Enviromentalist Question

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Please, I do not want this to get politicial. This is a question about the issue of enviromentalism and a strange paradox in this thinking.

I believe we need to be good stewards of the Earth enviroment, and make use of it wisely, while not abusing it. I believe it is a good thing to create clean, low cost energy generators and the rest. Here is where I got confused: I thought most of those who call themselves "enviromentalists" would agree with me..and indeed...some do. But I spoke with some enviromentalists, who, to my honest surprise, told me they do NOT like the idea of cheap, clean energy and the ability to cheaply and cleanly produce goods (say, using advanced 3D Printers). When I asked why, their basic answer was this: They believe if mankind has a source of clean, cheap energy and the ability to produce goods, even with 100 percent recycling down to the atoms, this would "Encourage humans to over populate the earth" and put more strain on the earth.

Another example: I mentioned how I am an advocate of mass-desalination of the Earth's oceans. I believe it is a good idea to develop a source of clean, cheap electricity, and then de-salinate, take the salt out of the oceanic water, and use the water to provide everyone a guaranteed source of clean drinking water, and we can irrigate deserts and make them bloom and produce orchards of fruit and vegetables for mankind.

These same enviromentalists who I was talking with actually told me they are AGAINST THIS because, in their eyes, it would somehow "Upset the balance of the earth". Have any of you come across this attitude? See; I always thought all enviromentalists would 100 percent across the board support all efforts at providing clean cheap energy, clean cheap manufacturing, and clean water for the human race. It appears not all of them do.

One enviromental group was even against the idea of producing clean nuclear fusion reactors. You would think they would love it: It would be the end of burning fossil fuels. But to my sincere shock...they claimed to be AGAINST fusion power..claiming it would produce "heat pollution" even if there was zero material pollution..and claiming it would lead to "over production".

Can any of you explain to me why some so-called Green Enviromentalist advocates would be against these new energies this way?

Also: If you consider this to be crossing the line about politics, I do not wish to cross that line, I just would like to hear what others have to say about this. Thank you in advance.

[3rdGenRigger]

I don't see any easy way to answer this without getting political other than to say we could be doing a lot better than the attitudes of the antihumanists (A Robert Zubrin book titled Merchants of Despair will IMO answer a lot of the points you mention with well sourced arguments (Emphasis on MY opinion)...I'm not saying that everyone should agree with it, but to read it and decide for themselves...I won't tell people what to believe).

Technologically speaking this is one alternative (The link to Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors I'll post after this paragraph) I strongly believe is our best option, and the technology was made to work in the 50's and again in the 70's but was quashed for political reasons. Real environmentalists should be pro nuclear...just not the EXTRAORDINARILY inefficient (0.5% for US light water reactors and 0.7% efficient CANDU heavy water reactors), and unsafe way (Pressurized reactors), that we do it now. I'm not sure if I can say much else without delving into political arguments...once again, I'll stress that I'm not trying to tell anyone what to think or believe...just the first things that popped into my head after reading your post.

https://youtu.be/YVSmf_qmkbg

[williaty]

Can any of you explain to me why some so-called Green Enviromentalist advocates would be against these new energies this way?

OK, first of all, there are a very small number of people who shouldn't be called environmentalists, they should be called something like anti-humanists. If we ignore those people, however...

There's a lot of people who believe that inventing technological band-aids like you mention won't actually solve our problems, they'll just kick the can down the road and finally, when we can't kick it any farther, the problem will be much more catastrophic. To these people, the fundamental problem is that human kind hasn't learned to live within the resource budget available on Earth. Consider someone who hasn't learned to live within their financial budget: they can keep getting new credit cards and new loans to sustain their suspending for a while, but the bills come due eventually. The longer the person manages to juggle various sources of credit against each other, the worse the situation is when they finally drop the ball and the bankruptcy court gets a hold of them. The only solution is to learn to live within the amount of income you actually make. That's how a small but notable number of people feel about humanity's use of the Earth: we're using more than the Earth can sustain and someday that bill is going to come due. Technologies that allow us to continue to spend energy and resources faster than the Earth can produce/absorb them, but that seem to help us in the short term, just make the final collapse worse. Once you look at the cost per energy extracted, the energy return on energy invested (EROEI), and how they're dependent on fossil fuels anyway, current and proposed alternative energy sources really stop looking so shiny. It gets even worse when you see how energy-expensive it is to get some of the things those alternative power sources require in order to be built. So we have to spend more energy, not less, to bring new energy sources on-line.

