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Is Civilization Screwed?
Hexmage-PA
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Is our modern industrial civilization unsustainable? We're only a few centuries into the Industrial Age and already trouble is looming on the horizon. There are simply too many people using too many resources.
The introduction of the automobile in particular seems to be causing massive problems for the human race now and in the near future. Automobiles have contributed to the US' dependence on oil, generated pollution through exhaust, enabled a flawed and environmentally hazardous agricultural system, and lead to rising levels of obesity. Since WWII the United States' communities have been designed with automobiles in mind, making automobiles into a necessity, particularly in rural areas that lack public transportation.
Many experts in various fields now believe that our way of life is causing catastrophic problems to arise that may seriously affect us soon, possibly within the next few decades. Climate change is by far the most well-known result of industrial society, but we may also be affected by a haywire global economy due to the difficulty of supporting a massive global population.
We may be able to mitigate these disasters if we act quickly, but unfortunately the best-case scenario doesn't seem likely. The average person is ignorant of the very real possibility that the way of life they take for granted is not only unsustainable, but may be crippled or even destroyed within their lifetime. We need a drastic revolution to prevent untold damage to civilization, but people are both unable to agree on what should be done and unwilling to change.
What can we do to mitigate these disasters? In the worst-case scenario, what measures can we take to survive?
The introduction of the automobile in particular seems to be causing massive problems for the human race now and in the near future. Automobiles have contributed to the US' dependence on oil, generated pollution through exhaust, enabled a flawed and environmentally hazardous agricultural system, and lead to rising levels of obesity. Since WWII the United States' communities have been designed with automobiles in mind, making automobiles into a necessity, particularly in rural areas that lack public transportation.
Many experts in various fields now believe that our way of life is causing catastrophic problems to arise that may seriously affect us soon, possibly within the next few decades. Climate change is by far the most well-known result of industrial society, but we may also be affected by a haywire global economy due to the difficulty of supporting a massive global population.
We may be able to mitigate these disasters if we act quickly, but unfortunately the best-case scenario doesn't seem likely. The average person is ignorant of the very real possibility that the way of life they take for granted is not only unsustainable, but may be crippled or even destroyed within their lifetime. We need a drastic revolution to prevent untold damage to civilization, but people are both unable to agree on what should be done and unwilling to change.
What can we do to mitigate these disasters? In the worst-case scenario, what measures can we take to survive?
Hexmage-PA on
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Yes.
We (being Americans and most of the first world) would need to reduce our populations to 1/6 - 1/4 current numbers to be sustainable. Countries entering the post-industrial economy would have to achieve comparable population densities.
That's not feasible. Besides the near impossibility of expecting rapid negative population growth (short of major disease or war), our economy could not support that kind of recession in population. I've alluded to this before on these boards, but as countries advance economically, their population growth naturally declines. It becomes more resource-intensive and less beneficial to a family to have more than one or two children, so some countries like Japan and Italy are seeing major economic problems due to inadequate population growth. Despite that, as an economy grows from an agrarian economy to an industrial and then post-industrial economy, its use of natural resources and production of pollution increase by orders of magnitude even as its population growth slows. Population reduction is not the answer to our problems; lifestyle reduction is.
We need to reduce our energy usage, find cleaner sources of energy (probably nuclear as a stepping stone to hydrogen or solar), use fewer natural resources, and pollute less. A certain amount of that change is going to come from new technology, some of it will come from new laws, but there will have to be personal sacrifices as well. We have to grow out of the current typical American dream of buying a huge house out in the suburbs 30 miles away from where you work and driving your huge car into work every day. The agricultural practice of shipping produce 200 or 300 miles from huge corporate farms to population centers has to be supplanted by smaller, suburban and urban farms. We have to live closer to where we grow food and where we work and we have to live smaller and simpler. And if we don't do that, economic changes - the price of oil, the reduction in crop yields and arable land due to climate change, etc. - will force those lifestyle changes upon us.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Okay, would you care to elaborate?
What I mean by it is: use less energy. Travel less. Commute less. Live in smaller homes. More efficiently designed homes. If you have the choice between a job that is 20 miles away and a job that is 5 miles away, but the farther job pays more, take the one that pays less and save money by moving to a smaller home. (Or move closer to the farther one and pay more for a smaller home.) Eat local food, even if it costs more. Take public transit or bike or walk wherever you can. Recycle and reuse whatever you can. Repair electronics rather than replace them, even if they're obsolete.
