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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 |
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Sep 29, 2015 00:06
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