Since we're doing polls on energy today, here's an offbeat one

[GliderGuider]

If humanity were to develop a new source of very large-scale, very clean power (think Mr. Fusion or Zero Point Energy), what would your reaction be?

[Frosty1]

1. I wonder how much this will cost?

It would be wonderful except, I suspect, they would find a way to screw the people over.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. I believe GG's point will be...

...that energy is not the only problem. For example: even if we have a new energy source to run tractors, there's still a limit to arable land.

So, the cost of the new energy source is (to some extent at least) moot.

[phantom power]

3. His point will be...

that if we had that much energy, we would use it to ravage the biosphere in an orgy of unlimited expansion.

[GliderGuider]

6. .

[phantom power]

8. I stuck with "we're saved!"

Although I don't think anybody familiar with human behavior would ever consider the other choice impossible.

[GliderGuider]

4. Close, but not quite.

I do believe energy isn't our only problem, but but that's not what drove the question (and I haven't voted in the poll myself).

[AndyTiedye]

5. Go to the Stars

If we have the energy, we don't all have to stay on this planet!

[krispos42]

7. It would be the Holy Grail

We could get almost entirely off of carbon-based fuels in 20 years. All-electric heating and cooling nationwide. New cars are all either all electric or burn renewables like ethanol or biodiesel. We use electricity to distill and process the renewables. Older cars retrofitted to burn ethanol.

Distillation provides all the fresh water everybody needs, and it can be pumped anywhere. Potable, industrial, and agricultural water for everybody.

Depending on the size of the facilities we could put them in ships, airplanes, maybe even truck and cars.

And space travel! It would be great to have cheap access to orbit. We could move asteroids into Earth orbil for metals, then once they are mined out be could melt the slag down, turn it into a hollow habitat, and have orbiting space stations. Grow food, have manufacturing and chemical processing safely out of our atmosphere, old-folks homes.


How about weather control? Selectively saturating parts of the oceans with microwaves to alter weather patterns and reverse spread of the deserts.

[XemaSab]

9. It wouldn't be nearly as cool as solarization

Letting the sun's energy kill all the bermuda grass in your yard is just plain cool.

[Kolesar]

10. Didn't you used to have broccoli as an avatar?

[XemaSab]

11. I did used to, yeah

I made this design at http://logobama.com/ and I'm liking it for right now.

I'll probably change it back after the election.

[Kolesar]

13. would they not approve a broccoli in the Obama logo?

All logos are held in a queue until approved by the Logobama team. We will not censor content, we will only delete inappropriate content as specified in the Terms of Use.

[XemaSab]

15. I did try that

but I liked this one better. :)

[silverweb]

12. Wonderful, but...

...it still wouldn't solve our other primary problem of overpopulation with all its attending complications of resource depletion, soil degradation, food production, water pollution, etc, etc.

[GliderGuider]

14. Ayup.

I rather suspect it would make the population problem worse. For a while, anyway.

[silverweb]

17. Agreed.

Until the planet does like Carlin describes and "shakes us off like a bad case of fleas... a surface nuisance" and heals herself.

[Throckmorton]

16. Robb is a dingbat N/T

[Dead_Parrot]

18. Those of us who don't starve..

... will all get flying cars and big-ass TVs

So, 1 or 2 depending on how much veg I can get planted. :)

[tinrobot]

19. Who owns the patent?

If the oil companies own the patent, I would choose the "we're doomed" option.

[tom_paine]

20. I voted 'Yay we're all saved' but we could just as easily be dooming ourselves.

It may be that Mr. Fusion allows us to "save ourselves" by jetting away from this doomed planet.

It may be that Mr. Fusion exacerbates our problems and that we can't escape for some other reason (there's no planet or moon suitable, and fusion doesn't allow for global terraforming...something like that), so we're double doomed and at that level of energy-use, we may be able to render the planet uninhabitable, or knock things back to bacteria level in which case the Earth's biosphere, which only has an estimated 500 MYears left of habitability, won't have enough time to re-evolve intelligence (mostlikely).

[stuntcat]

22. actually yah, me too

why did I answer we're all saved? Anything that lets our population keep shooting up at the same time we're speeding up the mass-extinction is just gonna buy us more time and make for more horrible disasters later.