Added to this are people who believe that we tend to make problems worse when we think we're making them better with frightening regularity. In other words, they're strong believers in the law of unintended consequences. For instance, large-scale desalination of ocean water produces an excess of salt. What do we do with the salt? If we store it in solid form on land, runoff changes the salinity of the surrounding soils and watershed, which alters what plants and animals can live there (or outright kills things). If we reject the undesirable salt into the ocean, we hyper-salinate the ocean water. One of the things we've learned is that a significant driving factor in the Great Ocean Conveyor current are salinity gradients (different amounts of salt in the water produce different water densities, making it rise or fall, which powers the current). If the Great Ocean Conveyor were to change course, intensity, or outright stop, we'd see climate change on a scale that makes CO2-caused Average Global Warming look like a warm breath. Europe, for instance, is only as habitable and farmable as it is because of the large energy input to its local climate from the ocean currents carrying energy to Europe from the tropics/equator.

So the two groups together would rather see humanity learn to live within its means than keep expanding the means until something fails catastrophically. Me? I think we need to do both. We can't reduce our resource usage to a sustainable level because people won't accept that they can't vacation in Cabo and we can't come up with magic energy from nowhere. We need to reduce our resource usage significantly and we need to improve our resource production significantly. The problem with the latter half of that statement is that, in terms of everything except EM energy, is a closed system. We've got what we've got and we're not getting it anymore until we leave the planet.

[The Deacon]

I don't consider myself an environmentalist, and definitely not a "green" one, but I'm firmly convinced that Walt Kelly's observation 60 years ago that "we have met the enemy, and he is us" was correct. The earth is already suffering ill effects from an excessively large human population and that further increasing that population will only make things worse. The only realistic long term solution, is the one that's socially unacceptable, drastically reduce the human population. Increasing food production capacity and the availability of fresh water will only postpone the inevitable for a few years, but I think humans have 50 years, at most, before we reach our tipping point and suffer an extinction, or near extinction, event.

[Doc Dan]

I am a proponent of the proper care of nature. I want clean energy and desalination would solve many of our water woes. However, the "mass desalination" of the oceans on that scale would probably terminate most life on the planet due to how the ocean currents operate and control the global temperature. There are also untapped (recent science) deep oceans of water under the crust of the earth (it appears). That would be a good source. Edgar Rice Burroughs had an idea of making water from out atmosphere and something on that order might be paired with the others to provide water safely. This could be paired with automobile engines that produce water vapor (why did GM drop this and let the Koreans take over?) and would solve the water vapor problem produced by so many billions of cars producing it (hopefully).

[Blerv]

You're concerned about making a political post? Lolol, that's rich. :D

[paladin]

You're concerned about making a political post? Lolol, that's rich. :D

yup...look out here it comes!

but I think humans have 50 years, at most, before we reach our tipping point and suffer an extinction, or near extinction, event.

...on the bright side, the need to buy 2 of every Spyderco "in case one wears out" has been eliminated... :p

[uhiforgot]

Please, I do not want this to get politicial. This is a question about the issue of enviromentalism and a strange paradox in this thinking.

I believe we need to be good stewards of the Earth enviroment, and make use of it wisely, while not abusing it. I believe it is a good thing to create clean, low cost energy generators and the rest. Here is where I got confused: I thought most of those who call themselves "enviromentalists" would agree with me..and indeed...some do. But I spoke with some enviromentalists, who, to my honest surprise, told me they do NOT like the idea of cheap, clean energy and the ability to cheaply and cleanly produce goods (say, using advanced 3D Printers). When I asked why, their basic answer was this: They believe if mankind has a source of clean, cheap energy and the ability to produce goods, even with 100 percent recycling down to the atoms, this would "Encourage humans to over populate the earth" and put more strain on the earth.

If BIO110 class taught me anything, it is that any given environment has the ability to support only a finite biomass. This biomass is (in most wild places in the world) kept in check by animals and plants that continue to be subject to natural selection. Due to massive advances in the study of science and health, humans are only slightly subject to this natural selection, and we are also living far longer than nature intended. No matter how masterfully we optimize our life support productivity, the human population increase will eventually outstrip our environment's ability to support our biomass. Simple physics and biology; no politics.

Another example: I mentioned how I am an advocate of mass-desalination of the Earth's oceans. I believe it is a good idea to develop a source of clean, cheap electricity, and then de-salinate, take the salt out of the oceanic water, and use the water to provide everyone a guaranteed source of clean drinking water, and we can irrigate deserts and make them bloom and produce orchards of fruit and vegetables for mankind.

These same enviromentalists who I was talking with actually told me they are AGAINST THIS because, in their eyes, it would somehow "Upset the balance of the earth". Have any of you come across this attitude? See; I always thought all enviromentalists would 100 percent across the board support all efforts at providing clean cheap energy, clean cheap manufacturing, and clean water for the human race. It appears not all of them do.

The imbalance proposed by desalination of the worlds oceans presents a problem somewhere on the scale of using a compressed air duster on a house of cards. This planet has figured out a system that works, and we're the only species that dares mess with the system; all other organisms have figured out on some level that if they mess with the system they will die.

