And now for something completely different...

[eppie]

Hi,

I'm going to take a bit of liberty with the order of your statements in your post.
This is *the* most important (maybe even the *only* important) ecological question. A reduction of the world population by a factor of ten to a hundred would make this a much better planet for all species, including ours. This reduction needs to start soon, preferably within the next decade. To drop the population by a factor of, say, 10 in the next hundred years would require a (negative) growth rate of approximately -3% per year. This may be unrealistically high. Consider a simple model: each generation produces half as many children as its population. Then a reduction by a factor of ten will take over three generations. That's about a century. Needless to say, this is a very long term problem. But it must be solved, for there is no such thing as a sustainable growth rate (except zero growth).

I fully agree. But if the major part of westerners already start plotting against their own government if petrol prizes go up, how do you think you can force people to get less children?
Most rich european countries have negative population growth already (apart from the immigrant populations) but as I said in 2nd and 3rd world countries it is not going to happen.
One option might be to cut all development support to poor countries and close the borders for immigrants....this is however a far from nice perspective.

Not even in theory. Bio-fuel is still carbon based. Using it solves the 'problem' of making Arabs richer. It does not solve global warming. And, in a world were hunger is a problem, diverting resources from growing food to growing fuel reduces the amount of food available and increases the cost of food. The use of some bio-mass for fuel *is* a good idea, especially if that would be bio-mass that would otherwise be wasted. However, that is not that great an amount, since most bio-mass can be composted to return the nutrients it contains to the soil. Your second statement is very true.

I guess much of the biomass is wasted now, but you are right, it will not be a huge contribution to an energy solution.

Wind, tide, wave, solar, etc. are all good options from two perspectives. They are 'renewable' and they have a minimal carbon footprint. If one looks at these technologies from end to end, some meet neither the economic nor the ecological objectives. Wind, where the conditions are right, seems to be the best. Tide and wave require pretty specialized conditions, and the necessity of having to work in a salt water environment puts high demands on the systems. Demands that generate high costs in production and maintenance.

Yes that is true, but these are all jobs for people. And seeing as in the beginning we need to have some subsidizing anyway, why not to these industries.

Whether you left out nuclear by oversight or intentionally, I do not know. However, it is the best energy source available to the world now. Modern designs of nuclear plants are extremely safe, even if operated by ignorant people. The actual cost of building a plant, when calculated over its lifetime energy output, is very low (however, the cost of battling the ignorant does drive the price up quite a bit). And the claim that the available fissionable material is too small to make nuclear power viable is a half-truth. If the material is used once and dumped, it is indeed too little, and it does generate large quantities of waste. But if the material is reprocessed, it increases the energy that can be produced per unit of ore by three or more orders of magnitude. And it decreases the amount of waste by about the same factor.

I am not a big fan but that is another discussion (one we had a few month ago if I remember correctly)

You mentioned economic growth as a driving factor. My question is, why does there have to be economic growth? Why should we (the world) not strive for economic balance? Why is a coffee house that sells the same amount of coffee to the same number of people in the same neighborhood this year as it did last year considered a 'failure'? If last year it generated enough cash to pay the workers a reasonable wage, to cover its expense, and to generate some return for its investors, why does it need to do more? Figure that out, and you come close to figuring out part of the problem (and maybe part of the solution).

--Pete

Again I agree with you, but that is not what capitalism thinks.