Canuckistani

The fish didn't disappear because plankton decreased in the ocean, AFAIK, but because we overfish them and degrade their spawning grounds. Too, bad, I thought Indigenous People were in touch with the earth and would understand that. Our population numbers are as high as they are because of fossil fuels. Take those away without adequate replacements (that don't seem to be on the horizon) and it's dieback time.

Sustainablitity is the only sane answer here. I don't think humans are that sane tho.

We're hopeless as prevention, always about the cure. just look at our medical system.

Why go the circuitious route. Just put sails on cars and go with windpower. No transmission or storage losses.

I've Me too. But there's somebody on this forum who claims that Easter Island was not destroyed by human activity. Not sure what he claims the cause is. Anyway, we're much smarter and technologically advanced over those Islanders, so we'll figure out technological fixes no problem.

As long as the electricity is made from hydro power and there's no plastic or rubber on the car. - those come from oil too.

You're both right, since the motive is the same for both. Corps couldn't outsource if consumers had pride in their home products. My understanding is that this is still true in Germany, people will buy domestic and pay more for it. But then the quality is there too, they don'th throw things away after a short time of use. And corps, as always are driven by the bottom line. If selling their grandmother improves it, well who'll give me top dollar for this slightly used old lady. It's the capitalist way.

China is already becoming too expensive for some manufacturers, so they go elsewhere. The good part about this is that it llifts many third world people out of poverty. The bad part is that it does it on the backs of the Western middle class. The rich, as always, make out like bandits. I think what we're seeing is the formation of a global economic elite, the !% with the top 20% to service them. Their allegiance will be to their class, rather than a country. I could see a world oligarchy arising out of this, with the technology to keep everybody else in serfdom and very hard to dislodge.

It was corps shooting themselves in the foot. Sure the first ones to outsource made a bundle, but now that everybody does it, the greater profit isnt' there anymore and we're rapidly loosing the middle class consumers who are supposed to buy all that crap.

You probably are more optimistic than I am. I think we're more ,like the frog in gradually heating water. But you're right, we deal better with a sharp, immediate catastrophe. One good world wide pandemic, and problem solved for number of people anyway, and maybe it will wake us up. The black plague in Europe killed 25% of the population, and had all sorts of postivie effects: no more cyclical starvation, lack of labor meant serfs were more valuable and paid more, dignity of the individual came out of this, as well as higher standard of living for everybody.

No, I agree. We've got the tiger by the tail, and can't let go. Too many people would die. No way to revert back to some primitive, low impact way of living, and we don't have the will and foresight to really try to work out a sustainable solution for the population density we've got. The will for the kind of co-operation needed to bring the world to a sustainable economy just isn't there. Ther world's poor are still trying to raise their material standard of living to ours, the rest of us are desperately trying to hang onto it aftert the mess we've made, and the economic ellite is partying likes it's 1999.

A healthy environment can exist without humans at all. With 7 billion of us, not so much. Primarily because carbon fuels have allowed us to temporarily far exceed the earth's carrying capicity for humans. I doubt that can condinue indefinitely. Especially with more and more people coming on stream who what the materially wasteful lifestyle that we have.

I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of it, but it sounds pretty Strangelovian to me. We'd better make sure we don't have a mineshaft gap.

How does winnable work with all that radiation around from a full nuclear exchange, even if one side is weaker here than the other? And, you're going by today's China, not the China of twenty years from now. But, even with what you describe, I think it would be a Pyrric victory, with the Russians becoming top dog of the plant by default. What's left of the planet, anyway.

No matter what, the capitalist system seems to be based on faith. Faith in paper money, faith in gold, I'm not sure there's much difference. They had bubbles and collapses when I believe they were stil on the gold standard. What we seem to need tog get rid of is easy money, ie money made by speculation. That seems to be where the weakness of the system lies. OTOH, I guess that speculation also raises the capital that allows for booming economies. So we'd have to be satisfied with much slower growth rates, lower material standard of living. And of course somebody would always go for the speculation, make a bundle, everybody else would want in, and kaboom I don't think capitalism is sustainable, it's always going to outpace the resources. A sustainable economy is what we need, but I don't see how we can get there from here. We're pretty well hardwired to grow.

WWIII would be like no other war before it - most of humanity wiped out. Not some happy economic boom for the "victor." So we'll have more and more proxy wars of one kind or another that keep things contained, I guess. Or we just surrender dominance to the Chinese and make them our new overlords.

How will using gold and giving it an artificially inflated value be any better?

Well, the HST debacle is in very large part responsible for the NDP being ahead in the polls the way they are, so I guess they don't mind too much. That 1.6 bil was in large part why the Libs went for the HST in the first place, so they could continue to claim to be good budget managers. Presumably tho, that repayment is reflected in the LIbs' current budget, so they've had to deal with it too.

Bank of Canada is owned by the Minister of Finance on behalf of the Queen. So it is not as you describe it. I believe you said it was govts that should print money, well that seems to be the case in Canada. Bank of England was nationalized in 1946. I don't pretend to know enough about banking to argue other points with you, but if you can get this wrong, what else did you get wrong. I do agree we seem to be in some sort of permanetn appearing crisis. It may just be the shifting of dominance away from Western nations tho. Or, it may be that we've exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet for humans.

Guess he means people will be depressed. I think Trudeau will only get in if things are going either really badly or really well. If the latter, people will feel cocky and want somebody with a new image and hope. If the former, then Harper gets blamed. If they go along like right now, I think people will go for the bird in the hand.

Can you explain how you got that from what I wrote? The only thing I said science created was the bomb.

That won't work with Harper. But the article that WWTT cites actually says Justin is being smart and it's not his Kim Campbell moment. Trudeau is also building a large war chest to counter the attack ads that will come from the CPC as soon as he's elected leader. He seems to be a very good organzier, and may have more political smarts than people give him credit for. Still elections are lost by governments, not won by the opposition.

Yeah it did - I bet God and country was as big then as it was with GWB. Science created the bomb, morals and ethics dropped it. And social science can make very good, rational arguments for altruism and cooperation. What science teaches us is there will always be a small proportion of users in society, and they will be successful only if they don't increase in relative numbers too much, otherwise, by by society, species, what have you. For immoral behavior to thrive it requires a groundwork of moral behavior. None of that requires religion.

Exactly. So leave religion out of it where it doesn't belong. Have all the faith you want, believe what you want, but when you try to lay those beliefs on science without having the evidence to back it up, then that's a no go.

Faith and hope matter to most. Depressed people have a better hold on reality (ie the odds of something occurring) that non-depressed. Who wants to be depressed. Getting up in the morning is a statement of hope. But those parents praying to God to not let their kid die. It's understandable when faced with impotence to protect your child. But what are they saying? If God saves their kid, but not the one in the next bed, does He love their kid more? Are they better people. And why did God give that diseae to the kid in teh first place? Basically they are appealing for mercy from a cruel and capricious dictator. As long as believers in Santa etc don't demand that he be taught in science class, it's all good. Most adults grow out of that belief - maybe if they grow up enough they'll grow out of beleiving in the Guy in the Sky too.