Why Climate Change Isnt Our Biggest Environmental Problem, and Why Technology Wont Save Us Post Carbon Institute. Why Climate Change Isnt Our Biggest Environmental Problem, and Why Technology Wont Save Us. Reposted with permission from Ecowatch. Our core ecological problem is not climate change. It is overshoot, of which global warming is a symptom. Overshoot is a systemic issue. Over the past century and a half, enormous amounts of cheap energy from fossil fuels enabled the rapid growth of resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumption and these in turn led to population increase, pollution, and loss of natural habitat and hence biodiversity. The human system expanded dramatically, overshooting Earths long term carrying capacity for humans while upsetting the ecological systems we depend on for our survival. Until we understand and address this systemic imbalance, symptomatic treatment doing what we can to reverse pollution dilemmas like climate change, trying to save threatened species, and hoping to feed a burgeoning population with genetically modified crops will constitute an endlessly frustrating round of stopgap measures that are ultimately destined to fail. The ecology movement in the 1. As a result, many of the best environmental writers of the era framed the modern human predicament in terms that revealed the deep linkages between environmental symptoms and the way human society operates. Limits to Growth 1. Jay Forrester, investigated the interactions between population growth, industrial production, food production, resource depletion, and pollution. Overshoot 1. 98. Reposted with permission from Ecowatch. Our core ecological problem is not climate change. It is overshoot, of which global warming is a symptom. Cybernetics is a transdisciplinary approach for exploring regulatory systemstheir structures, constraints, and possibilities. Ancient Secrets Quest For The Golden Key Chapter 6. Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics in. Hadley on esimene proua Hemingway, kuid kaugeltki mitte viimane. Armukolmnurgad, kirg, pahed ja pettumused see on autentsetel kirjadel ja telegrammidel phinev. Eagle Pace Software Tutorial more. De 3078495 la 1729329 le 1492229 12155938 et 1041232 en 869788 du 676120 a 657417 un 624129 pour 560741 dans 468982. The following is a list of people who are considered a father or mother or founding father or founding mother of a scientific field. Adobe Flash Cs3 Serial Number Keygen Mac. Such people are. William Catton, named our systemic problem and described its origins and development in a style any literate person could appreciate. Many more excellent books from the era could be cited. However, in recent decades, as climate change has come to dominate environmental concerns, there has been a significant shift in the discussion. Today, most environmental reporting is focused laser like on climate change, and systemic links between it and other worsening ecological dilemmas such as overpopulation, species extinctions, water and air pollution, and loss of topsoil and fresh water are seldom highlighted. Its not that climate change isnt a big deal. As a symptom, its a real doozy. Theres never been anything quite like it, and climate scientists and climate response advocacy groups are right to ring the loudest of alarm bells. But our failure to see climate change in context may be our undoing. Why have environmental writers and advocacy organizations succumbed to tunnel vision Perhaps its simply that they assume systems thinking is beyond the capacity of policy makers. Its true if climate scientists were to approach world leaders with the message, We have to change everything, including our entire economic systemand fast, they might be shown the door rather rudely. A more acceptable message is, We have identified a serious pollution problem, for which there are technical solutions. Perhaps many of the scientists who did recognize the systemic nature of our ecological crisis concluded that if we can successfully address this one make or break environmental crisis, well be able to buy time to deal with others waiting in the wings overpopulation, species extinctions, resource depletion, and on and on. If climate change can be framed as an isolated problem for which there is a technological solution, the minds of economists and policy makers can continue to graze in familiar pastures. Technologyin this case, solar, wind, and nuclear power generators, as well as batteries, electric cars, heat pumps, and, if all else fails, solar radiation management via atmospheric aerosolscenters our thinking on subjects like financial investment and industrial production. Discussion participants dont have to develop the ability to think systemically, nor do they need to understand the Earth system and how human systems fit into it. All they need trouble themselves with is the prospect of shifting some investments, setting tasks for engineers, and managing the resulting industrial economic transformation so as to ensure that new jobs in green industries compensate for jobs lost in coal mines. The strategy of buying time with a techno fix presumes either that we will be able to institute systemic change at some unspecified point in the future even though we cant do it just now a weak argument on its face, or that climate change and all of our other symptomatic crises will in fact be amenable to technological fixes. The latter thought path is again a comfortable one for managers and investors. After all, everybody loves technology. It already does nearly everything for us. During the last century it solved a host of problems it cured diseases, expanded food production, sped up transportation, and provided us with information and entertainment in quantities and varieties no one could previously have imagined. Why shouldnt it be able to solve climate change and all the rest of our problems Of course, ignoring the systemic nature of our dilemma just means that as soon as we get one symptom corralled, another is likely to break loose. But, crucially, is climate change, taken as an isolated problem, fully treatable with technology Color me doubtful. I say this having spent many months poring over the relevant data with David Fridley of the energy analysis program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Our resulting book, Our Renewable Future, concluded that nuclear power is too expensive and risky meanwhile, solar and wind power both suffer from intermittency, which once these sources begin to provide a large percentage of total electrical power will require a combination of three strategies on a grand scale energy storage, redundant production capacity, and demand adaptation. At the same time, we in industrial nations will have to adapt most of our current energy usage which occurs in industrial processes, building heating, and transportation to electricity. Altogether, the energy transition promises to be an enormous undertaking, unprecedented in its requirements for investment and substitution. When David and I stepped back to assess the enormity of the task, we could see no way to maintain current quantities of global energy production during the transition, much less to increase energy supplies so as to power ongoing economic growth. The biggest transitional hurdle is scale the world uses an enormous amount of energy currently only if that quantity can be reduced significantly, especially in industrial nations, could we imagine a credible pathway toward a post carbon future. Downsizing the worlds energy supplies would, effectively, also downsize industrial processes of resource extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and waste management. Thats a systemic intervention, of exactly the kind called for by the ecologists of the 1. Reduce, reuse, and recycle. It gets to the heart of the overshoot dilemmaas does population stabilization and reduction, another necessary strategy. But its also a notion to which technocrats, industrialists, and investors are virulently allergic. The ecological argument is, at its core, a moral oneas I explain in more detail in a just released manifesto replete with sidebars and graphics Theres No App for That Technology and Morality in the Age of Climate Change, Overpopulation, and Biodiversity Loss.