Sunset on Human Civilization?
I got this link about entering a new era from Jay Lake’s livejournal.
Do technological cultures survive their growing pains? Species extinction through war or unintended environmental consequences — a cap upon the growth of civilizations — could be one solution to the Fermi question. They’re not here because they’re not there, having left ruined cities and devastated planets in their wake, just as we will. It’s a stark picture whether true or not, one that makes us ponder how the things we do with technology affect our future. Consider the question in terms of time.
In saying we’re entering a new era, though, even though it’s admittedly because of human activity, this kind of relieves humanity of responsibility in an odd way.
I’ve often thought conversations about new technology like iPods, argument about copyright, and the discussion about the death of reading is pretty irrelevant in the face of what we’ve done to ourselves. I’m not talking about giving up hope, but that we need to re-prioritize. We need to face the fact that we should be promoting population control all over the world, that we should be abandoning plastics, abandoning and transforming harmful agricultural practices, jettisoning those parts of globalization that are destroying the planet and local, less harmful economies, and immediately put the oil companies on a short leash, while insisting the auto industry get with the program–not in ten years, but in five, and not with a stupid 35-mpg minimum, which doesn’t really help.
I mean, I don’t mean to be Friday’s harbinger of doom, but does no one see what the f— is going on all around them? You in the stupid SUV over there. Me in my f—ing car. You know what I mean?
Jeff
February 1, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Well, the interesting thing about oil is that the alternative energies that are in production now (biofuels) could create more watershortages and corn shortages as well. The water shortages would of course be hastened by the global warming caused by our past reliance on coal and oil – since less cold means less mountain snow, means less water releases in some places (like California).
We’re reaching a crisis point- hastened by the population explosion. More people equals more consumption. Although it’s still frightening that for as few people in the US (relatively speaking to India and China) we still consume 90% of the worlds energy. That is frightening. With other countries rising out of poverty demanding the same access to energy that first world countries have will only create bigger problems.
February 1, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Yup.
But, yanno, you try and organise the murder/suicide of the world’s population. Living is like heroin, real hard habit to kick.
February 1, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Of course Ray Kurzweil would say that we’ll find a technological fix for everything, that humans always have found a way around extinction, and that the increasing power & sophistication and declining cost of computing will allow us to discover unimagined sources of energy and methods for ameliorating the damage we’ve done – all in the nick of time. That in 50 years we’ll extend human life indefinately but that won’t matter, because we’ll all be uploading into that glorious dawning singularity. Right, Ray.
But what if?
Many people say they wouldn’t want to be immortal. I ask them if they really think they’re going to turn down some medical miracle that will save their life. Give me a chance; I’ll upload into some really robust robotic spacecraft and head for the center of the galaxy. I’ve been studying archeology for years, I’d be perfectly happy digging through the bones of old civilizations.
Meanwhile though, I’m with you Jeff. We better do something pretty quick.
February 1, 2008 at 6:44 pm
I dropped by to talk about Kurzweil and his marvelous book “The Singularity is Near,” but I see that Mr. Larsen has already beat me to it.
I think that Lake’s idea – that technologically advanced societies always destroy themselves – has been posited elsewhere as a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox. I’m not too sure I buy it. Seems like with an infinite number of civilizations at least one or two of them would have managed to avoid self-destruction.
Not to get too far off topic here, but I suspect that we as a species might not recognize another intelligent race even if we met one face to face. Who’s to say that there not out there, and maybe we just have the capacity to recognize them or their communications.
Like you, I tend to skew more toward the
February 1, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Like you, I tend to skew more toward the “peril” side of the promise vs. peril of tomorrow’s technology, meaning I think that we’re probably too tribal, primitive and violent to keep from destroying ourselves, but I’d like to hope that maybe there’s a tiny chance we’ll evolve enough to get our act together.
February 1, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I’ve always been of the opinion that both extremes are silly–we won’t be uploading into robot bodies and taking to the stars in perpetuity anytime soon, but we also won’t “destroy ourselves”. The likelyhood of an event–manmade or ‘natural’–which actually snuffs homo sapiens completely, in every conurbation and remote crevice of the planet is ridiculously small. More likely we’ll develop a harmonic population (and technological) pattern, with occasional rises and falls; sometimes smooth, othertimes abrupt.
