It should have been titled "Science may save the Ecosystem desirable for humans for a short time". You don't save the planet by switching to nuclear power or by growing GMO crops; that simply extends the time our planet stays habitable by humans. We cannot save the planet in the long term, as our sun ages it will grow, long before it consumes the planet itself all the moisture will be removed. Unless someone can invent a planet moving technology its destruction is assured. Humans have been around for 2M years, at the scale we are consuming our natural resources we will not make it to even the 135M years that dinosaurs were around let alone the 500M-1B years it will take for the Sun to destroy the planet. So what exactly are we trying to save? Even if we tried we couldn't destroy all life on earth without destroying ourselves early in the process. Life will continue after we are gone, for a while at least. The idea that we can 'save' the planet (whatever that really means) is a human centric idea and involves a level of guilt that is beyond the sins we have committed. What this environmental discussion is really about is saving ourselves. The planet itself doesn't care whether we exist or not. The great oxygenation event wiped out somewhere between 90-99% of all life and that is just one of 3-4 mass extinction events that have happened in earths history. Species go extinct all the time, we are the only ones who seem to worry about this. If our focus was really on saving the planet then a voluntary mass extinction of our species should probably be discussed, when I was born there was 4.5B people on the planet and now there are over 7B. Whats a sustainable figure from a resource POV? Far lower than 7B I would imagine. I have seen estimates that if we switched to nuclear power completely we would run out of fissionable material in less than 20 years, nuclear energy relies on non renewable resources. Our focus on renewable energy is admirable I suppose but its also insignificant in comparison to our almost exponential growth in consumption of non-renewable resources. Solar, Wind, Wave are noble ideas but they cannot produce the energy demands we need today let alone the energy demands we need tomorrow. Some backsliding will be needed. Unless someone can come up with free energy we are facing one of 2 scenarios.
[1] We use all of the available resources on earth and our current tech bubble ends abruptly reducing us back to something similar to pre-steam engine civilisation. Imagine a world without electricity, fuel, plastics etc. Rapid population decline follows, what chances does our species have for reaching the 500M year mark under those conditions? Earth is unaffected by the blip in time that was human civilisation.
[2] We render earth almost uninhabitable for human life due to pollution. Rapid population decline and possible early extinction, small pockets of survivors hang in there for as long as they can. Earth is unaffected by the blip in time that was human civilisation. The real question is "Do you care and why?". More than likely you and your children and your childrens children will be dead before the really harsh effects are seen. I'm talking about starvation and mass wars over ever reducing resources. Does this really bother you enough to sell your car and start growing your own food and making your own clothes? That's an extreme example I know, here comes another one. There are people dying right now from starvation in other coutries but we still commute to work and pay $50 a month for sports channels. How do we balance the fact that we do little or nothing for the people suffering right now yet claim to be concerned for the unborn masses that may inherit our 'mistakes'. Our guilt it seems is selective, and our efforts at change are at best lipservice. Embrace what you are. You are the destroyer of worlds and your time is short.
It's a good one. It reminded me of this George Carlin bit on saving the planet.
I don't read wired (Bradley Manning) so I don't know the exact arguments made but .... tech has never reduced the net consumption of energy before so I predict that is will not do so in the future.
Eh, its pretty much the same article I'm sure you've read elsewhere: tl;dr: Global population will increase by 2 billion by 2050. More people and more 3rd world development leads to a need for greater global agriculture and energy production. We can achieve this with GMOs and nuclear energy. Unfortunately these are controversial despite few scientific counter-arguments for their use.
I have a guarded hope this will be true. Unfortunately even limitless electricity (remember to cheap to meter?) may just lead to increased consumption of consumer goods plastics etc. I think a cultural shift towards less consumption will be needed as well as tech.