Exponential Growth: The lillie pond riddle

[bitingmidge]

We've got to start somewhere, so we should start with ourselves. Australia is growing at 200,000 a year. We are damn good a consuming.

I agree completely, although I'd like some ideas of how you think we should do that. If we all set off and do the "alternative" lifestyle thing, the world would suffer a glut of handwoven alpaca mohair ponchos in about one afternoon.

My own ideas of how we could go about this are fairly simple:

1% population growth is not significant, and if everyone undertook a 10% reduction in consumption we've have a net gain.

Lets' introduce a supertax on non-renewable resources. For fuel for example, say $3 per litre. That would force us into smaller more efficient vehicles, reduce trip distances and frequencies and put the price of goods up to the extent where the meaning of "luxury goods" would be restored to its literal place in our language.

We'd be spending more on food, so couldn't afford to have two teles. Manufacturers would have to rationalise packaging to gain a competitive edge.

"Climate control", heating and airconditioning should be banned, we should have to adapt to the conditions we live in, not have our environment adapt to us.

Travel wouid become expensive, encouraging us to live in clusters, (previously known as villages).

Eventually these villages would become high density clusters, much like the original settlement villages in Sydney (Paddo for example). As the density increases in these nodes, the cost of servicing will go down commensurately, and the proceeds from the tax could be used to demolish large tracts of suburbia, re-establishing green agricultural belts on previously fertile ground, and creating a food production source close to the residential one.

Overproduction could be exported in exchange for supertax rebates, so that efficiency is rewarded.....

Or we could just turn off lights in rooms where we're not using them I suppose.

Cheers,

P

[outback]

Why don't we just spray the bloody lily with 245T ?

[Groggy]

Why don't we just spray the bloody lily with 245T ?

or we could gild it...

[bitingmidge]

Why don't we just spray the bloody lily with 245T ?

'cause it'd bugger up the ozone layer, global warming would happen, the lake would overflow into the next paddock, then the pineapple crop would die and we'd all get the rough end of it! :eek:

Come on Grunt, you started this, give me something to work with here!!

cheers,

P

[Grunt]

A 1% growth rate means that the population of Australia will be over 40 million by 2076. Not all that long from now. The worlds population would be 13-14 billion.

Growth is not a sustainable option.

I think everyone needs to really ask themselves what they need rather than what they want. After all, you'll never reach nirvana with desire.

Globalisation is really evil. Why did my dinner tonight travel 10s of thousands of kilometers to get to my plate? Why do we dig holes in the ground to get iron ore, send it by boat to some other place to have is sent back in another shape?

The only real answer is to depopulate. However, chosing a method of doing so is tough. Those who survive will need to be part of a community, that largely provides for itself. This is how it was done before industrialisation.

How about:
Stick a pineapple up where the sun don't shine for everyone who turns 65. If they don't die of constipation, they can stay.
Kill all Collingwood supporters, or anyone thinks about being a Collingwood supporter.
Any child who annoys me, gets one chance before they're sent to the knackers.

Any other ideas?

[Grunt]

No because the Earth will still be capable of supporting more life but external influences will start eradicating it quicker than it can grow.

The Earth is a closed system (with the exception of some sunlight, sunspots and a bit of gravity from the moon). Which external influence do you mean? Starvation and disease are the main tools of nature to reduce populations.

[bitingmidge]

Why did my dinner tonight travel 10s of thousands of kilometers to get to my plate?

1) Because you like stuff grown in a sunny climate and you're too lazy to move here.

2) The stuff you had last night was from near your home and it made you fart.

3) There is a famine in Victoria, but we are always looking to help our fellow man.

Cheers,

P (who had stuff from a fridge right in his own house - how's that for acting locally!)

[Grunt]

For the record, what I am doing to reduce my foot print is to:

Build a strawbale house on our 11 acres in Lancefield. The house will be solar passive and will require very little externally supplied heating (a wood heater) and no cooling.

