NationStates Jolt Archive

the way in which we produce things in the West today: is this sustainable? can we keep doing things this way indefinatley without reprise?

poll coming.



i'd be especially interested, if you decide to post as well as vote on the poll, if you could say what your general political affiliation is (left/right will do) and where you're from... unless i know already of course :)


edit: and that's the current ways of producing etc, so simply stating that advancements in technology will enable us to remain more sustainable for longer don't really count.

the way in which we produce things in the West today: is this sustainable? can we keep doing things this way indefinatley without reprise?

Certainly not, as long as we continue to use fossil fuels.

Jesus Christ. I'm typing out my A-level geography revision notes and the only idea I can come up with is fossil fuels...


And my political position is centrist (at least, the Political Compass says so), but I do lean left a little.

Well, as a right-winger from Texas, I’m going to have to say that it is not sustainable at the current rate. You posted in your edit that advances in technology do not count, but that is the only way it will be sustainable. As much as I would like it to be so, the current production in the West (and the rest of the world for that matter) is not sustainable.

As it currently sits: no...not sustainable.

If you add in technological advances and new R&D, the West is s-l-o-w-l-y moving toward sustainability, but unless businesses make a concerted effort, true sustainability is a LONG way off.

I will vote for Melkor.

Myrth gets a lot of these extra poll votes, it's high time we had another moderator whose name begins with "M" up on there!

Well, as a right-winger from Texas, I’m going to have to say that it is not sustainable at the current rate. You posted in your edit that advances in technology do not count, but that is the only way it will be sustainable. As much as I would like it to be so, the current production in the West (and the rest of the world for that matter) is not sustainable.
thats the point. without the assumption of change i think 99% of people will agree that the way we do things (using a pleasantly vague term here) cannot last.
so all people should be agreed that change is needed.


the question comes in how far this change should be, and how to instigate it.

personally i don't think there's enough committment to this change from either governments nor corporations, and that the considered road to change needs to be started on proper - current efforts need to be stepped up from all sides - before we run into potentially irreversable and globally-threatening situations. because of the uncertainty of timescale of any such potential environmental disaster, i'd rather "be safe than sorry" and start too soon than too late

Of course the West is ecologically and economically sustainable for the future, but not the way things are currently being done. There will have to be a dramatic shift in society for that to happen.

As it currently sits: no...not sustainable.

If you add in technological advances and new R&D, the West is s-l-o-w-l-y moving toward sustainability, but unless businesses make a concerted effort, true sustainability is a LONG way off.

Agreed. (I'm not reading your mind, Tex...)
Presently, we're already seeing a decline in real productivity in favour of what my grandmother called "warshing each other's socks".
Having lived in a "Service Economy" I can say that the trend towards one in the west is definitely not a sustainable model. There are more barriers than non-interest in business, though- we have a number of externalities to overcome or eliminate before the economy can be stabilized and growth sustained. One big one, is the use of the Civil Courts to block development of viable alternative energy sources (Nuclear, Hydroelectric), or to dismantle the same.
Environmentalist activists bitch about Fossil-Fuels, but the solutions they offer are... unreliable, uneconomical, and require fossil-fuel systems to be produced and implemented. Further, there are legal and financial barriers to other methods (including biodiesel) that could provide a measure of relief from current problems, and the whole "Nimby" problem to deal with.

Everything comes down to energy-to reduce dependence on fresh mineral resources you have to recycle, which takes more energy per-ton of reclaimed material than it took to process it in the first place. (Nuclear materials excepted-those processes don't require much external power to implement in the recycling stage.) To reduce your reliance on fresh sources of materials, you have to have lots of cheap energy. The Cheapest (energy out for energy in) energy source that doesn't draw crowds of rabid protestors and shark-packs of Lawyers filing lawsuits is spelled "Fossil Fuels", this is because Gasoline, coal, Diesel, etc. don't require refrigeration equipment to store and transport, or high-pressure storage media th way Hydrogen does, nor do they fail to work if the weather changes (Wind and solar), and they are not tied to a single 'base' location tht is inherently non-portable (Geothermal, Hydroelectric).
So far, after almost forty years, we still can't produce a controllable Fusion reaction that produces more energy than is input. (Unlike Fission power, which doesn't require an external power supply once the chain-reaction is begun until the fuel gives out.)
Fusion is likely going to be impractical for another twenty to forty years at minimum, and, like Perpetual Motion, may be impossible to harness.

TANSTAAFL, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Eventually, you have to produce more than you consume or your consumption will eat you alive.

Therefore, to survive, the West must find a means of increasing Energy Production and reducing its cost before environmentally-friendly materials processing can move from second and third tier to first tier.

The shortcut, of course, is to find new sources of raw material, then find a way to reach those sources without breaking your economy.

the Moon Treaty of 1967, and the Outer Space Treaty of 1979 have effectively killed serious investigation into using the lifeless rocks of the solar system as a source of raw-materials, turning the Space Programme into expensive entertainment, a luxury, rather than a serious endeavour. Nobody is going to finance serious work on lowering the cost of surface-to-orbit-and-beyond as long as there is no Profit in doing so.

This forces a kind of soft-core Colonialism to be sustained globally by the great powers, since Raw Materials are second highest cost of production (right behind Energy) in non-agricultural economies.

"Energy" is the main reason France opposed the second war in Iraq-they had a deal with the Ba'athist regime to exploit oil fields in N. Iraq in exchange for, effectively, looking the other way. It's the reason the U.S. maintains ties to Saudi Arabia, and why Venezuela's paranoid president makes the U.S. papers.

"Raw Materials" is the reason that Africa continues to recieve foreign aid, adn why China is making inroads in Zimbabwe and propping up Mugabe's regime.

The only way to break the cycle is to remove barriers to development of better technology. conversely, this means that one has to seriously consider lifthing the ban on closed-cycle Nuclear (to free up energy resources and supplement/replace coal, oil, and Natural Gas at the municipal/regional level), loosen the regulations around upper-atmosphere and high-altitude flight (including space. This also means repealing the 1979 and 1967 treaties to allow private holdings on celestial bodies) and dumping or amending the "Law of the Sea" treaty signed by the Clinton Administration in 1996 (which made it prohibitive for the best-equipped and most likely commercial outfits to develop sea-bottom mineral exploration and extraction.)

it also means recognizing that Unilateral Free Trade is like Unilateral Disarmament-stupid and suicidal in the long run.

it also means recognizing that Unilateral Free Trade is like Unilateral Disarmament-stupid and suicidal in the long run.

Your whole post was brilliant, but this was the line that really sealed my high respect for you. Kudos! :D

bump