The Problem With Energy Efficiency – NYTimes.com
The problem confronting human beings? Progress and development have both progressive and regressive consequences.
- To the extent that these consequences are progressive and most are advantaged, environmental footprints increase because more people are able to share in modern conveniences. This leads to Malthusian dilemmas involving resource depletion, pollution and life-style excesses .
- To the extent that progress and development is regressive and diminishes well-paid employments, Malthusian problems are diminished.
Which outcome will carry the day? Which outcome does it make sense to hope for?
Turkey Seeks a Buffer Zone on Its Border With Syria – NYTimes.com
Turkey Seeks a Buffer Zone on Its Border With Syria - NYTimes.com.
BBC News – Cave paintings change ideas about the origin of art
BBC News - Cave paintings change ideas about the origin of art.
Japan’s demographic collapse points to grim future- Nikkei Asian Review
Irony here! The consequences of progress, development and resulting temporary middle class affluence has lowered birth rates and created a bulge of oldsters everywhere in the developed world.
The irony is that this bulge of people spending is masking the regressive consequences of progress and development for most people. Western economies are enjoying an artificially sustained level of demand because oldsters are able to continue purchasing and paper over the underlying economic rot in globalizing, developing economies.
When today's bulge of oldsters totter off to their well-deserved oblivion, the final harm we have been orchestrating - the economic and political Armageddon already on the horizon, will rush in.
But wait! Will this grim business happen soon enough to prevent the alternative described by George Monbiot in Heat : the prospect of human beings cooking themselves and much else alive?
Japan's demographic collapse points to grim future- Nikkei Asian Review.