One enviromental group was even against the idea of producing clean nuclear fusion reactors. You would think they would love it: It would be the end of burning fossil fuels. But to my sincere shock...they claimed to be AGAINST fusion power..claiming it would produce "heat pollution" even if there was zero material pollution..and claiming it would lead to "over production".

There is no such thing as a perfect energy source, and there never will be. Any energy production will produce waste of some sort (see physics and chemistry), we just have to decide what the least of all the evils is relative to our needs... but then again that doesn't necessarily imply that we would be acting in the best interests of the planet, does it?

Can any of you explain to me why some so-called Green Enviromentalist advocates would be against these new energies this way?

Also: If you consider this to be crossing the line about politics, I do not wish to cross that line, I just would like to hear what others have to say about this. Thank you in advance.

I think that the concept of "Green Environmentalist" needs to be elaborated upon further. I don't think of myself as a GE at all; I just try to be conscious of what's going on around me. However unfortunately, Deacon has the right idea here: the only feasible solution to the present problem is to remedy our overpopulation somehow, but I suspect that nature will find a way to do that for us.

*COUGH*ZOMBIEAPOCALYPSE*COUGH*COUGH* :p

[sdedalus83]

Detonating every nuclear weapon on the planet, with an even distribution over every landmass, would be a far less cataclysmic event than oceanic desalination. At least life would eventually recover.

[wrdwrght]

You speak of environmentalists as though they are in lockstep, which is hardly the case.

[defenestrate]

The anti-humanist/anti-industrialist movements have gathered a lot of steam of late, and likely aren't going anywhere, but they represent a minority of self-proclaimed environmentalists. There are a number of factors here that spell greater peril for the human race and the planet in the future, and a few mitigating ones as well.

Nuclear power is not super popular of late, partially because much of the world's nuclear infrastructure is rather dated, and partially because of the rare but catastrophic possibility of major disasters, a la Chernobyl or Fukushima. Newer reactor designs can help to lessen the dangers, but our problems with resources reach far beyond energy.

Newer farm production methods and hybrid/GM plants can increase the feeding capacity of the world's agricultural systems - these methods also have risks, but so far the upsides have generally far outweighed the downsides.

Another mitigating factor is that as most nations reach a certain standard of living, the population tends to grow more slowly. We see this In most European nations, the USA, Canada, and many other developed, prosperous nations. We still have some crucial points in the next few centuries where this alone will not be enough, and the probability of great famines, climate and food production issues from overutilization, etc will continue to rise without some kind of large-scale intervention. The probability that more conflicts will arise due to reasons related to food, land, safe water sources, etc. will also increase.

I wouldn't say it is completely cut and dried to say that we're doomed, but the makings of potential doom are becoming more clear as population, resource extraction and overall consumption increase. We still have chances to greatly mitigate this situation, but the jury is still somewhat out as to what future calamities are avoidable and which are already potentially set in stone.

[Divo]

This is a question about the issue of enviromentalism and a strange paradox in this thinking.

Its not so difficult to explain.
You come with ideas that give in certain areas in environmental issues a relief and you think that that is the goal of environmentalists.
But here is a mismatch. In your vision you solve some problems of energy and water we are better able to produce things for even a larger amount of people, your vision here is to extend the consumersociety. Which creates all kinds of other problems and in other areas issues with the environment. (The world is complex and interactive)

Environmentalists are in general for a more durable world with durable solutions implemented in the total system, to create more balance in the total of things, in the system called World. They see the solution is to decrease the consumersociety, and to adapt new economical systems where producing/consuming is much lower than now. They think that a higher standard of living definitely should not to be found in more industry/production/consuming, but on other levels. You can say the opposite direction. Lower tension on the earth.

You can't solve some problems only and do nothing with the rest. Producing more drinkingwater and for example still extending the pollution of the world is contradictive. Not in the least that pollution has huge effect on the quality of drinking water.(of course there are tons and tons of other examples) So your interpretation of what environmentalist want to achieve is not in line what you are thinking and that creates with you the paradox.

[Evil D]

At this point the only way to fix the harm that manufacturing does is to simply reduce it. I do agree that cleaner renewable processes will ultimately lead to even more manufacturing and even more pollution. This is the same as the hybrid car paradox. They may be better on gas and produce less emissions, but there are far more of them than old cars that made more pollution, and the manufacturing that goes into building them, especially the batteries, is counteracting the reduction of emissions. The only thing cash for clunkers did was remove perfectly drivable vehicles from the road and put them in junkyards for others to pick through and keep their clunkers on the road, while driving the sale and manufacturing of new cars which creates more pollution. It's a vicious cycle. Too many things are made today with a throw it away and buy a new one attitude. Simple things like plastic Solo cups need to be outlawed, etc.

[kbuzbee]

Along these lines, has anyone heard of Earthwatch? Just curious if there are opinions here.

Thanks,

Ken