What is better than Capitalism?

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morfe lux M
morfe lux Sep 9, 2003 21:47:33
Replying to Dog 3000

Association of Plastics Manufacturers? I can only be forgiven for maintaining a degree of doubt regarding their 'argument' for producing plastics from oil.

What about http://www.dieoff.org/

Hybrid cars are still thousands of times less efficient than HPV's, although we cannot pedal (unless one is a world-beating gossamer-light HPV pilot) from London to Washington, neither can we drive there. We have to do everything TODAY, with the minimum effort, in order to pay for the things that we want that can do everything TODAY, with minimum effort, i order to allow us to enjoy ourselves enough for it to be an incentive to do everything TODAY, with minimum effort, in order to earn enough to...

It doesn't make sense? I mentioned ages back the concept of annexing a desert in order to use photovoltaic cells to split hydrogen and transport it to fuell cells, yet I 'm prety sure that was disproved as energy inefficient. The problem is our lifestyles are (by large) energy inefficient. This warrants a whole other thread methinks.

D Dog 3000
Dog 3000 Sep 9, 2003 22:06:45
Replying to morfe lux

If oil production is going to "peak around the year 2010 and then fall off" then it won't take too long to know who'd wrong or right (historically speaking.) ;-)

As far as long-term energy solutions go, the best place to collect solar power is in outer space (no atmosphere to disperse it, not conflicting with any land usage on earth.) The only problem is how to get it back to earth efficiently (I heard one theory about using "microwaves", don't know how feasible that is.) Obviously that's a far-off solution.

There is also the idea of Nuclear Fusion (and before you freak out it's nothing like FISSION which is what they use in nuke plants today.) It would produce more energy and no radioactive waste. But it'd probably be real dangerous -- again space might be the best place to put fusion reactors.

Sounds far-fetched but of course 50 years ago we hadn't even managed to put a satelite or a person in orbit yet . . . who knows what we'll be able to accomplish in space in the next 50 years.