[Indenturedebtor]

21. You forgot the option for "We all get Robotic Harems"

What gives?

[GliderGuider]

23. Here's my opinion and my reasoning

Human behaviour all through recorded history, and at least back to the development of organized agriculture 10,000 years ago, has been uniformly expansionist. Whenever we have developed a new ability to extend our dominance over the planet we have used it. In every case it has taken energy to do this, and the more energy we've had available to us, the more the expansion has accelerated. The uniformity of our history in this regard strongly implies that the process would simply repeat itself if we developed some new and even more powerful energy source.

While there have been recent efforts to curb this expansionist behaviour, they have run head-on into a growth paradigm that seems so deeply embedded in our outlook as to appear biological in origin. While our growth imperative may be cultural as well as biological, it's a fact that no dominant culture in the past 10,000 years has been sustainable (i.e. content to live within the bounds of natural income instead of drawing down natural capital). That observation further supports the conclusion that a new, clean, high-output energy source would simply accelerate our expansion, to the detriment of every other living thing on the planet, and ultimately humanity itself.

Any conclusion to the contrary requires that one believe that humanity is a rational species, in the broadest sense of that term. I submit that there is precious little evidence of that. Even the findings of neuroscience point to evidence that people make most decisions based on emotions, and use their reason only after the fact to develop an acceptable rationale for the decisions they have already been made.

That does not bode will for the hope that enlightened decision-making will ultimately win the battle with our emotionally driven expansionist urges. This would especially be the case if it appeared that the new energy being used in the expansion process had no intrinsic, immediate negative consequences. In that case one of the final restraints to the casual use of the new energy source would disappear, and the secondary effects of human expansion would be allowed to run rampant across the globe.

Oh, and for the "We could simply leave the planet in a human diaspora" folks -- of which I used to be one -- if we managed to leave this decimated planet behind us, we would simply take our expansionist tendencies with us, with all that implies. If we managed to damage new continents in our movement across this planet, would we not simply do the same to new planets in our movement across the universe?

Whether or not you buy my argument depends largely on your answer to the question, "Is Man Perfectible?" In my opinion, answering "Yes" to that question is a statement of faith that is not supported by the evidence.

[Nederland]

24. Define "expansionist"

All the data collected over that last 100 years shows that once a culture reaches a certain stage of education and material wealth, its birth rate drops, in many cases, rather precipitously. Our goal therefore, should be to get the entire planet to that level of education and material wealth as quickly as possible. Clean, cheap energy would do much to get us to that goal.

[GliderGuider]

26. "Expansionist" includes the expansion of consumption as well as population

"get the entire planet to that level of education and material wealth as quickly as possible" qualifies as an expansionist philosophy. Since material consumption requires the draw-down of natural capital, expanding consumption is just as much a culprit in the unfolding crisis as our expanding numbers.

I'm not aware of any country that has achieved a stable or even declining population and also exhibited a decline in aggregate consumption. Russia may have experienced this for a short while in the early 1990's, but once they got their social problems sorted out, the march resumed.

In case it's not clear, I consider all of humanity not living in tribal settings (i.e. the overwhelming majority of us) to be part of a single culture. We may exhibit minor regional variations, but due to mobility and communications humanity's cultural memetic fabric is essentially uniform.

[Nederland]

27. But cheap energy changes the entire game

Given cheap energy, all sorts of things become possible. For example, it becomes possible to recycle materials that currently are uneconomical to recycle. Furthermore, the economic trend that countries display as they progress is that a higher and higher percentage of their consumption goes toward services rather than material goods. As a result, their ecology footprint stops increasing. Technological changes improve the picture as well. Just consider the vast difference in non-energy resource consumption that exists between yachting in real life and yachting on a Playstation. Our society becomes more and more virtual everyday, and that lowers the consumption of real, non-energy goods dramatically. I suspect that we have yet to see the real impacts, but they are coming quickly.

[GliderGuider]

28. With lots of cheap energy

What's the incentive to recycle? In this scenario we have the energy we need to dig up ever less concentrated resources and just make new stuff. Why should I play yacht on a Playstation when I can own one in real life? Both of these, in case it needs emphasizing, are status issues. The need for personal status is a powerful driver of all consumption, and is not terribly amenable to rational modification.

