Said a top scientist at Yale to me today:

“Wow. I have thought about worst case contingency plans in terms of policy
(mitigation) action, but not this polar cities adaptation measure.”

He was referring to polar cities, our fire exits for the future, our lifeboats for the future. Sharon, have you ever considered the idea of polar cities and what they might mean for humankind? See info here. Maybe one day blog pro or con on them, too?

DANNY
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

Sharon, I feel it is already too late. We passed the tipping point about 40 years ago, and we are now living on borrowed time. Forget 2012 or 2015. We are done for as a civilized humanity. O the humanity! Meanwhile, as we jabber, the highways of Norther America, South America, Asia and Europe are clogged with “CO2 beasts” and nobody is lifting a finger to stop this sad end of humankind.

Now is the time to prepare for transition towns, and later for polar cities. We will need transition towns by 2050, and we will need polar cities by 2500. For the breeding pairs in the north to continue to human species. This is serious. We need to face the reality of it all. We are not in kindergarten anymore. Time has run out.

We cannot get down from the tree because we climbed to high, yes. Perfect metaphor. We are done for. Our goose is cooked. But we still have 30 more generations to prepare for the worst. The worst won’t happen for another 500 years. So let’s roll up our sleeves, our mental sleeves, our spiritual sleeves, and get to work. Forget life in the Lower 48 and Europe and South America and China and India. All those “places” will be unlivable by 2500.

Sharon, what do YOU think of these ideas?

With the Greenland and Antarctic ice masses. Potential energy 100 million TWh there, for a thousand years globally.

We have a thousand years time to detect other energy making forms, and that is enough time.

I really like “energy freedom.” I’m gonna use that.

To Jace & pro-nukies: You should ignore us luddites. You need to talk w/the nuke industry like Fla Power & Light (FPL). Maybe you can help ‘em to get THEIR act together.

FPL, with the help of local, state & federal officials and agencies, Federal subsidies & llimitations of liability and a streamlined (non)regulatory atmosphere, are gonna add two units to Turkey Point down in Miami (probably first new nukes in the nation).

FPL is charging utility customers, NOW, for the conservatively estimated $16 Billion these new units will cost, driving up already high utility bills…

FPL’s gonna build up 300 coastal acres to 20 feet above sea level so they needn’t fear seal level rise or storm surge. (A Category 2 Hurricane here in the panhandle caused a 22 foot storm surge a couple of years ago.)

And then FPL and the local/state officials don’t have a clue where the water is gonna come from to operate the reactors - millions of gallons per day in a locality with already dreadful water shortages and a several year drought. Maybe spend billions on water reclamation infrastructure, not estimated in the cost of these plants?

Oh yeah, and FPL has had numerous security issues, like sleeping guards. And technical issues, like a recent blackout, and on…

You really want to spend $ multi-quadrillions on a nationwide nuke strategy?

edde

ok. anything missing, maybe is only that we need to cut what middle-and-down people are paying now for overhead on medical, housing, education, pension, child and elder care, and taxes, if that has anything to do with our future finances. while we share those risks unevenly, other changes will be difficult, because of the pressure to keep the cash flowing. so talk about prosperous-austerity-with-a-future.

and maybe the austerity thing should be stated more clearly. we don’t need new junk, we have lots of existing junk, so those industries making junk at high resource cost can retool for green while they’re retooling to build the things we actually need. and during that time we all don’t replace our toasters or anything. which is actually good, because it will take a little while to get really resource-thrifty equipment in the sales pipeline, right?

I should not have used the expression “high-tech”, since this carries the implication of a deadly-polluting industrial technology, which is the exact opposite of what I’m thinking about.

I should have said “technology-intensive.” Being able to farm a plot of land intensively for generations, and still have enough time left to visit with friends, make art and music, or dream of the future, is what I mean by “technology-intensive.” It requires knowledge that is passed on from person to person, and generation to generation. Put an average city-dweller on that same plot of land without that “intensive technology,” and they’ll starve, work themselves to death, or exhaust the land within a few years.

That could well be a part of option #4. Or perhaps it will be portable fusion reactors and nanotech fabricators. Either way, the emphasis is on sustainable.

So, to summarize very briefly, we have the following options:

1) Continue the head-in-the-sand option we’ve been (in this country) pursuing for the last seven years, let everything crash, and suffer horribly for a short period (a few generations, perhaps?). Allow civilization to start over, probably to make the same mistakes again, but that isn’t our problem.

2) Reduce the world’s population suddenly: release a deadly global virus, host WWIII, or have a Jim Jones style kool-aid party for the world. Same as #1, but with a slightly shorter and more intense starving/suffering part, and possibly an even less viable environment for the survivors to recover within.

3) Pursue an increasingly radical austerity program (as we learn more about what we need to do to try to offset whatever is causing global warming, and as the third-world gets its day in the sun), suffer pretty badly for a potentially very long time (you think less than #1, perhaps you are right), and possibly still face option #1 down the road, since no one yet knows if we’ve already tipped the scale, or if the forces behind global warming are external and uncorrectable, or if we have any natural population cap.

4) Look for long-term technological solutions that allow us to find whatever is our “natural” population density and live there sustainably in a variant of a high-tech lifestyle, despite changes in climate. Considered science-fiction now, but our current world was unimagineable in 1900. If successful, we’re out of the woods, assuming we actually have a “natural” population density cap - otherwise, back to option #1.

5) Look for a quick fix - technological or pillage-based - that will provide more energy, food, and water in the short-term and put the problem out of sight until tomorrow. We party down, and let our children and grandchildren worry about the suffering and death part.

—

Does that about cover it?

Option #4 is the only one that makes any sense to me, in reason and in conscience.

Unfortunately, only option #5 seems the least bit likely, at the panicked tail-end of a long period of option #1 head-in-the-sand. Which might lead to #2, but at that point, who really cares?

Option #3 has the double-whammy of being unattractive, AND requiring human behavior that simply doesn’t occur. People in mass do not create “Victory Gardens” when the supermarket is open. They turn to Victory Gardens when the supermarkets close. I’m very thankful for the minority (e.g. the transition towns movement mentioned above by Jane) that is preparing the way for the masses to follow if and when the supermarkets close, but until the shelves are empty, the masses simply won’t do the work. And governments are playing a completely different game: it is a fundamental mistake to assume their objectives have, or have ever had (in 5000 years), anything whatsoever to do with the common good.

Anyone have a sixth option?