash program will be the first ice free arctic summer (according to my estimates) in 2017. But millions of people demanding a transition to 100% renewable Energy will give us a fighting chance to win the Climate Victory.

You can help us leave dirty energy sources that are killing us behind.

All we have to do is use Common Sense, admit we were WRONG, and make ETHICAL BEHAVIOR sine qua non in human affairs.

We HAVE A CHOICE. But how can we make that choice if people no longer believe there is a difference between good and evil behavior? The short answer is that we can't. The apparently "easy" choice will always be taken. THAT IS WHAT GOT US HERE. THAT IS WHAT UNTHINKING, NON-TOOLMAKING, NON-SINNING BACTERIA DO in a petri dish with agar running out (after their instinctive ring 'circling' attempts collapse).

WE ARE NOT BACTERIA. WE HAVE A CHOICE TO DO THE right THING.

All we have to do is stop pretending otherwise. WE understand nature pretty well. It's time we obeyed her and put everybody who doesn't in jail. THAT is the INNOVATION in human affairs that would NOT create a bigger problem than the one it solved. You don't have to believe in God to admit you were wrong and that biosphere math MUST be our guide, but it helps.