Originally Posted by
tandempower
It's unfortunate that with all the experience you seem to have, you don't have the ability to look at the details of situations instead of lumping all factors together as either 'modern' or 'primitive.' I've explained this to you before but you'll never get it because you don't want to do anything except validate industrialism in contrast to what it isn't.
Industrialism has been an amazingly fruitful learning experience. There are so many technologies we can continue to harness and refine to continue progressing into greater sustainability. What seems to bother you is that doing so might mean using these technologies and energies more surgically in order to let more land host living soil and organisms the way it evolved to. You can't seem to grasp that we have reached a point with technology that we can deal with the problems caused by living ecology, such as insects and other pests/diseases. You can't seem to appreciate the fact that modern science gives us the ability to understand living organisms as complex networks of nano'tech' that utilizes latent heat and sunlight to power processes that perform productive labor for us. I'm not just talking about growing food and wood but also to clean the air and water and absorb CO2 from the air and use it to produce shade that cools the air and keeps ground moisture from evaporating away.
All you ever do is debate what is plain to see for many generations of people who see how nature is and always has been sustainable. Why you imagine that ever-expanding industry is sustainable and that ecological processes made of living organisms isn't I can't understand. Yes, I understand that humans are capable of harming the life around them even when they LCF, but why can't you see that overuse of industrial power, including driving and its infrastructure, is also damaging and that sustainability can't be achieved without significantly reducing the amount of cars and pavement?
These things are not theory to me.
You see the sky is falling and I do not. You assert that cars are the major cause of your falling world and I do not. I see technology as the only possible solution with ways to grow more food and desalinate more water. But if you want to try and make LCF a moral imperative I am willing to go there. What have you done with your ideas to relieve today's human suffering? Have you sat down with someone that had to walk 3 hours to get to a medical care holding their child in their arms all the way? I have and I wish they had access to a car. Have you stayed with a family that built their house with mud and sticks and had to have a separate small house to cook because all they had to cook with was charcoal and that leaves a black soot on the walls that they sit in while cooking? I have and wish they had electricity and or gas stoves. I would love to hear you explain to them why it is best not to have heat because it makes their bodies stronger as their children shiver till someone provides blankets and jackets they couldn't afford. And why can't they afford such things? Because they have too many children and can't support them. When sitting in a room with such people and listening to their dreams I would love to hear you explain how they don't need the advantages of what we have.
We have people living in the world today that are living your dream of no heat and no cooling and no way to keep food cold so they have to shop every day. They want a taste of the life we have and you need to go visit these places and explain how bad it would be for the rest of us if they ever get them. How cutting down trees for heat and clearing fields for planting and building cities, even small ones, is bad for sustainability. Because till you see a woman walking along a road with two children holding onto her dress as she had anther two miles to go to get home and then start dinner you can't claim the moral high ground now are you the oracle of truth in this matter.
I have even had some of those same people come over her to visit and see how we live. Care to guess what they think? I wish it were possible to solve the problems by LCF but it simply isn't. Could it be something that helps a bit? Maybe. But there are a lot of people in this forum that claim to believe in LCF that had a much bigger carbon foot print than some that are not.
I am just challenging you to put feet to your words. Double pane glass in all of your windows, LEDs for all of your lighting. New insulation in the walls and roof. Maybe living with or at least talking to someone or a family that is living just like you suggest. Walk the walk in other words. Once you have done some of that tell me what I don't understand.