Problems, Predicaments, and Technology

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

  "If yo u’re in your last 10 percent of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of you r mind when you’re with them and treat that time as what it actually is: Precious." ~ Tim Urban I am about to post the 1000th "Live Now" post in the Prepping for NTHE Group today. It is special for many reasons. Most importantly is how precious the time we all have left is. Another journey awaits me soon and I am poignantly aware of how important this time spent out in nature is, and I eagerly look forward to getting away from the city for awhile. My outlook is tempered by the fact that one never knows when the last trip will be, so it is imperative to treasure and cherish these days of leisure. I have been feverishly adding new scientific peer-reviewed literature to these pages this week, with almost 300 new articles added. 55 articles were added to the Climate Change and Collapse file alone! My efforts to get the message out to Live Now [ <<<link to