marsmellow
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2008
- Messages
- 2,942
I'm going to post links to three videos. One is more educational, one is more artistic, and one is more negative, but they all have the same message. Basically the message is this: we human beings are rapidly multiplying, polluting the environment and devouring the Earth's resources like a plague of locusts.
Are humans smarter than yeast?
The stork is the bird of war.
Humans are a virus.
For tens of thousands of years, our population grew slowly. But since the industrial and green revolutions, the world population has exploded from about half a billion, to almost 7 billion. This was made possible by our technology. Our technology is powered by these natural resources which we are quickly stripping from the Earth.
In the next 50 years or so, many of those resources like:
Fossil Fuels (especially Oil)
Fresh Water
Topsoil
Phosphorus (fertilizer, used to grow our food)
Lithium (used for electric car batteries)
...will be extremely scarce and expensive. On top of that we are badly screwing up the environment with our activities.
The climate is getting hotter
The oceans are turning more acidic
The ice caps and glaciers are melting
The rain forests are being clear cut
Our water is polluted with heavy metals, pharmaceuticals and other chemicals
There is a giant plastic soup larger than Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean
Thousands of species are being driven to extinction
Now, you see all this above? This is the situation right now. But this is mostly from the Western World. How much worse do you think it will get once China, India, and the rest of the world industrialize? They want to live just like us (i.e. wastefully,) and we really have no right to tell them they can't. (and don't forget, every minute 255 more people come into the world, the population is still growing)
When I think about this stuff, I can't help but conclude that we have some very tough times approaching. I don't think our future involves colonizing space and enhancing ourselves with computers, I think it will involve extreme energy shortages, famine, rising sea levels and vicious wars over resources. I think we are going into a bottleneck or a die-off. Or maybe it has already started...
Basically, my question is can someone convince me that my apocalyptic visions are wrong? Can somebody talk me down? I really don't like believing this stuff. It is a bit depressing.
Are humans smarter than yeast?
The stork is the bird of war.
Humans are a virus.
For tens of thousands of years, our population grew slowly. But since the industrial and green revolutions, the world population has exploded from about half a billion, to almost 7 billion. This was made possible by our technology. Our technology is powered by these natural resources which we are quickly stripping from the Earth.
In the next 50 years or so, many of those resources like:
Fossil Fuels (especially Oil)
Fresh Water
Topsoil
Phosphorus (fertilizer, used to grow our food)
Lithium (used for electric car batteries)
...will be extremely scarce and expensive. On top of that we are badly screwing up the environment with our activities.
The climate is getting hotter
The oceans are turning more acidic
The ice caps and glaciers are melting
The rain forests are being clear cut
Our water is polluted with heavy metals, pharmaceuticals and other chemicals
There is a giant plastic soup larger than Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean
Thousands of species are being driven to extinction
Now, you see all this above? This is the situation right now. But this is mostly from the Western World. How much worse do you think it will get once China, India, and the rest of the world industrialize? They want to live just like us (i.e. wastefully,) and we really have no right to tell them they can't. (and don't forget, every minute 255 more people come into the world, the population is still growing)
When I think about this stuff, I can't help but conclude that we have some very tough times approaching. I don't think our future involves colonizing space and enhancing ourselves with computers, I think it will involve extreme energy shortages, famine, rising sea levels and vicious wars over resources. I think we are going into a bottleneck or a die-off. Or maybe it has already started...
Basically, my question is can someone convince me that my apocalyptic visions are wrong? Can somebody talk me down? I really don't like believing this stuff. It is a bit depressing.
