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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3125 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: NASA Confirms Evidence That Liquid Water Flows on Today’s Mars

    Oil, for example, used to be largely supplied by whales. Then, when that resource starts to deplete, new technologies are founded. Real oil, electric lighting. Finally, we start to run low on that new resource, and move on to the next one.

Must I really point out how destructive this kind of behavior is, to both you as a terran and to the planet we inhabit? Depriving ourselves and the planet of resources you hold so dear is exactly what leads to the trouble we're heading towards.

But you're right, of course. Humanity will most likely persevere and do fine afterwards. However, we won't do so by doing the same thing we're doing right now. Not that we ought to stop draining resources, either, though it would be preferable for humanity to live off less (as if we ever need this much). Throughout history, progress came through change; this time, this change might as well be changing our paradigm of how we view resources and consumption.





bioemerl  ·  3125 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The pattern through history has not been to give up resource use, but to continue using as much as is feasible, while developing new technologies that allow the shift to new, more common, resources and using less harmful methods to collect them.

To live off less is not a "change" as previous ones have been, it would require a massive shift in what human beings are. this isn't going to happen, and it would hurt society more than it helps to do so.

It is through luxury, through frivolous crap like facebook, that new industries are formed, that progress is made. The computer was a hobbyists plaything. The internet driven by people who found it fun.

What do we restrict? How do we lower resource usage? You can't do it without harming progress more than you buy time, not in a way that substantially lengthens the time humanity has left on earth.