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How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?

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Chris OConnor

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How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?

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I'm a member of Mensa and in the monthly "Bulletin" magazine they ask questions to the readers. I'm going through the questions from the past several months and will be posting the ones I find interesting here on BookTalk.org.

How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?
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Re: How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?

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I would like to see other people answering before I tell my opinion ;D
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Re: How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?

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My first thought was that each resource has it's own set of problems and solutions. Water/trees/oil/fish/etc., the issues are all different. The only solution for 'all' of them that I can think of is population control.

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Re: How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?

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Energy is the mitigating force behind human life, therefore conversion from natural sources of energy to unnatural is becoming more necessary. One solution is Carbon Arc Plasma Gasification Technology using Municipal Solid Waste as a fuel source. I am referencing from conversations with a friend who is prominent in the energy industry, Plasma Arc Conversion (Gasification) can be found under the titles:
Carbon Arc Technology
Plasma Gasification
Plasma inhanced melter
Waste Gasification
Green Energy
Plasma Conversion
What ever the name, the technology has been known for more than thirty years. Within the Plasma Conversion process contaminants are removed from the syngas and/or from the flu gases prior to being exhausted from the stack. Specific design and operation characteristics of thermal conversion systems also reduce air emission significantly.
I would really like to reproduce the entire document as I think it has relevance here but I would have to make sure I have permission to do so.
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Re: How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?

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Chris OConnor wrote:How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?
We have to get back to simple living, get back to the garden. Realize that our infatuation with buying stuff is not healthy for us or the planet.

Population is a key concern. I don't know if there's a way to curb population organically, without limiting human freedoms. Sooner or later our world will undergo a population decline. Unfortunately our economy is tied to expansion, so with population decline will come a decline in many other areas as well.
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Re: How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?

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Geo: it seems a natural conclusion that a decline in population is a part of the future decline of the whole earth, but isn't that decline well into the future? beyond the strains we are witness to here and now. I'm not suggesting a dam the torpedo's attitude, but there again the problem of immediacy, seems the crux of whats at stake here. Recycling will be a very necessary part of that immediacy. There are many good ideas out there that go unnoticed. It seems unfeasible at this time to consider effective population control, but by going after those things we can rightly consider, like alternative energy and carbon capture we give our selves a head start in mitigating natural resource strain. anyway just a thought.
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Robert Tulip

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Re: How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?

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Find ways to use the carbon cycle more efficiently to produce abundance.

Humans now add about ten billion tonnes of carbon to the air every year. This carbon pollution is dangerous waste, causing massive risk of extinction, political instability and poverty. We need to extract this carbon for productive uses such as construction materials, food and energy. The challenge is to find low cost large scale methods with rapid practical transition strategies.

The ocean contains more than a billion teralitres of water. There is enough nutrient in the world ocean, if we work out how to mine it, to sustain a global human population of fifty billion people for ever, with steadily growing biodiversity and ecological complexity.

My suggestion of a method to mine carbon and other useful things from the ocean involves construction of plastic structures that will use wave and tide and current power to pump nutrient with no fossil energy input, aiming for near zero operating cost and self replicating robotic methods. Mimicking the natural efficiency of ocean animals such as whales and jellyfish is part of the story, eventually aiming to grow algae at teralitre scale in controlled environments. Industrial systems of this type on one percent of the world ocean would be enough to stabilise atmospheric carbon level and reverse global warming and ocean acidification.

Key to this story is supporting the capitalist system, working with large energy companies to enable transforming innovation, funded by profit, under scientific supervision and regulation.

The idea that economy and ecology must be in conflict is wrong. We can shift the political paradigm from colonial extraction to ecological inclusion. Economic growth is entirely possible in ways that support natural ecological complexity.
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Re: How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?

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I think sometimes you say this about 50 billion people just to bait me :hmm:. But every time you say it I wonder how you can be serious. It's the co-existing with the rest of nature that I find unbelievable. Conceivably, we could septuple our population and "survive," but it would come with the price tag of crowding out a great many of the species we live beside now (indeed, we're doing that with our seven billion), and we'd have a bleak environment all around. It's not all about carbon, either. Despoilment of the earth happens on many fronts.
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Re: How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?

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I know that population is part of the problem now. But I don't think it's connected directly to the problem. Sometimes population is the solution! How? I will keep it an open subject but I will just say that it's either you have a great amount of stupid people or a great amount of educated people. And when you have the second one, I think you will decrees the problems in the world in general.

Second of all .. I think putting regulations on factories and industries and force them to follow will change the world. If you want my personal opinion, I would say that capitalism caused the world to be greedy. So I can say that if you really want to solve the problems of earth... you have to change the whole system first.. other stuff just remove the symptoms.

There are many solutions but no body wants to use them.. because they are simply working to make more money this year. .. not less..
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Robert Tulip

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Re: How would you solve the growing strain on natural resources?

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DWill wrote:I think sometimes you say this about 50 billion people just to bait me :hmm:. But every time you say it I wonder how you can be serious. It's the co-existing with the rest of nature that I find unbelievable.
It might take ten thousand years to reach that population. I put it out there to say transformative technological change could create universal abundance on a scale we can hardly dream of today.

Hong Kong has a population density of 6500 people per square kilometer. If we work out how to build floating cities at sea with that density, 50 billion people would only need 2% of the world ocean, with a further 5% of the ocean for industrial agriculture, transport, etc.

Ten square kilometre floating cities with buildings a kilometre high could float around the North Pacific Current between America and Asia. Almost all of the world ocean, and most of the land, could then be devoted to biodiversity, cultural heritage, etc.

It is all about fostering values that look to long term growth, stability and respect. Pressure on natural resources is only due to poor governance. Once we get started on innovative methods, current imagined constraints could evaporate.
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