|
I got to wondering about this after reading some papers about environmental impacts. The fact is, any sort of industrial society is going to cause some level of ecological damage. It's going to have to mine for the ores and minerals it uses, it's going to have to generate power in ways that will cause ecological damage even with clean energy such as dams, factories create harmful waste etc. My question is, what's the lowest ecological impact we could have and still have something recognizable as an industrial society? Suppose we mined carefully, causing as little damage to the surrounding environment as possible (we can take our time, not like the ore's going anywhere). Logging industries the world over stick rigidly to replanting and selective logging policies to prevent deforestation. We more or less nix commercial flight, and do all our travel by train and ship. Consumer culture doesn't really take hold; the improved production from factories and assembly lines is instead used to give workers 30-hour weeks and decent pay across the board, rather than endlessly cranking out more poo poo for profits. Everyone resolves to take 5-minute showers. Reducing device power consumption and increasing efficiency becomes seen as one of the best-funded fields of study there is. Inefficient suburbs are replaced with the old urban/rural divide, reducing the need for cars and allowing more people to live in less space. Most of the population takes up a plant-based diet. Sex education is comprehensive, and birth control and family planning services are universally available. Electronics and appliances, when they're still used, are built to last and aren't thrown out until severe obsolescence/brokenness requires it. Obviously, even these sorts of drastic changes would leave some problems. Even if you could power the whole thing with dams and solar collectors, you'd still wreck some downriver ecosystems and fry some birds with concentrated sunlight. But where would this damage floor be? What would the world look like? I understand it's unrealistic to expect people would do this, but this is more of a thought experiment about the theoretical bare minimum level of ecological damage you have to accept as an industrialized nation than anything else. ETA bleh, figures I'd put thought into this thread and then forget to set the tag. Polybius91 fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Sep 29, 2015 |
#
?
Sep 29, 2015 00:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 30, 2024 13:19 |
|
|
hashtag 420 posting in a poo poo poast thread #yolo !!!111! lol You basically want to reduce land use, climate change, and nitrogen/phosphorous/other emissions. Put all your agriculture in greenhouses/vertical farms or make it intensive while limiting runoff (boo Germany, yay the Netherlands), don't eat tons of beef, run on nuclear power and whatever renewables you feel like adding without wasting land and resources (e.g. no solar in dark shitholes like Northern Germany, no hydro except on rivers you're already loving up for other reasons, no biomass powerplants except those fed by certain types of waste), live in at least moderately dense cities. Recycling helps reduce resource extraction impacts which are basically land use and emissions. Everything boils down to land sparing - use the gently caress out of whatever area you need, trade energy for lower area use, limit impacts to the area you're already using. That way, you'd kill off only minimal city areas plus comparatively small resource extraction/farming areas while everything else stays ok. Pretty much all species except for a few unlucky endemics should do ok. Energy efficiency wouldn't be all that important as long as you aren't consuming at like fourty times the current level where waste heat would become a problem. Currently, everyone invests in energy efficiency because people hate  atomz for dumb reasons and because market-ready types of commercial nuclear power plants are a long term investment which doesn't start bringing in shareholder friendly revenue immediately or provide great PR like renewables, so many countries will have to make do with those less energy-dense and more resource and area intensive renewables.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2015 12:54
|
|
I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
|
Vertical farms won't work, mass vegetarianism is probably going to be mandatory, as is public transit being the dominant transport option - granting every man, woman and child the 1 1/2 tonnes of steel/aluminium for private car ownership can't scale. Nukes everywhere, Hydro everywhere, and you're probably going to want to integrate power-plant waste heat output and pipe that into home heating (especially hot-water), which is going to mean small city sizes and high density. You're also going to want to minimize commute distance, so the topology will be:
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2015 15:26
|
|
|
A good way to make very inaccurate predictions is to assume that the means and methods used now will be used in the future. I don't think we could support the 1+ billion horses required to sustain transcontinental trade in the US.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2015 16:52
|
|
