Comments on: Environmental Heresies

By: asics france

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By: Messi Kaka

Messi Kaka — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 18:54:45 +0000

Paul Ehrich may have been wrong, but Jeavons wasn’t. Technological “fixes” to socio-environmental problems (i.e. overcoming environmental limitations to the human carrying capacity without societal destruction), whether of the conventional kind (GMOs, nuclear power, etc.) or the unconventional (floating ocean crop circles) all have the same effect, described first by Jeavons and later by a number of economists. This “Jeavons paradox”, or rebound effect, states that the more efficient we become at deriving a resource, the more demand there will be for that resource. In other words, the more efficient our energy- or food production systems become, the greater the demand will be for energy or food. This ultimately leads back to the same spot, where further increases in energy- or food production efficiency are needed. This downward spiral can only go on for so long, since we live on a finite planet. As an environmentalist, I have no problems with the technologies Brand suggests we should embrace, as long as they are banned from this living planet and all others. GMOs and nuclear power are for space colonies, not terrestrial life.

By: Hamster Cages

Hamster Cages — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:58:59 +0000

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By: Rocky XVIII

Rocky XVIII — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:30:09 +0000

I am a biologist/marine biologist and offer the following.

A key question that the interview must prompt is this: What if Stewart’s optimism/complacency turns out to be wrong?

Note, for example, that no combination of technology, additional Einsteins, or human cleverness, inventiveness, or ingenuity managed to save the passenger liner Titanic.

It’s decision-in-maker in chief ignoredwarnings, made wrong and incautious decisions, and mistakenly imagined that his vessel was unsinkable.

We are wrecking our planet already with a population of 6.9 billion, and only half of us are industrialized – if our population did not grow at all, we can expect that our current unsustainable impacts to double as (if?)the world’s poorest and least-developed nations areable to achieve developed nations standards of living.

Finally, since I cannot post an image here, Stewart and fellow readers are invited to examine once again a graph of human population growth over the past ten millennia (for example at http://www.scribd.com/doc/25205868)

and note that the graph very much appears to have the look, perhaps, of late-phase exponential conditions.

By: Brian Stahl

Brian Stahl — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:50:12 +0000

How about some common sense along with a look at the big picture? The marketplace is about to (finally)create opportunities in producing energy in other formats. We can blend it all and have the non-renewables as a foundation. I am wary of nuclear because I have been around construction sites all of my adult life. I have heard the French do a very good job with nuclear. If you can keep plants from melting down, recycle fuel and minimize all the extraneous waste (low level but still poisonous) maybe we can make that work.
I think we should be going toward hydrogen. It burns but it doesnt make co2. If you have water and electricity you can make it. I’ve heard there are problems with storage and valves because it is somewhat corrosive and we all know it blows up pretty easily.
I agree that we need to get real and drop some of the dogma from the 70′s.

By: John Bergamini

John Bergamini — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:37:50 +0000

Take a serious look at Chernobyl, (See “http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/”.), and tell me why it isn’t unrealistic optimism to hope that kind of accident isn’t inevitable over the incredibly long time scales required to store nuclear materials safely.

Stewart Brand’s willingness to accept the dangers of nuclear power are based on the presumption that global warming and CO2 atmospheric poisoning cannot be ameliorated quickly without that technology. That is a false assumption. For a comprehensive, non-nuclear solution to global warming that returns farmland to wilderness, (and thereby ends the catastrophic extinction rate), see “Land Not Bombs” at “http://landnotbombs.pbwiki.com/”

By: Felix J. Tapia » Stewart Brand, el bi

Felix J. Tapia » Stewart Brand, el bi — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 13:44:37 +0000

[...] A continuaci