But what about the children...

[GoodCallYouWin]

It doesn't take a bunch of fancy statistics for me to tell you that we, the lucky ones born in the West, consume far more than our average global citizen. Nor do I mean to cast moral aspersions here, for we are no more to blame for the evolution of our society than a bird blamed for their nest.

What I'm asking is, at what point does this crazy trading of good stop helping and start hurting? What would the world look like if everyone consumed at the level we did? Given the rather finite nature of the resources on this planet, does it make sense to rush force into temporary wealth? And is the current rate of our consumption of natural resources sustainable for more than a few hundred years?

At what point should we, as a society say, "enough is enough, the crazy non stop consumption fest has to stop"? Do we ever?

Or is there no danger? Can our renewable resources and new technology handle ever increasing levels of consumption through increased efficiency and for example in places like the Alberta Tar Sands where oil is slowly being won back from dirt. Or desalinization plants...

So, which is it?

[latefordinner]

--What I'm asking is, at what point does this crazy trading of good stop helping and start hurting?--

a couple hundred years late on that one [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

the myth of the greatness of industrial capitalism has been fueled (pun intended) by the close-to-free supply of energy in the form of millions of years of easily extracted solar power stored in fossil fuels -- in essence we have mistaken the fall after jumping off of a cliff as the ability to fly -- the ground is coming up alarmingly fast now and while some believe that a totally free market would instantaneously absorb this information as it becomes available and steer us in another direction, I think it's probably a bit late for that one

the collapse of industrial civilization isn't going to happen overnight, but it's going to be a particularly nasty slide for a lot of humans. the rest of the world though, can't wait.

[Brainwalter]

Even now nuclear, wind, solar, etc. are just a little farther from free than oil is.

[AlexM]

Uhm... we haven't had capitalism since we started really using oil, we've had a mixed economy.

[natedogg]

[ QUOTE ]
--What I'm asking is, at what point does this crazy trading of good stop helping and start hurting?--

a couple hundred years late on that one [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

the myth of the greatness of industrial capitalism has been fueled (pun intended) by the close-to-free supply of energy in the form of millions of years of easily extracted solar power stored in fossil fuels -- in essence we have mistaken the fall after jumping off of a cliff as the ability to fly -- the ground is coming up alarmingly fast now and while some believe that a totally free market would instantaneously absorb this information as it becomes available and steer us in another direction, I think it's probably a bit late for that one

the collapse of industrial civilization isn't going to happen overnight, but it's going to be a particularly nasty slide for a lot of humans. the rest of the world though, can't wait.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah.. the usual peak oil nonsense. Got Howard Keunztler? I have some farmland in Dakota to sell you... hahaha

natedogg

[GoodCallYouWin]

I'm not talking about oil... I'm talking about everything.

[Girchuck]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not talking about oil... I'm talking about everything.

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't, but oil and coal are the resources which enabled the growth of consumption. Oil and coal made us wealthy, allowed us to feed several billion people, financed our technological advances, allowed emergence of global economy.

[latefordinner]

I realize you are talking about "everything" but as Girchuck points out, the entire modern industrial economy runs on oil. Oil ships the plastic crap from China to the the US. Our food production system is quite literally growing food in inches of oil (large scale industrial agriculture=massive pesticide/fertilizer use) and then shipping those tomatos across the world using...oil.

[GoodCallYouWin]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not talking about oil... I'm talking about everything.

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't, but oil and coal are the resources which enabled the growth of consumption. Oil and coal made us wealthy, allowed us to feed several billion people, financed our technological advances, allowed emergence of global economy.

[/ QUOTE ]

The food allows us to feed several billion people, not the oil. Oil is just one part of the system, yes our world would be radically different without it, but people would still eat. My problem has nothing to do with oil, the problem is that if the entire world consumed things like we do, there wouldn't be much left to consume after a couple years, and the entire world is becoming like us.

[latefordinner]

I assure you, not as many people would still eat.

I agree that consumption capitalism is a cancer that will kill the host organism eventually.