There was once a time when man kind worked on solar energy. Well not to produce electricity, but to grow crops, to light the outdoors, and other various things. We did not have the capacity to do much work at night, due to the lack of light. Sure there were lamps for inside the house, but this was about it, work did not continue into the night. Transportation was slow, so most food was local, people had to manually do the farming with the assistance of horses, and all this worked to limit the population of the world.
Then came oil and coal. They increased the hours that could be worked, the distances that could be traveled, the amounts of food that could be grown, the size of cities that could be built etc etc etc.
Not only did oil and coal cause the population explosion. But it caused most of our climate woes as well.
Pollution and over population seem to be our major problems. Over population leads to large resource needs. Large amounts of food, shelter, fresh water, etc. Pollution limits the supply of fresh water etc, but the energy produced by the polluting agents is what made the transportation of these supplies possible. The world finds itself in a desperate situation. If the energy problems are not solved then we either pollute ourselves to death or stop using the pollutants killing billions. You think that I am over blowing our precarious situation, I need only site an article that was sited in a diary that was rec listed. One Pissed of Liberal thanks for the link
Yup, a world renowned scientist thinks we can all be dead in 100 years. This my friends is a major, major problem. Even if he's wrong and its 200 years we are still in a deep pile of shit. It would be unethical to have children if any of this is true. However, I'm not sure he's saying its absolutely inevitable. There is always hope, but we can't hope blindly. If we don't act drastically oil and coal will be the death of us all.
As a documentary with Leonardo DiCaprio put it in the past we worked on energy provided by the sun on a daily basis, now we use stored sunlight to get much more energy per day. That was probably horrible paraphrasing but the point is what matters. Our current situation is predicated on us having this energy. This extra energy allows a few people to produce all of our food, and then ship it too us. It allows for many other services to make personal self sufficiency completely unnecessary. We play little to no part in our own food production at this point, nor do we go to fetch our own water. It is this lack of connection that allows us to feel disconnected from the growing water shortages etc.
The documentary called the 11th Hour explained how dependent we are on oil/coal. Though I saw it a long time ago, I believe I remember it saying that 5/6s of the worlds population would die if we stopped using all fossil fuels immediately, within the time frame of one year. If that's not dependence than what is?
11th hour trailer.
We are facing death at two ends unless serious changes are made. If we run out or stop using coal/oil immediately we lose 5/6s of the population. If we keep using coal/oil we brutalize the environment beyond repair and all die. This is the pressing need of our time. Slow action is no longer an option. It will cause our death. Something really must be done.
Thanks for your time and listening. I'll leave you with some videos that remind us of what is happening.
Anyways, I havn't gotten to watch all of them, but the first one I liked so I decided to post the rest. I doubt anyone will watch them all, just wanted to contribute to my world by trying to wake other people up. Maybe just maybe once enough people care, and perhaps feel the survival instinct they will stand up. Perhaps they will do something about it after that.
Good day.