That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. What are you talking about?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
EDIT: I mean we don't need to stop building cities. We don't need to have less luxurious lifestyles. In fact the only thing we need to do is be slightly more efficient with our resources, and even then mostly the material ones. Energy is not the problem people think it is in my opinion, simply because nuclear is a far vaster resource then anyone imagines we just haven't got to shove yet on the issue.
EDIT 2: Nor finished tapping the well that is electronics recycling in the first place. Also you're presenting a skewed view of the problem - you can't repair electronics, because most of it is unrepairable beyond certain obvious faults and would take a hell of a lot energy to repair rather then replace.
Hopefully no one will do anything too stupid in the meantime, like nuke someone or something. We need IQ and psychiatric assessments before anyone is allowed in a position of power...
Edit: I'll elaborate in a bit.
I could give you some far more impressive statistics on building envelope design, green roof efficacy of reducing ecological footprints, &c. but the overall point remains. Oh, and even though suburbs are sprawling, they're still far more concentrated than what life was like in the 1800's. 54% of all US residents live in a metropolitan area greater than 1 million, ~80% of all US residents live in what would be considered a metropolitan area period. We are an urban nation. Making urban areas more dense, walkable, and efficient for transit is easier than giving Montana a subway.
Oh, and:
CAN YOU DIG IT!
My attitude is that you can either get used to living with fewer luxuries now, or you can wait until you discover that the lifestyle you've been living has become so expensive that you can no longer afford it.
I am highly skeptical that new technology and new social policies alone are going to bridge the gap between our current common lifestyle and a sustainable economy. I don't believe that we're going to see a sudden catastrophe. We're not going to wake up one morning in an apocalypse movie. But energy will get more expensive, petroleum-based building supplies will get more expensive, food will get more expensive, while wages do not increase to compensate. Meanwhile people who are used to the lifestyles they've been living will try to use credit to maintain them, reasoning that the increase in prices are just temporary blips in the economy and everything will be fine once they get that yearly raise they were promised. The cost of living will continue to rise, though, and they'll find themselves with more open credit than they can afford and find it difficult to pay back...
...is this starting to sound familiar at all?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I don't think we need to stop building cities. On the contrary, urban living is significantly more efficient than suburban living.
You can't translate a suburban McMansion lifestyle into an urban setting though.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
See, that isn't living simpler. To me a lot of that is living more complexly than I currently live. It's also an increased standard of living, healthier for me, and likely more enjoyable. The value of a home, to its occupants, is not determined in square feet; for example. If anything that is the worst metric to use. The quality of materials, design, and follow through are far more impactful.
Thankfully we live in a time when this sort of complexity can be easily managed and made equal in difficulty to the current process of just overcoming something with brute force. It's living smarter, living better, but not living simply.
Yes you can. Unless what I consider to be a lifestyle differs from your own. What is it that you consider impossible to support in an urban core when compared to the fringes of suburbia?
In any event, the answer isn't the abandonment of suburbia; simply the alteration of policies to make it more dense and more like urban neighborhoods.
I agree. But in our culture, right now, value is calculated in terms of size. There needs to be a cultural sea change in which the "bigger is better" mentality fades away in exchange for a more sophisticated understanding of value.
That's what I'm talking about. Is it possible we're talking across from each other rather than with each other?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This notion that the earth can't support more than a billion people is one I find hard to swallow. More than a billion people if tomorrow we had to stop using fossil fuels, but we have a good long while before it becomes an issue of basic survival for the modern world even if oil has already peaked.
Current short term issues like the economy, health care, and infrastructure are more pressing. If the fact that the world suddenly had a massive drop in oil demand do to economic reasons isn't enough proof to the "THE END IS NIGH BECAUSE WE DONT HAVE ENOUGH RESOURCES" crowd, I don't know what is.
We can use less resources, but it takes strong incentive. We're moving in the right direction, I don't know if it is fast enough, but we are. Going back to the horse and buggy is not only not an option, it's a bad option. Pre industrial society sucked.
Why? I agree consuption needs to be reduced, but population does not seem to be the real issue. We aren't running out of food, we aren't running out of space. It seems that efficiency is the real issue.
If we moved the entire population to texas it would be about an apartment building an acre. If we increase efficiency population isn't really a problem.
but they're listening to every word I say
That's not actually the culture, it's simply all that's offered because contractors and developers make more money that way. There's a reason that high density, walkable neighborhoods with 80+ year old homes are incredibly expensive. It's because they're scarce as hell, and people don't make that kind of quality anymore. And I'm not talking about plastered walls or thicker lumber. The actual designs of the homes take how you live into account far more than modern designs do, because most modern designs are stretching themselves too thin. The fees that architecture firms charge for homes don't help much in that respect either.
