Prosthetic Conscience

No first-world lifestyle anywhere in 50 years

I heard Jared Diamond, author of Collapse and others on National Pentagon Radio yesterday. He was saying that unless we solve all of about 12 different resource crunches (the top ones being energy, water, and topsoil), no one anywhere in the world would be living what we now consider a first-world lifestyle anywhere in the world in 50 years. This morning I thought a little about different non-first-world lifestyles the people of Earth might be living 50 years from now.

1. 9 billion humans living mostly modern third-world urban lifestyles, like Calcutta ragpickers or Caracas shantytown dwellers. A vanishingly small global elite hangs on to something similar to a modern lifestyle, held in place only by the constant exercise of violence by private armies, but technological advancement ground to a halt a decade ago. Those on top are interested only in holding on to their remaining prerogatives for as long as they can, knowing that it can’t last.

2. 5 billion humans living in dispersed villages in heavily permicultured landscapes. People generally live where they work and vice-versa. Some high technology still exists, mostly for long-distance communication, powered by a diversity of low-yield, decentralized, and sustainable energy sources. Long-distance travel, however, is as obsolete as consumerism. Tools, works of art, and toys are made as heirlooms to last generations. Every village is a little different from its neighbours, and peoples efforts to make their own entertainment lead to a flowering of all kinds of creativity.

3. A few tens of millions of deculturated, often cannibalistic savages scrounging in the bombed-out ruins of the cities for even the simplest tools, which they can use, but are unable to make. Many of these bands of wretches are deprived in ways no so-called primitive society ever was, being descended from consumers with no skills useful outside the culture they once lived in. Some have even all-but lost the use of language, being descended from packs of feral children.

4. Tens of billions of post-human minds, each more brilliant than we can imagine today, limited as we are. Their numbers are difficult to estimate, because they merge with each other, or spawn off partials and independent copies from moment to moment. At any given time, only a few of them occupy physical bodies, most of them living wholly virtual existences in dense matrices of highly-efficient computing substrate. The ones that do have a physical presence at any moment build bodies as they need them, perhaps nearly-baseline human, perhaps robotic. New sources of energy, and the lack of need of fuel for transportation or land for agriculture, mean that they bear more lightly on the land than the two billion baseline humans of a century ago. Many have left the Earth entirely.

Two of these societies blatantly failed to solve the problems ahead of us. One of them did everything right, and reached a “soft landing” with limited horizons, but the potential for abundant happiness at a humane scale. And one of them changed so radically that the problems we see ahead of us never had a chance to matter to them. We can’t even imagine what their real problems are.

What other possibilities do you see? What world do you want to live in? What world are you afraid we’ll get?

[ Posted: 20:31] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Miracle Mouse

The Times of London is reporting ‘Miracle mouse’ can grow back lost limbs. But it’s not just lost limbs, it’s damaged organs, severed optical nerves; anything but the brain. If this is true, it is very big news, for two reasons. First, the genes that are altered that control regeneration in these mice are almost certainly also present in humans, which could lead to gene therapies to provide regeneration to humans. Secondly, when cells from these mice were injected into ordinary mice, the recipients gained the power of regeneration for up to six months; this could also be extended to humans (via an injection of modified human cells).

The modified mice may also have increased lifespans, but it is too early to tell (they are 18 months old, and this breed of mouse normally lives for 2 years).

Given that the brain does not regrow, I was tempted to post this in zombies, but if this is true, it’s too important to take flippantly.

[ Posted: 11:34] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Bio-stupid

Not new, but new to me, this article sums up a lot of how I feel about both biotech and nuclear, two fields of science with a lot to contribute to the world, and which are both opposed tooth-and-nail by my dearest comrades. A couple of quotes:

The protesters at a San Francisco biotech summit were scientifically illiterate and politically irrelevant. But they were also right.

…

And yet I can’t shake that spooky feeling that I have been clubbed with a hard and dangerous reality deceptively wrapped inside a gigantic wad of fuzzy thinking. I have attempted to decipher a congregation who despises globalization but believes in the global village. I have heard about the evils of NAFTA and the people’s intrinsic right to food sovereignty. I interviewed a biofeminist who knows in her heart that vitamins are an insidious plot by the new military-industrial complex. As I walk down Franklin towards the ocean, a concept is focusing through the lens of memory. And I think, none of this garble, even the most fractured of these fairy tales can erase the reality that the green revolution was a complete hoax and that forcing genetically engineered food down the throats of unsuspecting hungry people is evil.

Good intuitions, but no knowledge to give them strength.

[ Posted: 19:24] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Paper Says Edible Meat Can be Grown in a Lab on Industrial Scale

According to researchers, it may soon be possible to grow meat in-vitro on an industrially viable scale. What this means is that one day you would be able to buy meat that did not come from an animal, but rather from animal muscle tissues grown outside the animal. While some people might find this idea disgusting, I’m of two minds about it. On the one hand, the advantages over soy protein seem rather limited. On the other, this is a way of producing meat on an industrial scale without the environmental and animal-welfare impacts of factory farming. There are also potential health and food safety benefits. I can see this taking the pressure off the mass market for meat; real meat could be produced on a much smaller scale by organic, free-range, family farms while McBurgerFilling is grown in vats.

[ Posted: 17:11] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

MIT profs, colleagues propose plan for nuclear energy

From Science Blog:

MIT faculty members and colleagues, all former senior energy or security advisors in Democratic and Republican administrations from Carter to Clinton, have proposed a pragmatic plan that would allow the world to develop nuclear power without increased risk of weapons proliferation.

Makes sense. You solve the waste problem through breeder reactors, and then you solve the proliferation implications of breeders through political/economic means. Technical solution for a technical problem, political solution for a political problem. Imagine that.

[ Posted: 14:10] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Energy balance of corn ethanol

A recent study from Argonne National Lab shows that production of ethanol from corn now has a positive energy balance. “Cellulosic ethanol with biomass feedstocks from fast-growing trees and switchgrass” can be even more efficient.

Interpretation from Smirking Chimp reader superyumancrew:

Ethanol from Corn: 1.00 million BTU (produced)- 0.74 million BTU (consumed)=0.26 million BTU net energy, or 26% net energy.

Gasoline from Petroleum: 1.23 million BTU (total petroleum energy) -0.23 million BTU (consumed in production) = 1.00 million BTU net energy, or 81% net energy.

Still not as efficient as gasoline, but the energy cost of ethanol production continues to go down, and the energy cost of petrol extraction keeps going up. I would suppose both hemp and kudzu would be very good sources of cellulosic ethanol, though there’s always slash pine.

Other related links: DOE Summary, Argonne Study. These are a bit more dense than the news report above.

[ Posted: 12:21] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Zero-emissions Coal

Saw a pointer to the Zero Emissions Coal Alliance. This looks like a promising energy technology, given the abundance of coal. However, this ignores the problem of extracting the coal, which is a social, medical, and/or environmental disaster depending on the method. I don’t want the tops of any more of my beloved mountains to be pushed into the valleys, and I don’t want debt-enslaved workers dying of black lung.

[ Posted: 11:31] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]