Problems, Predicaments, and Technology

  First picture: Morning, Hamilton Ranch (aka Carroll Ranch), Big Hole Valley, Montana Second picture: Beaverslide used for hay. Agriculture is what led into civilization. After quite an interesting last week, I have a better understanding of why so many people fall into the different "traps" and mindsets that we do. Rarely do we see the bars around us (known as wetiko or colonialism ) and as such, we often forget precisely which boundaries are real and set in stone (such as the fact that civilization is unsustainable ), which ones are real and temporary, and which ones are only illusory and imagined. This brings a new aura to the forefront; one which explains why it is so necessary to Live Now . Peter Russell points out one of the big issues surrounding modern humans, looking for external items we think we are missing  in our lives.   One of my friends, Simon Michaux, just came out with a new video  describing precisely where we are with regards to mining and extraction and

This is Part 3 of So, What Should We Do? One of the things that is so pervasive in today's society is the constant flow of hype, advertising, marketing, and propaganda, and many people fail to see through it. Steve Bull came out with this article explaining the same scenario. They are led to believe that everything is a problem and that technology or some product produced from technology can solve it all. The truth is that technology and its use is actually the root source of these issues; and they are predicaments, not problems. Furthermore, more or new technology can do nothing but cause yet more damage. Technology is what supports civilization, as I pointed out in my last article (see the top picture) . Agriculture is technology . Since civilization is unsustainable , we cannot fix portions of civilization and stop the damage caused by civilization, which is causing those portions to develop trouble in the first place. In other words, we cannot switch out ICE (internal combus

 T he Hungry Horse Dam located just outside Hungry Horse, Montana Let's talk about infrastructure, shall we? Living in the human-built world day in and day out, we often forget that all these buildings, roads, buried pipes, wires, sewers, and literally everything else we build is not actually natural. We require nature - other plant and animal species - for the ecosystem services they provide, but nature does not require our infrastructure. Think about that deeply for a moment and realize that no other species requires our electrical grid - it only serves us, and even we don't truly require it for survival; we got along fine for most ALL of the last 200,000 years or so (except for the last 150 years) without electricity. We *could* get along just fine without it now too, except we went into ecological overshoot. There is now no way to keep industrial civilization humming along without it, and this brings some rather uncomfortable facts to light as shown in this study  about our

  What is ecological overshoot and why is it important? Is it a more important predicament than climate change? What about energy and resource decline - more important than it? The answer to the latter two questions is YES  and ecological overshoot is important because it is the predicament which is causing all the other (symptom) predicaments such as climate change, pollution loading, energy and resource decline, and the list of files included in this post . While one can read this peer-reviewed paper from William Rees, I found this video quite instructive and possibly more understandable to most people. Practically every article I've written here is about ecological overshoot in one way or another. Put simply, ecological overshoot is the collection of predicaments that our unsustainable lifestyles have brought forth. Collectively, humans globally use far more energy and resources than the planet can provide in a given unit of time and we produce toxic wastes that the planet ca

One of my friends in the world of energy and resource decline is Mike Stasse. I have a considerable number of friends who have serious experience with solar PV systems, and Mike is one who has written a blog regarding his experiences. He constantly and consistently shares lots of information about ecological overshoot and the symptom predicaments which offshoot from it in the blog he writes, Damn the Matrix . Now, I have already previously shared much about the limitations, the overall environmental cost, the reasons why non-renewable "renewable" energy systems actually end up requiring MORE energy than if we simply began reducing overall energy use in the first place (civilizational inertia and Jevons Paradox), and the science proving all of this; however, Mike's information comes from personal, real world experience. Here is his latest saga regarding his (relatively) new solar system. As one can clearly see, the real world experience is a whole different scenario from

  I have mentioned Tom Murphy many times in this blog precisely because facts don't lie. If anyone wants to truly know where we are as a species on this planet, Tom can definitely tell you. Don't get me wrong, I can also tell you; but I'm not a physicist. Tom is one of the few individuals who has written a book about our predicaments and allowed free access to everyone.  Tom has done far more than that, however. He has a website which has been a staple within the energy community for many years. He talks about our situation in this video  and surprisingly thought the same way I did for many years regarding our future. He thought that we would develop various "renewable" technologies and that our future would be shiny and "green" so that BAU could continue unabated. I actually think a very large portion of society thinks the same way, and it is because they simply do not understand the laws of physics, thermodynamics, biology, and chemistry and how they

    If you believe that there are good reasons to say that hydrogen produced with nuclear energy should be deemed to be "pink," then there must be something that doesn't click right inside your brain. The people who propose this rainbow of colors for a colorless gas don't seem to realize that when you arrive to this level of silliness, there has to be something deeply wrong at the very basis of the idea. (Courtesy of this article )  I  have mentioned how non-renewable "renewables" don't actually reduce fossil fuel use AND how they require the fossil fuel platform for their very existence in several of my articles. This means that ANYTHING which depends upon that infrastructural layer also doesn't reduce fossil fuel use due to the ongoing building, maintenance, and decommissioning and disposal of the infrastructural layers of civilization which support these upper layers and said "anything" also requires the fossil fuel platform for its ex