Improved gas milage (and other more createive alternatives) are welcomed in the meantime. Death by global warming? It’s far from certain.
February 1, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I think it’s foolish NOT to assume the worst, especially since even if you took the global warning out of the equation, we’re still POLLUTING the planet at an ungoldly pace. We are also reaching critical population levels and we mostly have food economies and product economies based either on exploitation of Third World nations or systems that waste more than they produce.
So I’m not saying it’s hopeless, but your view…is silly. Because I’m not talking about humans being wiped out as a species. I’m talking about the fall of civilization.
This is also why I think discussions about the death of hardcopy books are ridiculous, because in 70 years it’s possible we’ll only have the technology left to do hardcopy books and anybody wasting the electricity to surf the ‘net for hours will be wealthy elites in guarded city-states.
JeffV
February 2, 2008 at 1:13 am
More likely we’ll develop a harmonic population (and technological) pattern, with occasional rises and falls; sometimes smooth, othertimes abrupt.
Repeated abrupt drops in human population don’t actually sound very appealing to me, harmonic or otherwise.
February 2, 2008 at 1:40 am
You’re dead on the mark, we do need to do something. But to be quite honest, nothing short of invading every home and telling people how they’re going to live from now on while pointing a gun at their heads is gonna cut it. At least where I live. China and India will need the same treatment (hah! like that’ll happen) as soon as their energy demands begin to skyrocket as well as all the first world countries.
It would take every writer in the world across every medium to get the message out, and you can bet your arse that there will be an uproar when everyman finds out how it’ll affect them.
As for getting rid of oil, that’s just not likely. Too much depends on it now. I keep hearing about how we’ve got maybe ten-fifteen years worth of oil left. Soon we won’t have a choice anyway.
February 2, 2008 at 3:49 am
in 70 years it’s possible we’ll only have the technology left to do hardcopy books and anybody wasting the electricity to surf the ‘net for hours will be wealthy elites in guarded city-states.
Well, this is the kind of talk that I think is silly. Aside from a 50’s style kill-em-all nuclear chain reaction, or a 12-Monkeys virus, civilization is really quite likely to maintain a non-catastrophic equilibrium. Pollution sucks but we aren’t going to accidentally, abruptly pollute ourselves to death. We won’t run out of oil or coal until well after developing substitutes. In fact, we have the technology today to power 90% of our activities on solar power, and solar cell efficiency is likely to continue to improve at a rapid pace. As for “critical population levels”, Paul Ehrlich was wrong 40 years ago and that view is still demonstrably wrong today. (T.Roar: known oil shale reserves alone would supply the entire world at today’s oil consumption rates for 100 years–nasty though it may be, we’re nowhere near the end of oil)
Now, I absolutley agree that we need to step up the pace of implementing these improvements, but doom-mongering–which makes sensational headlines, seems to fulfill a secular Catholic guilt substitute desired by some, and makes for good sci-fi settings–really isn’t the best psychological motivator.
I maintain a middle ground. Civilization will almost certainly modulate itself, but probably not through centralized, top-down decisions. For better or worse (and I still see hope for better) we’re at the mercy of our collective selves–and I think that collective will be far more motivated by creative, high-tech solutions than by a regressive hairshirt scolding. People won’t give up their SUVs for a bicycle…but they would for a nice clean hydrogen-burning hovercar.
Since I’ve already become tedious, I’ll make one more assertion: people aren’t stupid. You (nor I) are not any smarter than “them”. My wife was raised in China, educated in Denmark: she’s seen the difference between an uncontrolled, rapacious, polluting socioeconomy, and an established, conservative, clean and green one. She knows the difference and it’s important to her. My point here is that exposure to ideas and experiences are far more important for people to make “good” decisions than moralizing and mandating. A writer’s call should be to expose people to ideas, not tell them which are right.
As a final note, I also think discussions about the death of hardcopy books are ridiculous–because that will still be my medium of choice in 50 years. The Amazon ebook reader will still be hideously ugly.
