Relief

 

Can't say much that I have too much planned today, or this weekend for that matter.  Mostly just a lot of pottering about.  The place needs some picking up, not too much needed in the way of cleaning.  Might spend some time finishing up a distillation run, but that is mostly sitting around, waiting for the clear lovely to exit into the mason jar.

Today's Screed

I guess that I have been ruminating on the extinction thing a bit.  Not a healthy way to go, but as I ponder the issue, it just seems that while there may be some merit to the extinction discussion going about, the odds are so low and the timeframe so long, the issue needs to be shut down in the arena encompassed by my frontal lobes and my limbic.  

I am fairly certain that the quote "the future is here, it just isn't evenly distributed" came from Bruse Sterling, but I am just too lazy to look it up right.  I think that the issues presented by the extinction mega-doomers are real and alarming, but the real issue is whether or not the word "extinction" should be used.

I am of the opinion that the industrial society that we currently espouse here in the land 'o the free is gonna go down.  In a way, the shrub was right back during the last time it had a crisis;  that sucker was going down.  The capitalists and the banks saved the structure by throwing a shit-ton of funny money at the problem.  That little bit of insouciance bought Obama some nice digs and some frequent flyer miles on the country's dime, but being a wall street minion, he certainly didn't do anything that would allow the project to heal.  We are now under the Trump days, and Trump's mandate has always and forever been, "run that sucker dry, but don't fuck with my Pickup".

The doomers seem to think that the ongoing poisoning of the ecosystem by oil-based industrial society is both unrelenting and permanent.  Neither of those things are true.  We are "discussing" how to bridge out of fossil fuels and into the bright new world of renewable energy, but that particular dog won't hunt as we are getting the idea that out whiz-bang shiny culture/desires won't work under the intermittent 25% of the power currently available in our profligate ways.

The industrial system is going to die within the next fifty-some-odd years.  It will be replaced with a system of small, renewable technologies that will provide a lower standard of living if we maintain the current population.  The standard of living for those living through the storm times will go up as the population drops.  If we want to maintain our current population, we should look at Lagos, Nigeria or Sao Paolo, Brazil as the models for our future world.  As the oil starts running out in the next twenty-some odd years, you can expect cities like this to begin losing population in a serious way (please don't think of this as being emigration).  When the human population goes down, and the industrial output goes down, and the energy use goes down, the planet will begin to heal and rebuild.  Not having poisons dumped into the system will allow it.

I tend to think that in 2125 the planet will be sitting around 3.5 billion folks.  I think that in 2225 the planet will be host to around 1.5 billion and will start looking pretty stable.  If I am right, then talking about "extinction" is just histrionic nonsense.