Our Story in 6 Minutes

[Uncle Joe]

This one even goes into the distant future.

[VWolf]

1. This seems to imply that our Sun will go supernova.

Not sure if it's massive enough.

[ffr]

2. Lots of Utopian wishful thinking in this one.

We will not advance this planet into dream cities, we will die off over the next 50 years, beginning in about the next 11 years, when fresh water supplies are depleted, land that can be cultivated is drained or otherwise consumed or polluted beyond use and the 6th mass extinction accelerates out of control as the planet is scorched from within our own atmosphere.

The Sun also will not go supernova, it will become a white or red dwarf.

The Utopia we seek is right in front of us today, Earth, the world around us. Earth's ecosystems can rebuild, but not with human populations in their current state. We are breeding out of control, like a virus consuming all of Earth's natural resources, pooping out pollution as a byproduct of our progress. 2 - 3 billion is sustainable. 7.6 billion and growing is not.

[Uncle Joe]

3. What's the opposite of "Utopian wishful thinking?" Humans have a major mental advantage over

all other life forms.

Where did you come up with 50 and 11 years?

I partially agree with you, population and fresh water supplies present major challenges to long term existence but should things become too bad nature will balance out the former and we're making major advances in regards to the latter.

(snip)

By recycling effluent water, including household sewage, the Shafdan Wastewater Treatment Facility near Tel Aviv supplies approximately 140,000,000 cubic metres of water per year for agricultural use, covering 50,000 acres of irrigated land. Over 40% of Israel’s agricultural water needs are now supplied by effluent water. The waste sludge is also sent to an anaerobic digestion plant, which uses the methane as a fuel to produce renewable energy.

“If Israel can do it," says Anders Berntell, executive director of 2030 Water Resources Group, a multi-sector water resources group, “a country located in a desert, it proves that with the right technology, economic resources and political determination, you can make it happen."

(snip)

A simpler and cheaper solution is rainwater capture. It’s an old idea whose time may have come: Beneath Istanbul, Turkey, the Basilica Cistern built by Caesar Justinian (A.D. 527 - 565) can hold 80,000 cubic metres of rainwater. One and a half millennia on, many cities are now emulating it.

Melbourne's largest stormwater harvesting tank can store four million litres of partially treated water. Authorities including Kerala, Bermuda and the US Virgin Islands require all new buildings to incorporate rainwater harvesting, while Singapore meets up to 30% of its water needs through rainwater capture.

(snip)

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170412-is-the-world-running-out-of-fresh-water

Whether the sun goes red dwarf, white dwarf or the highly unlikely supernova, the ultimate effect on human existence will be the same should we keep all our eggs in one basket.

[ffr]

4. To answer all of your questions,

mankind is not living sustainably and we are releasing prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We know this. The news of a pending fresh water crisis is all around us. The forecasts are in place and we don't have billions of years figure it out. They forecasting fresh potable water resources to be tapped somewhere around 2045 and human population to taper to about 8.5 billion around then IIRC. I halved their estimates from when they did their surveys, which at the time stated fresh water supplies be depleted in 30 years. Assuming they're wrong and we burn through them at an accelerated rate, I estimated 15 and that was several years ago.

In just about every category, where Earth's natural resources are dwindling, as nice as these conservation measures are, just as conservation efforts to save the Earth's wild species, we are failing. The one common denominator is us. We need population control, birth control, learn to live with recessionary economics as a good thing. No politician can talk about doing such things and nobody wants to talk about it or do anything about it, because it's unpopular. Well, that's the solution, unpopular or not. What are we doing? Increasing our population. What are other species doing? Dying off. Meanwhile CO2 levels are now at 411 PPM, their highest levels in 800,000 years.

The other interesting thing to note about Israel's water recapture rate, which is around 86%, is that they live in a desert. I personally don't wish to turn the area I live in into a desert before we, as a species, do something meaningful. Water is necessary for other species as well, including plants and animals that have sustained their way of living within the constraints of the natural resources that were readily available. Humans live outside that realm. We take resources from wherever they are in a very unnatural way, doing so outside the sustainable ecosystems that were present when we arrived.

And none of this throws in the countless other variables we haven't considered yet, like disease, famine and war. If it's one thing we know about humans, when the going gets tough and resources reach critical mass, love, caring, and kindness will be in short supply along with everything else that there is a last one of.

But go ahead, keep our need to find another home, as if that's the most pressing question we need to ponder, when we know we haven't learned any lesson about taking care of the Utopian one we inherited. We have billions of years to figure out a second home. We have a blink of an eye to figure out how to live sustainably with this planet. And we're doing a terrible job at it thus far. That other planet, our second home, will rue the day we spotted and colonized it.

Agent Smith's revelation isn't far from accurate.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Again I agree with much of what you say but it's ironic to have the Matrix in your post

I liked those movies, they were good science fiction but Agent Smith couldn't have been more wrong.

Nothing could be further from the truth, everything is connected on Earth and intricately part of nature including us and when we get too far out of balance it will be corrected, nature corrects everything and as our population escalates the cost will become most severe but it will happen.

I also believe it's no coincidence that the Matrix came out in 1999 just as a major environmental political leader was running for President.

The fundamental illusion or true Matrix is the belief that because of all our "artificial" human made artifices that humanity is separate from nature or "living outside the realm" as you stated and incapable of being balanced out as if we were disconnected from the environment and the laws of nature don't apply, in this the movie did no favors for the environmental movement.

Rocks formed the Earth, rock gives life and life gives rock, everything is connected, nothing truly dies on Earth it just reforms.

If your estimate of 15-30 years is correct it won't take billions of years to figure it out.

Finding others homes and resources away from Earth isn't the most pressing need but it's critical for the long term and the fundamental lessons of both evolution and human history demand it.

[BigmanPigman]

6. I agree with you 100%.

About a year ago I posted on DU that we are overpopulated and that is one of the main problems with our limited resources and a fellow DUer posted a map of the world and the population growth. The "advanced" countries have a below normal population growth at the current time. That is the basis for a lot of arguments which say population is not the factor in resolving our depleted natural resources. However the reality is more apparent to those who look at the whole picture as you stated. The world wide effects of overpopulation and depleted resources will be evident in future economies, pandemics, changing animal and plant life effecting food sources, etc will create incredible immigration and governments' economies to fail. The resulting wars will be challenging to the remaining populations and they will not result in changing the fate of Earth's humans. I feel badly for the plants and animals that our species has destroyed through the human desires of greed and power. If women were the gender of power for the past 2,000 years the human race may have ended differently. Man's anger and aggression and the desire for more control and power sealed the fate of the human population. The planets and animals deserve a chance at surviving and not have selfish humans kill them off over time.

[Rhiannon12866]

7. K&R! Fascinating video, thanks for posting!

[Uncle Joe]

8. Thank you Rhiannon