February 2, 2008 at 3:56 am
My sincere condolences to anyone who trudged though the above. Euphrosyne is shamed, and that is unbecoming.
February 2, 2008 at 5:46 am
I made it through all that, euphrosyne. ;) Most of it seemed quite sensible.
I live in Perth, Western Australia, and there has been a lot of talk about oil reaching ‘peak production’. I even watched a documentary and an American fella said that if demand keeps growing (stress on growing) at its current rate then we won’t be able to keep up with that demand. As well as what I previously said, that we’ll run out very quickly.
Could you point me in the direction of any sources that say we have enough oil to last us another 100 years at our continually growing rate of demand?
February 2, 2008 at 8:36 am
Yes, it’s sensible, in the kind of way that makes most people settle back into their chairs and say, “Well, I guess I don’t need to do anything after all.”
I also don’t think that all people are equally smart or wise. It’s just simply not true, as much as we would like to think so. Certain professions, certain points of view, are better suited than others to make people be more “awake” so to speak. Some professions or points of view are more questioning of status quo than others, by nature. For example.
JV
February 2, 2008 at 10:34 am
And one example is: I’m more willing to take as fact an environmental scientist’s analysis and opinion on the subject of global warming than, say, um, someone who isn’t.
February 2, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Roar: I used the (cited) Wikipedia estimate midpoint (3.05 trillion barrels), and the CIA world factbook number for worldwide oil usage from 2007, about 82,500,000 barrels/day. Notice I said said 100 years at today’s consumption rates–that’s not accounting for oil. It’ll definitely get worse before it gets better.
We need to face the fact that we should be promoting population control all over the world, that we should be abandoning plastics…
Jeff, I think my main problem with your rant is that there’s a lot of vague “we” going on, which does nothing to address the particulars of the problem. I understand the frustration and agree with (voluntary) implementation of the solutions. Developed nations’ pollution rates has leveled off, comparatively. But China will be creating more pollution that the rest of the world combined before terribly long. That sort of problem can’t be solved by a Berkeley teach-in. Likewise, many developed nations are currently beneath the population replacement rate. And look, China has “population control” and it doesn’t work! The overpopulation of the future will not come from people with broadband access and university (or even high school) degrees. I think history shows that the best way to get people to have fewer babies and care about the environment is to make them wealthy and comfortable. We (you and I) can and do choose to make our own tiny contributions. But we are not the real problem of the future.
But we’re mostly arguing over nothing here. We both agree there are problems that need solutions. We appear to differ in that I think the best hope for improvement will come with the next generation of technological solutions. We’re not at a sustainable/equilibrium point today, but I refuse to believe that regression is our best (or only) hope.
And yes, not all people are equally smart or wise, but collectively we’re pretty good. I do think that most people can make smart choices when presented with good options–the trick is in making the options better. Most people tune out gloom-and-doom because it’s tiresome at this point. Maybe they’re not “smart”, but they have to be dealt with. We either make them into soylent green for the enlightened, or we create better choices so that their lack of foresight will inadvertently save us all through the greater genius of the designers.
Regards.
February 2, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I think you’re way too optimistic and that you must not live in the US to assume people are that smart–or rather not not smart, but distracted by the trappings of consumerism–but I agree we’re arguing over details, not the big picture. I would like nothing more than to be wrong, of course, but I rather think I’m right, sadly enough.
I remember right after 9-11. My first thought was: Bush will use this as an excuse to invade Iraq and grab more power and curtail our civil liberties. Of course, no one I talked to at that time besides people like John Clute wanted to hear that.
JV
February 2, 2008 at 7:01 pm
At college, my father wrote a term paper about oil production in which he quoted information material from the oil industry stating that global oil reserves would only last another twenty years. That was fifty years ago.
At school, I was taught that global oil reserves would only last another twenty years. That was twenty years ago.
So if someone tells me now that global oil reserves will only last for ten to fifteen more years, forgive me for not being overly worried. Because predictions of doom have been wrong too often before.