I will grow a sustainable permaculture garden which will provide more food than we can eat.

I will continue to work but continue to telecommute to work as long as they let me.

I've been thinking, I may have to turn to the darkside.

I'll install some solar panels and have a backup diesel generator. I'll grow enough vegie oil to power the generator and small tractor. Around 1000 litres a year.

[graemet]

How about:
Stick a pineapple up where the sun don't shine for everyone who turns 65. If they don't die of constipation, they can stay.

And up yours too!

Cheers,
64 years old Graeme

[bitingmidge]

The only real answer is to depopulate.

Won't that make it harder for your dinner to travel 10's of thousands of kilometres to your place??

If there's no-one to drive the delivery trucks, you could be in deep do-do's.

I'm doing my bit, I promise not to have any more kids between now and 2076.

cheers,

P

[outback]

For the record, what I am doing to reduce my foot print is to:

Build a strawbale house on our 11 acres in Lancefield. The house will be solar passive and will require very little externally supplied heating (a wood heater) and no cooling.

I will grow a sustainable permaculture garden which will provide more food than we can eat.

I will continue to work but continue to telecommute to work as long as they let me.

I've been thinking, I may have to turn to the darkside.

I'll install some solar panels and have a backup diesel generator. I'll grow enough vegie oil to power the generator and small tractor. Around 1000 litres a year.

Your'e funny




You are being funny aren't you? I mean you can't actually be serious about all of that............can you?

[Grunt]

Won't that make it harder for your dinner to travel 10's of thousands of kilometres to your place??

No, I'll just drive down to the take out alot.

I'm doing my bit, I promise not to have any more kids between now and 2076.

But the seed you've already sown is already out there doing there bit for the economy. You know, 1 for her, 1 for him and 1 for the country,

I took my children to the vet and had their bits removed as soon as they were old enough.

And up yours too!

Cheers,
64 years old Graeme

My point was that it's really hard to work out an equitable way to depopulate. Unless we have any volunteers?

[bitingmidge]

For the record, what I am doing to reduce my foot print is to:

I don't in the least want to devalue what you are doing (except for the poncho weaving bit), however, there are a few arguments that can never be won here.

Depopulate you said, yet you haven't got killing anyone on your agenda.:eek:

Seriously, we have to accept that we have a fabric of society, and while you may live in a way which is very self-fulfilling, and I make compromises in my thermally efficient, veggie gardened suburban dwelling, scrounging second hand timber for my projects, riding my bicycle and generally minimising personal consumption, our tokens are just that: tokens that remind us of how irresponsible the rest of the world is.

What will be the catalyst to educate the masses? (I almost said the great unwashed, but that's you and your straw-baled hippie mates)

Maybe making stuff expensive. Paying the true cost for water, and as I have suggested above, supertaxing anything that uses a non-renewable resource will help.

What won't work, is moving everyone onto self-sufficient plots, our climate wasn't designed to sustain veggie farms 12 months a year, and spreading out further is self defeating, requiring a whole new set of resources.

Perhaps if we were to look to how China lives now, in self-sufficiency, sub-urban structure and transportation terms, we could develop a model.

The trick is to convince them to stop developing further, but they've seen what we have, and I don't blame them for wanting it, even if we see the evil in our ways.

Practically, how does the local snack bar employee telecommute?

I'd love to chew the fat a bit over it. It makes the IR concerns a bit irrelevant eh?

cheers,

P

[Grunt]

Your'e funny

You are being funny aren't you? I mean you can't actually be serious about all of that............can you?

It'll keep me out of trouble.

[Grunt]

Midge, I don't actually think what I'm doing will make one iota of differnce to the world. It just makes me feel better.

The things that need doing won't get done because they'll be killers on election day for any government that implements them.

Sadly, by the time the general population agrees that something needs to be done, it'll be too late.

I have stopped worring about the IR laws.