If we have cheap energy, we will inevitably produce more stuff as well as more services, especially if we intend to bring the rest of the world up to a European standard of material wealth so that they'll stop having babies. That needs resources, not just Internet connections. Recycling will not support the required quadrupling of the world's industrial output. And getting at the needed resources (given that we would have the energy available to extract them) would result in a continued degradation of the ecosphere.

Edit: Keep in mind that it was cheap energy that got us where we are today. What has the rational human response been during this time of cheap energy? What has the emotional, status-driven, self-interested human response been? Which one has been winning since the first coal mines were dug? I don't think we should expect a miraculous change if the limits are simply moved further out.

[Nederland]

29. The market provides the incentive

As natural sources dry up and become more expensive, and recycling becomes cheaper due to cheap energy, the shift occurs automatically. Really, I don't understand how anyone can worry about runaway resource consumption. As soon as a resource becomes depleted through human activity the price skyrockets and consumption slows--precisely what we are seeing with oil right now.

As far as your question "why should I play yacht on a Playstation when I can own one in real life?" the answer is simple: people are lazy. Why bother to hop in the car and drive to the lake to take the boat out when you can walk into your living room? We see the results of those types of choices on our waistlines everyday...

[GliderGuider]

30. If we have tons of cheap energy, market signals will be distorted.

We don't typically run out of resources, they just get more expensive to extract, as you note. However, the majority of that cost is the cost of the energy for the extraction and processing. If that cost approaches zero, the cost of the extracted resource also declines. This closes the cost gap between new and recycled material, lessening the incentive to deal with the logistical costs of recycling. In addition, recycling doesn't increase our resource base, which will be needed if we undertake a social program of enriching the poor -- so additional resource extraction will be required even if we were to recycle everything.

Yes people are lazy, but we are also extremely status-conscious. That's one thing keeps so many people overachieving when they could be relaxing and taking it easy once their immediate material needs are met. And that's how they become part of the consumption problem. Given the choice between relaxing in their living room or relaxing in the salon of their own yacht, how many people would choose the former if the latter was accessible (and with lots of cheap energy it would be...)?

[Nederland]

31. So what are you worried about?

Either you are concerned about resources running out or you are not.

I you believe that resources are running out, prices will increase and consumption go down.

I you don't believe that resources are running out, then cheap energy will cause prices to decrease and consumption go up.

Either way, what is the problem?

[GliderGuider]

32. My concern is broader than the technical issues of resource pricing in the marketplace.

This poll is another facet of my ongoing concern that solutions-oriented thinking will not get us out of the shrinking box we're in.

The sacred cow of the environmental movement is that for every problem there must be a solution. One of the solutions that has been proposed is the development of large amounts of clean energy (aka windmills, solar panels, tidal barrages, etc.) The underlying idea is that if we could just get enough clean energy to replace the cruddy stuff we use today our problems would be solved. While I agree that our society as currently structured needs to do that, I disagree that it represents a "solution".

This thought experiment is a "reductio ad absurdum" to suggest that "lots of clean energy" doesn't represent a solution to humanity's larger crisis. Lots of clean energy doesn't address the fact that the biosphere is finite and relatively fragile, nor does it address the underlying human drives that cause us to damage the biosphere in the first place. In fact, as we've seen from our experience with fossil fuels, cheap energy simply enables those drives and allows them full expression, to the detriment of the other species on the planet. And if we damage enough other species, sooner or later we are going to knock out a critical link in the chain of life, with disastrous consequences for ourselves.

At its core, this thought experiment is a suggestion that people think a bit more deeply, broadly and holistically about the situation we're in.

[Nederland]

35. The biosphere is NOT fragile

Human beings can completely fuck up the biosphere to an extent that human beings can no longer live in it, but the biosphere will flourish long after we are gone. Long before that happens though, as human beings screw up the biosphere the cost of living in it will increase and again, market forces will assert themselves to correct the problem.

