The Humane Truth:

thehumanetruth.blogspot.com/

Please read my little old blog and then help me polish it.
Thanks guys!

I kind of feel like I’ll sound too critical if I say anything as it’s your essay, and to ‘help you polish it’ seems wrong as you are telling everyone what you think.

On the other hand I could look at it subjectively and say that these are the changes I would make if it were up to me:

I would cut the 5 meanings of life on earth down to 4 as ‘work’ seems like more of a medium through which the other 4 happen, and your goals seem to want to get rid of as much work as possible so it kinda doesn’t fit.
Goal No. 2 reads like only an observation and not a goal, so it should be made clearer what the goal is.

I also think that the 4 ultimate goals are really only one ultimate goal which you have not quite defined:
No. 1 says to change ourselves to suit our environment.
No. 2 says to achieve a state where we control our environment as though it were part of our body.
No. 3 says to change our enviroment to suit ourselves.
No. 4 says to achieve a state where any interaction between us and our invironment we do takes minimal time and energy.

Combining 1 & 3 says we need to change the way we live and the way our environment lives. Adding No. 4 means we change us and the environment until we achieve a state of synergy with the environment where we are maximised by living in our environment and out environment is maximised for having us living in it. Lastly, adding No. 2 says that this synergy requires for our environment to become an extension of our body, that our needs become the environments wants, and the evironment’s needs become our wants. Animals and plants breath each others waste air, one’s breath out is another’s breath in. But why waste the energy to draw two breaths when a perfect synergy would mean you and your environment would share the same one.

Or maybe I’m reaching there. I dunno. That’s kinda gone way past polish. Sounds a bit too much like bong talk now I read over it again. I suppose your blog got me thinking anyway, always good to exercise the brain. That’s my input anyway. Nice Blog.

Thanks MM.
I like feedback.

The evolution of civilization and technology is a strange spinning dance. We have far greater quality of life now then we did 200 years ago – but civilization is taking a huge toll on the environment.

I want to see genetically engineered plants that grow faster and absorb more co2/create more oxygen.

Once oil peaks I will be laughing. I will say: “How now brown cow?” this will force them to use other forms of energy. I can only hope that these new forms of energy will not pollute the way that our oil does.

I think that if things get too bad – a few of the super-elite will have what it takes to preserve themselves but the masses may suffer great loss.

I’m considering your reply and the future of humanity.
I am wondering if there will be more unity or more imbalance in the future. Perhaps there will just be more and more imbalance in the future?

In Bush’s latest state of the union speech he implied that alternative fuels ‘should’ be developed and implemented (whether they will be or not is another matter) saying that ‘America is adicted to Oil’. (The statement itself not actually stating if that’s supposed to be a bad thing)
My I’m trying to get to is, if the world does stop using oil as fuel, what’s the alternative? He was talking about implementing ‘renewable’ Ethanol petrol for cars, but they don’t mention that if you use more than 10% ethenol mixed in with petrol, it will start wearing down the guts of the engine relitively quickly. If car’s swap over to fuel cells (and not just fuelcell/petrol hybrids) you are using cells which require electricity from the grid to charge them. In america this will ultimately mean more Nuclear Power stations. I’d like to know which way create more waste in the long run. Tricky. Let’s hope a another technological option comes along real soon.

Extremely efficient, nanotech solar pannels were the best bet – thus far.

I see nothing wrong with complete nuclear power for all our stationary power needs. The waste produced by nuclear power is negligible. All you have to do is construct a storage site in a salt dome or something. The footprint for 1000 years of nuclear power would be microscopic compared to strip mining for coal, ect.

Furthermore, it should be noted that most of the radioactivity of nuclear waste dies off in a few hundred years. The ten-thousand year half life of the original uranium was there before we mined it. It’s the short lived byproducts that render it dangerous, and they go away pretty fast. A lot of the hysteria about nuclear waste is caused by superstitious fear and green mythology.

There’s no way we should be burning 30% of our oil to push electrons down a wire.

Furthermore, we will need thousands of gigawatts (literally terawatts) of electric energy if we want to replace all the gasoline we burn. I’m sorry, but windmills and solar panels just won’t cut it. (Especially since you need a lot of energy to refine silicon).

One of the things that strikes me as completely inconsistent with environmentalist thought is how we’re taking a toll on the environment by burning oil. It creates CO2. Plants like CO2. It creates a warmer, wetter climate. Plants and animals like that too. A greater toll would be taken if we were clear cutting forests for firewood and burning everything we can find.

Furthermore, isn’t it also inconsistent that you should warn us simultaneously about global warming and running out of oil? If we run out of oil, we can’t cause any further global warming. If we burned all the fossil fuels we could pull out of the dirt, we would be incapable of putting more CO2 into the air than existed at the time the plants which formed those fossil fuels were fossilized. Think about it. The earth cannot be rendered uninhabitable by global warming due to fossil fuel consumption. The worst that can happen is that the earth gets warmer and wetter again.

Thanks for all that you have taught me MRM1101!
I agree with you! =)