[Best Of: Culture] A good answer as to why "Redefining Sustainability" will be difficult, if not impossible
The presumption that millenials will consider economic sustainability in addition to social and environmental sustainability is that they are capable of being reasoned with. The environmentalists claim to be "progressives" while they are basically demanding a return to the primitive.
The "sustainable" crowd doesn't want us to use anything that we can't keep using forever. It's like the Babylonians trying to plan for the internet.
I always suspected there was a third tablet, and I think I know what was written on it as commandments 11-15:
11. thou shalt not troll.
12. thou shalt not engage in flame wars with thine enemy.
13. thou shalt not join a chatroom posing as someone other than thyself.
14. thou shalt not believe everything thee reads online.
15. thou shalt not censor people who have different points of view.
Over 70% of our energy comes from carbon sources, with 20% from nuclear sources, and 7% from hydroelectric sources. That means a whopping 3% of total power needs are from "renewable" sources. Demands that we cease and desist in the use of carbon energy sources, which are used to mine the materials used in renewables, produce the renewable systems, transport them to where they're needed, and install them, would mean the rate of production of renewable systems would slow to a crawl. The "Green New Deal" would miss its 2030 target by about fifty years, filled with misery and death, if it succeeded before a carbon rebellion demolished the fanatic greenies.
Quotes Edit
Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat intake, the use of fossil fuels, electrical appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable.
Maurice Strong, opening speech at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit[specific citation needed] But this quotation is not in the version posted on Mr. Strong's site. http://www.mauricestrong.net/index.ph...
If we don't change, our species will not survive... Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.
Maurice Strong, September 1, 1997 edition of National Review magazine
What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group's conclusion is 'no'. The rich countries won't do it. They won't change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?
"It's for the children."
https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-ma...
There is no doubt that Strong led a charmed life. And given the persistent presence of Rockefeller interests in that life from his earliest years, there is no doubt why doors seemed to open for him wherever in the world he went.
But still, one has to ask how and why a high school dropout who made it big in the oil patch thanks to his big oil connections would go on to become the single most important figure in the international environmental movement. Was he genuinely interested in protecting the environment? Consider Strong’s acquisition of the Arizona Colorado Land & Cattle Company from Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi in 1978. As part of that acquisition, Strong gained control over a ranch in the San Luis Valley in Colorado called the Baca Grande. As Henry Lamb explains in a 1997 article:
The ranch, called Baca, sat on the continent’s largest fresh water aquifer. Strong intended to pipe the water to the desert southwest, but environmental organizations protested and the plan was abandoned. Strong ended up with a $1.2 million settlement from the water company, an annual grant of $100,000 from Laurance Rockefeller, and still retained the rights to the water.
No, Strong’s interest in the site had nothing to do with preserving the pristine environment of the San Luis Valley. His interest was altogether stranger. As Quadrant Online notes:
Maurice Strong had been told by a mystic that:
The Baca would become the centre for a new planetary order which would evolve from the economic collapse and environmental catastrophes that would sweep the globe in the years to come.
As a result of these revelations Strong created the Manitou Foundation, a New Age institution located at the Baca ranch — above the sacred waters that Strong had been denied permission to pump out. This hocus-pocus continued with the foundation of The Conservation Fund (with financial help of Laurance Rockefeller) to study the mystical properties of the Manitou Mountain. At the Baca ranch there is a circular temple devoted to the world’s mystical and religious movements.
(Saved from reality by their beliefs sounds like religion to me.)
https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/p...
- Robert Heinlein, 1973
"Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."
- Robert Heinlein, 1973
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent-it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills."
- Robert Heinlein, 1973
Must be those stories, the fear of non-compliance and hope that those irrational promises are true.