----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Tobis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: gmane.science.general.global-change To: "globalchange" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 11:07 AM Subject: [Global Change: 2194] Re: The House Energy and Environment Committee
> > On Oct 13, 1:17 pm, "Don Libby" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> "Eric Swanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message > >> > Looks like more of the "technology will save us" >> > approach to the energy problem. >> >> Why not? It has worked pretty well so far. > > It's a good question. > > The first answer that popped into my mind is "wasn't that what the > Easter Islanders said about the statues" but that's perhaps a little > glib. > > John Fleck has spotted a cogent answer from an unlikely source: > http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/?p=2273 > > I'd also recommend the book "The Upside of Down" by Thomas Homer- > Dixon, and re-recommend Jared Diamond's "Collapse". I think it is fair > to say that the nature of the problems we face, while not entirely > without precedent, have not historically tended to be solved > effectively in analogous cases. > > mt Thanks for the reading list. Analogies, while useful, have their limits. When pondering the population collapse on Easter Island, it is helpful to keep in mind that hundreds of other populations on Pacific Islands did not collapse. Trade networks weave a resilient safety net of sorts. The extent of innovation and trade at our command today puts global civilization in a status unprecedented by prior civilizations, bound as they were to local or regional geographies. I think our situation today is more analogous to the Nineteenth Century economist Jevons's concern with "The Coal Question" - that coal would run out by 1950. Technology did work around that problem pretty well. Today's coal question: how can we avoid the harmful consequences of burning it? -dl --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