I'm talking about 4500-square-foot three-story homes, three-car garages (with three cars in them, two of which are SUVs), and never having to rely on public transportation ever.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It's a reflection of culture. They wouldn't have started making those homes if people didn't want them.
but they're listening to every word I say
I agree with Ra's Al Ghul.
I just have to strongly disagree, based entirely on my conversations with people and what I've seen of people's behavior. I think the demand for large suburban houses is high because we associate larger homes with better homes.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Brownstone with taxis on speed dial.
They make them because the margins are better. People buy them because they're cheaper than the better homes in the more existent neighborhoods that they wanted to buy in the first place, but not so cheap that they're much more expensive than the even worse shit on the wrong side of the tracks.
Did you read the rest of my post?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
All I can say is that if this is true for other markets, it is not true of the SF Bay Area. Condos in nice neighborhoods close to city centers and train stations go for prices comparable to (or less than) detached single-family homes in more remote areas; however the condos are half the floor space. People buy condos versus houses depending on what lifestyle they prefer.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
From what I've seen, everyone who comes into a developer or architecture firm either doesn't know what they want, or are more of a stickler on price and they'll be damned if they aren't going to get the most for their money. Making something larger is actually generally cheaper, per square foot, than making something more compact that's built better. And if you can't afford to go with actual wood floors in a 12x20 living room because it's too expensive, but using vinyl that looks like wood gives you a pile of money left over...well, why not turn it into a 16x20 room? It costs what you were willing to spend in the first place anyway, and vinyl is easier to clean than hardwood to boot.
*goes back to reading Rainbow Six*
I already referenced Ra's Al Ghul.
Do you have numbers on the number of home buyers who have negotiation power over the floorplan of their home?
Because in my admittedly anecdotal experience, the majority of home buyers are either buying a home that's already been built, or they're going to a developer that shows them six floor plans, three of which are mirror-images of the other, and say "pick one."
Edit: Besides, doesn't your post kind of play into my point, which is that most people think "bigger is better" even if a smaller home would be better to live in?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm with electricitylikesme on this one. Just because we're exponentially increasing our energy demands doesn't mean we won't exponentially increase our usable energy creation a la nuclear energy or similar pursuits.
Dyson sphere here we come
Is that meant to be sarcasm or are you looking for a serious response?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'd say that intelligent design (no, not Intelligent Design) could solve a lot of the Massive Houses problem. I live in a 1700 sq ft home that is fairly intelligently designed and is a perfect fit for my family of four. I've been in 2500 sq ft homes that felt smaller and had less usable space, as well as costing $Texas to keep heated and cooled. There is no thought at all put into the design of your standard, suburban cookie box house, or into the layout of the land, and so vast quantities of money, space, and resources are wasted.
And I, too, disagree with the notion that we can only survive if we dramatically "simplify" our life styles. I don't think things like big-screen TVs, ample room for the kids to play, two cars per family, and eating out are fundamentally untenable. I find it hard to imagine that any aspect of my life is intrinsically impossible to implement on a mass scale, given the right innovations and technological advancements.
Right, and those __ floor plans are designed with the cost to the builder in mind, not the desires of the home owner or legacy costs factored in. However they buyers have many other alternatives given that other builders are doing the same thing and custom built homes are, more and more, prohibitively expensive. So they settle for less, even when that less means more house than they really wanted organized in a fashion that doesn't suit their lifestyle.
No, they want the higher quality smaller home, then get shocked at the price of them. They already have the money set aside, however, and simply spend it somewhere else. If you can't have a 10, you can still get 2 5's.
A) Energy costs. Heating a large home is fucking expensive versus heating a small home.
C) That aside, sure, larger is nicer. More space is always a plus. But there's a point past which more size is completely unnecessary.
Read this, it goes into far more detail and with pictures, plans, and examples that I haven't the time to type out. It's a very easy book to go through.
The short answer, though, is simply the use of space. A Victorian era home could be twice the square footage of a Usonian home, but feel much smaller thanks to the plan of it.
But they should, because there's a ton of things beyond "this won't fall down" that directly affect the buyer.
Outside of "two cars per family" I don't see any of those as fundamentally untenable either.
However, the kids might be playing in a park or shared townhouse yard. When you eat out, you might be eating locally grown produce, which means your selections would be limited to what is seasonally available in your area or other selections would be noticeably more expensive.
I'm starting to think that somehow my prior posts were interpreted to mean that we'd have to live like cavemen or something.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.