Problems, Predicaments, and Technology

  "Civilization is the child of the Neolithic Revolution, of the widespread adoption of agriculture as a mode of production, and agriculture necessarily causes leaching and loss of topsoil, as well as many other environmental consequences, including climate change. Nor does any city live by bread alone. It needs water, so it must build dams and aqueducts. It needs wood for fuel and timber, so it must chop down forests. It needs metal for coins, swords, and ploughshares, so it must dig mines. It needs stone to erect palaces, courts, temples, and walls, so it must quarry away mountains. And it must build roads and ports needed to transport all the necessities of urban life. In short, a city lives by both consuming and damaging a wide array of ecological resources."  ~ William Ophuls - Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail See more here. "The illusion of control or agency and the attachment to it creates much suffering."                  ~ Chery Young   While I

  Pictures of wildfire damage at Glacier National Park in Montana 2016 What type of activities will help in reducing the effects of ecological overshoot? I'm often asked this question when I point out that solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear energy, hydroelectric dams, EVs, and all other technological devices will not help climate change, pollution loading, or any other predicament under the parent predicament of ecological overshoot: "Well, what are your solutions?" Sadly, this question assumes that I am pointing out a PROBLEM, not a predicament. Predicaments don't have solutions. So, I don't have a solution (and nobody else does either, despite claims to the contrary - more on that in a couple of paragraphs). But I can tell them what WON'T help. Buying more stuff, REGARDLESS of what it is, WILL NOT HELP. Because ecological overshoot is a predicament with an outcome and not a problem with a solution , people need to adjust their expectations accordingly.

With as much focus on extinction now that most of society realizes that this is AT LEAST a possibility, many people have come up with the idea of moving different species around the planet in order to insure that they will survive into the future. Some species have been brought to zoos or other places to help them reproduce and raise offspring to add to the number of those species living today. There are a number of seed banks  designed exclusively with saving specific genetics, breeds, and types of plants from being lost to extinction. But is it a good idea for us to interfere with nature, with wild animals who can become habituated to humans, and can we actually "save" other species from extinction or some other awful destiny, the overall reason we are constantly interfering with nature in the first place in this matter? I hate to say it, as this is a repeating theme on my blog, but do we really have agency?  Of course, this is too easy of an answer, and one that leaves out

What is hydrogen sulfide and what does it have to do with extinction events? In my last entry where I discussed James G. Anderson, I pointed out how the current behavior of the climate system will be interrupted and inherently changed by the loss of Arctic ice and the cryosphere in general. This loss of ice in sea ice, permafrost, glaciers, and frozen lakes and rivers will dramatically speed up the process of warming not only in the Arctic, but the entire Northern Hemisphere and beyond. As it does this, eventually, the temperature difference between the poles and the tropics will disappear. Without the large temperature difference, winds will be diminished, causing the world's oceans to mix less. This will cause hypoxic conditions due to less circulation and less circulation will lead to stagnation, and general anaerobic conditions will lead to the production of hydrogen sulfide leading to sulfidic oceans, also known as the Canfield Ocean .  Understanding that the cryosphere  is