[GliderGuider]

40. Fragile just means it is easily changed

And we are definitely changing the biosphere. For instance we may be the proximate cause of a lot of species extinctions. While the biosphere may remain functional for many species that are left, it may lose functionality for other species. At some point one of those "other species" may be us, at which point our perception of the fragility of the biosphere would undergo a radical revision.

I suspect it won't be the cultural conceit of "market forces" that will restore the balance you speak of. IMO it's more likely to be forces external to our species that cause an involuntary reduction in human numbers and activity. Of course that's just my opinion -- maybe Adam Smith will wave his invisible hand after all, and I'll be shown to be a fool. But at this point I don't think so.

[Nederland]

41. And that definition is a human bias

What right do we have to say that the way things are right now are the way things "should" be? That is the human conceit at work right there IMHO. I can easily see a scenario where our changes to the biosphere result in an environment that is very good for many species that environmentalists don't find as valuable as say, polar bears. That doesn't mean that they are of course...

[GliderGuider]

42. The problem of human bias in these discussions is a big one.

On the one hand we have the dualism inherent in the view of the world as containing only humans and resources. On the other hand we have the principle that because of our self-awareness we have a responsibility to make sure our actions don't unduly damage those species that can't protect themselves against us. On the third hand we have the existential position that things simply are as they are, and are perfect as they are, so no guilt is required over any of our actions. And on the fourth hand there is the notion that when you step out a million years it will all be different no matter what we do.

How does one balance and respond to these competing points of view? The mere fact that a human being is thinking these thoughts means that any outcome is going to reflect a human bias.

I use threads like this to think out loud, to explore my own opinions in the light of others'. No one is under any obligation to agree with anything I write. In fact I actually prefer it if people disagree with me.

My personal philosophy is that we are here to help the universe become aware of itself. Seen in that light, no matter what our decisions or opinions are, so long as they are formed consciously and in good faith it's all good.

[hunter]

25. We'd convert the entire mass of the earth into a great throbbing ball of human protoplasm.

The Federation of Intelligent Life in this Galaxy (FOILITG) would quarantine our solar system and have contingency plans for dropping a super-nova bomb into our sun should we start spreading to other star systems.

[slackmaster]

33. Yay, we're all saved until the next energy crisis

There will always be another.

[GliderGuider]

34. Well, if we discovered ZPE we'd be set until the heat-death of the universe... n/t

[slackmaster]

36. The heat-death of the universe may be accelerated by our discovery of ZPE

If not that, then by overuse of the Krell furnaces.

[Trillo]

37. With the deception that seems so in vogue amongst many,

why do you believe that IF ZPE was discovered, that it would be disclosed by the deceivers? As a 'holy grail' type of energy form, would it not represent one the greatest riches ever discovered, and as such, be subject to the deep lies of powerful people in high places in order to 'sell it' to 'the ignorant'?

In order to do that, one possibility would be to never disclose the true source of the energy, but, for example, to assert that the energy comes from something or somewhere else. So, if ZPE was discovered, why wouldn't a cover story be created that we need 'nuclear' (or something else, like 'clean coal', or even 'expensive renewables' of another form)? The point would be to keep the corporatist's money flowing to them in some form. Their entire pattern over decades seems to be to discourage independence, to encourage ignorance (while simultaneously decrying ignorance, and creating compulsory schools with many unimportant hoops to jump through), and to encourage dependence on corporate. Undoubtedly, if ZPE was discovered, and the above deception possibility played out, those who might claim to have found ZPE would likely be marginalized through ridicule and 'message force multipliers'; possibly other 'techniques' as well, perhaps including jail, mental hospitals, and torture. I mean, this would be BIG MONEY at stake, and no inhibition, including 'the law' would seem to be able to contain the deceptive in pursuit of "their" money.

I voted yesterday, my answer was "other".

[GliderGuider]

38. That's possible, but it's peripheral to my argument.

My assumption is "some huge new clean energy source becomes generally available".

Of course there would be issues surrounding "ownership", but in the case of ZPE that would be like claiming ownership of the universe. That might be difficult to do...

[Trillo]

39. My apologies for misunderstanding your assumption.

People would certainly need to learn to control their strong desire to self-replicate. Evidence suggests, when considering humanity as a single whole, that hasn't yet been achieved.