Yawn. So more fear based posts eh? Here are some thoughts I had while reading this blog.
The world uses 15 terrawatts of energy every year. Every hour approximately 120,000 terrawatts of energy hit our planet via electromagnetic radiation. Almost TEN TIMES the amount of energy we use in a year hits our planet in one hour. Biofuels are a method of maintaining scarcity, with solar and electric transportation we can have more than enough.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_solar_energy_reaches_the_surface_of_the_Earth
Denmark aims to have 50% of its power needs met by 2020, via wind power! Combined with biomass, solar, geothermal, etc, abundance is within grasp.
http://www.zeitnews.org/energy/wind-power-to-make-up-half-of-danish-energy-use-in-2020.html
In the US, over $70 billion is spent on oil subsidies. About $1 billion is spent on solar subsidies. Reverse the two, equalling a little over a billion for every state, and over a few years every city could be running on solar.
http://www.ecoinsite.com/2010/10/what-if-solar-got-the-same-subsidies-as-fossil-fuels.html
For those who aren’t familiar with my position, this doesn’t mean I support a continuing expansion of contemporary economic models. The monetary market model of resource distribution is the most destructive, wasteful, inefficient, and detrimental system to have ever existed. This exists due to the need to maintain cost efficiency, growth in GDP, competitive advantage, and preserve relevance of market share through maintaining artificial scarcity.
2/3 of all food grown for human consumption is thrown away, there are approx. 4 million homeless in the US, yet there are about 20 million vacant homes. We already have abundance of goods available, but due to the need for markets to create value out of scarcity, we preserve detrimental and cancerous traits like poverty, stratification, and homicide.
An important concept is the ‘four fold effect’, which theorizes that by creating open access economies, we can reduce consumption by four times while reducing waste by four times. Think libraries; you dont own the goods available to you, but you can use them when you like. Less waste, more access.
I hope that the members here who view the future as ‘hopeless’ realize the only thing hopeless is doing nothing. Get involved with your community, get initiatives for non-profit aquaponic greenhouse systems along with solar, wind, biomass programs.