I’m not saying that a bit of scaremongering is wrong, especially if it finally gets people to wake up and do something. And the US definitely needs a wake-up call regarding energy conservation and raising environmental consciousness in general. However, I lived through the European eco panic of the 1980s as a teenager and all this sounds depressingly familiar.
I’m doing my bit. I have solar panels on the roof of my home (in 2007 they generated 14700 kilowatt hours of energy and saved 11800 kilograms of CO²) and last year, our old oil furnace was replaced by a new system which couples the furnace to a generator. Beyond that, I refuse to get worried.
February 2, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Totally with you Jeff on the not so bright and uncaring people. I know heaps of people who are more concerned with how tough they are, how they look, and how much money they have (which they usually show off by buying a new great big hulking diesel vehicle).
Yes, it seems there are a lot of shale reserves. The documentary I saw must have been talking about crude and condensate, so you definitely have a point there, euphrosyne.
February 2, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Have any of you read Robert Kaplan’s The Coming Anarchy? I had to read this in a class way back in early 1994 when it was published and it’s amazing (sadly) how much of what he predicted has taken place. While I still have some grounds for optimism (it seems that birth rates have fallen faster than expected in large parts of Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa), I suspect we’ll see quite a few more “social diseases” in the coming decades until things level out. Whether or not this will lead to mass extinction for much of the world’s fauna and flora remains to be seen, though. Not too terribly optimistic on that front.
February 2, 2008 at 9:54 pm
I am actually encouraged by the fact that we’re seeing more and more of these types of conversations. Even my own parents, who all drive big, gas-guzzling trucks everywhere, are having these conversations and doing small things to help (new lightbulbs, higher efficiency appliances, etc.). Like Jeff, I worry that it may be too little, too late. However, the idealist in me (naiive though I may be) has to believe that we can and will turn it around. Look at how we all rallied around each other during 9/11. Look at how we all supported each other during Katrina. If kicked in our high-and-mighty, snobby butts hard enough, we can accomplish great things.
I believe our survival instinct is alive and well. Culture shifts take time. Our responsibility, as writers and citizens of Earth, is to continue to inform and influence.
February 2, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Re the oil thing–so what if we have enough? It just means we’re driving faster to our destruction.
Does anyone find it creepy that we’re basically using the power from burning the remains of our past? Literally driving our cars using the dead?
JV
February 3, 2008 at 1:41 am
That’s exactly what I was getting at Jeff. As said before, I keep hearing that oil is going to run out. What I was getting at was that it means that we don’t have to worry so much that the change to other, cleaner, sources of energy won’t happen. It would happen if a little later than sooner. But with all this shale you can bet that the oil companies and governments will drag it out, so long as they keep making a huge income. And wouldn’t it be in the interests of some governments of poorer countries to keep selling their oil? So, yes, it is a very bad thing that all this shale exists.
Speaking of energy, you guys ever heard of Nicola Tesla? There’s an unending (and I believe clean) source of free energy in the earth’s atmosphere. Government’s are stopping us from tapping into this source. Read up about him and spread the word! Link: http://www.mind-course.com/wireless.html
February 3, 2008 at 2:04 am
This one explains Tesla’s free energy a bit better: http://www.t0.or.at/tesla/tesfreee.htm
February 3, 2008 at 2:13 am
Free energy website: http://www.free-energy.ws/background.html
This is what needs to be told to the masses! And governments need to be challenged by this!
And before I forget, I guess driving our cars with the dead is kinda disturbing, when you put it that way.
February 3, 2008 at 9:21 am
Transfiguring Roar–I was barking at someone else, not you! But all the info is very interesting.
JV
February 3, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Jeff-
But getting off the fossil fuels kick won’ save anything- esp since even if everyone converted over to biofuels in the next week we would still have 20 years or so to reverse the damage. But biofuels (as I stated above) have their own problems. They need to come from *somewhere* and that somewhere will dip into our food and water supplies. If you think the cost of gas is absurd, wait until you see your waterbill if hydropower takes off.
February 4, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Potential non-crop way to produce bio fuel:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/scientists-make-oil-grow-on-trees/2008/02/04/1202090322448.html
February 7, 2008 at 8:53 am
Nice! I hadn’t seen that yet.