...if modern agriculture continues to follow the path it's on now, it's finished. The food-growing situation may seem to be in good shape today, but that's just an illusion based on the current availability of petroleum fuels. All the wheat, corn, and other crops that are produced on big American farms may be alive and growing, but they're not products of real nature or real agriculture. They're manufactured rather than grown. The earth isn't producing those things... petroleum is!

—Masanobu Fukuoka, Mother Earth News interview, 1982

It has long been held that technology exists to make life easier, less complicateed and possibly more productive for humans. These ideas may be somewhat true. One exerts far less energy in driving a car to work rather than walking or driving. A sedan with one driver and no passengers equates a poor EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). A diesel bus filled to capacity with riders standing in the isle is likely a good use of fossil fuels. One needs only to visit Central America and travel rural roads. Eventually a truck with it's bed loaded with riders enough that the frame sits on the suspension and prohibits the truck from going more than 25 MPH comes along is probably is an appropriate use of petroleum (non renewable resources). It is culturally appropriate to pick up riders in most of Latin America, especially in rural areas where no bus lines exist. Drivers benefit as unsaid, but largely well known is the fact that drivers are given gas money for rides of certain distance. A truck bed with 14 Guatamelans in the bed and 4 in the cab is a good EROEI for a small displacement internal combustion gas engine.

The case for PDX South Metro Area (Wilsonville, West Linn, Lake Oswego) looks markedly different than that mentioned above. Cars zooms down two lane roads seemingly oblivous to pedestrains and bicyclists. Watching cars go past for 15 minutes one may the impression of affluence over practicality. What good is a large Cadillac SUV if only the driver is transported in such a large vehicle? Makes you wonder where all those empty cars are going in such a frenzy. Probably to the tanning salon, 24 hour fitness or take out Chinese restaurant. The culture of covienance has spawned the increase of consumerism and increased the wantsof those with means to access (money) to such things. Convienance culture is everywhere and it can be hard to get away from. You drive down the street and what do you see?

Advertisements. Buy new things, spend more money and create a better life through consumer culture.

Wait a minute. What happens to all these items when they break. fix it? Surely not, there's already a new, improved widget for a little more than the cost of the original and the parts for the old widget are no longer available anyhow.

Its a concept developed called percieved obsolesence and planned obsolescence. More on it here.


http://storyofstuff.com



Oil being cheap through government subsidies keeps people filling the tank the states. That and lack of public transit in rural areas. Petroleum can be used as fast as we like as opposed to solar energy which is abdundant every day yet only so much can be harnessed to be used daily in plants that humans eat for energy and health allowing them to use biomass and solar energy to power forms of appropriate transport (by bike and foot). Petroleum will prove to be a blip on the radar of homo sapiens existance on Earth. Solar energy has been avialable far longer than the petroleum has been extracted and refined. Humanity must realize that technology with all it's simplification of complex problems only serves to solve problems which technology created in first place. If a person is eating an unhealthy diet and living a sedetary lifestyle and always ill, the Western concept says give medicine to cure the problems of the illness, not negate the cause of the illness through healthy diet and exercise. Technology is a viscous cycle of finding a problem and solving it with science, then when problems arise from the previous technology more technology is developed to conteract the short coming of previous fixes. Technology serves only to plug the dyke of nature who knows nothing of connecting two wires to make an electrical circut. Nature is complex system of communities which operate together and yet not. There is no science that can make concrete all of the concepts of nature and form mathematical equations to make forests and plants grow.

Economics has fallen into a theory of abstract concreteness wherein it is believed that since a certain scenario occured before then a similar scenario will occur based on events observed in the previous set of events. All of this is based on prior experince which is correlated into "since this x happened a certain way then the outcome will be z, if y happens under this set of circumstances. This is science's attempt make all concepts concrete and manageable in a form of graphs, linear equations and numbers. In nature none of this exists, humanity's attempts to strongarm the ecosystem into a manageable scientific realm is one it very failings. Failure though is not of detriment, failure ultimately leads of new thought and practices through which individuals, communities and civilizations gain knowledge of their shortcomings and improve upon mistakes for future generations. Why then has civilization largely disregarded the historical accounts of mistakes made by previous civilizations and used that knowledge to create a more functional? Technology exists for this very reason. If humans are given opportunity to upcycle things (anything sold or marketed) as an improvement of their lives; and largely these technologies can be bought with adequate money, then humans have no initiative to find for themselves the outlets through which improvements can be made or the affects of these changes on social and enviromental spheres. What most of humanity hears is, "this is good for, you take it, give me your money and good riddance." If that is what most us experience then how can the capacity to be questioning ever come to be. Here is technology telling us our lives can be faster, better, more efficient, but only if you invest in the widget. If not your largely considered to be unpallatable to the rest of consumer society.

So can humanity technology its way out of overpopulation caused by overzealous technological innovations?