Really good way of summarizing the world as we know it........................or do you really know at all. Good food for thought. However greed and these things that are doomed to get us is something that seems to be pre programmed by humanity these days. Most of us are self driven to consume and waste. Its like trying to tell someone they dont need two cars or something that they cant afford. We work our whole lives for these desires. When in reality we are all taking from our future. The long search for happiness has just turned into something unforeseen. The basic structure of what we are here for has already be decided. Basically we have built a system which those who are greedy feed off of and then the same system tells us how to raise our kids, schooling, tv, papers or the basic structure of our economy. Credit is good because you can pay it back? Because we have already started a system that feeds off your hard earned wages and gets taxed 25% period. Then if you want to borrow anything you cant afford. well we will take another 15-30% interest off all the money you pay. The basic structure is greed. Its not working hard for something you earned. I dont think there is any real easy answer. It would take a much higher enlightened generation of people to figure out all the parts we are getting wrong. I could go on and on about this forever but Im done for now. Science has a way of explaining things. so just read the article. Civilization was pretty great while it lasted, wasnt it? Too bad its not going to for much longer. According to a new study sponsored by NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, we only have a few decades left before everything we know and hold dear collapses. The report, written by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center along with a team of natural and social scientists, explains that modern civilization is doomed. And theres not just one particular group to blame, but the entire fundamental structure and nature of our society. Analyzing five risk factors for societal collapse (population, climate, water, agriculture and energy), the report says that the sudden downfall of complicated societal structures can follow when these factors converge to form two important criteria. Motesharreis report says that all societal collapses over the past 5,000 years have involved both the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity and the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or Commoners) [poor]. This Elite population restricts the flow of resources accessible to the Masses, accumulating a surplus for themselves that is high enough to strain natural resources. Eventually this situation will inevitably result in the destruction of society. Elite power, the report suggests, will buffer detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners, allowing the privileged to continue business as usual despite the impending catastrophe. Science will surely save us, the nay-sayers may yell. But technology, argues Motesharrei, has only damned us further: Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use. In other words, the benefits of technology are outweighed by how much the gains reinforce the existing, over-burdened system — making collapse even more likely. The worst-case scenarios predicted by Motesharrei are pretty dire, involving sudden collapse due to famine or a drawn-out breakdown of society due to the over-consumption of natural resources. The best-case scenario involves recognition of the looming catastrophe by Elites and a more equitable restructuring of society, but who really believes that is going to happen? Heres what the study recommends: The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth. These are great suggestions that will, unfortunately, almost certainly never be put into action, considering just how far down the wrong path our civilization has gone. As of last year, humans are using more resources than the Earth can replenish and the planets distribution of resources among its terrestrial inhabitants is massively unequal. This is what happened to Rome and the Mayans, according to the report. ... historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases). And thats not even counting the spectre of global climate change, which could be a loominginstant planetary emergency. According to Canadian Wildlife Service biologist Neil Dawe: Economic growth is the biggest destroyer of the ecology. Those people who think you can have a growing economy and a healthy environment are wrong. If we dont reduce our numbers, nature will do it for us ... Everything is worse and we’re still doing the same things. Because ecosystems are so resilient, they don’t exact immediate punishment on the stupid. In maybe the nicest way to say the end is nigh possible, Motesharreis report concludes that closely reflecting the reality of the world today ... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid. Writes Nafeez Ahmed at The Guardian: Although the study is largely theoretical, a number of other more empirically-focused studies — by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for instance — have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a perfect storm within about fifteen years. But these business as usual forecasts could be very conservative. filmsforaction.org/articles/nasa-study-concludes-when-civilization-will-end-and-its-not-looking-good-for-us/#.U3kEEFpgqAH.facebook
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 16:45:45 +0000