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Comment by junklight | Hacker News Reader

it's got bugger all to do with any gods or deities.

I can't help noticing that the natural tendency of the human species is to expand and adapt - that is what we are. I also notice that the various movements that advocate more basic living patterns have never really caught on.

So you are going to have two options:

1) Refuse to do anything about power, let it get more and more expensive until enough people die that you have a solvable problem

2) work on making it cheaper

I am sure the greens would say also:

3) everyone chooses to live a more basic quieter life against our natural instincts. Oh and all those nice rich and powerful people will also be joining in and not just taking advantage

and I will say

good luck with that (oh and if you try to achieve 3 without peoples buy in but rather through legislation you effectively are back to option 1)

it's 1 or 2 - and 1 is going to be f@#king awful so let's get working on cheap power

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"everyone chooses to live a more basic quieter life against our natural instincts."

Serious? That's a huge claim. yet, so many people do live this "quieter" life. I am striving to live that life. There is quite a growing community (at least in British Columbia) of people concerned with things like food security and climate change.

Ever since I was young, I was disgusted by the City. Yes, this is not a popular view, but I am in no way choosing to live "a more basic quieter life against our natural instincts." The city was never meant for me.

Though, I'm not really sure what movements you are referring to? Do they include those that suggest consuming less? Or are there some movements somewhere suggesting you start living by candle light?

Sorry, if this comment is off-topic from the article, but it seems wildly bold for you to claim that a way of life is against natural instincts. I strive to live a life combining the joy, satisfaction and security of producing my own food, and living with the land as well as benefiting and perhaps contributing to advancements (particularly with water and power management).

it's not a bold claim at all.

Look around at the planet. Humans are everywhere it is possible to be. Something drove us to do that. And given it is quite unlikely that there was a meeting 100,000 years a go in Africa where we as a species decided - "let's give overrunning the whole planet a go" I think that "instinct" for want of a better word is what drives that. Living in a sustainable way does not come naturally to humans - I'm betting you are well educated and have reasoned long and hard about it.

Yes there are people like you who chose to be sustainable. But unless you get everyone to do it then we are screwed. Because it's an all or nothing plan. And you may love making your own food but by the same token I am really glad someone else is doing it for me. I find it boring and a waste of my time - I want to just be able to get food when i need it without thinking about it. My interests lie elsewhere.

Likewise the global trend is too the city. Every bit of research points to massive urbanisation http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/aug/18/percenta...

We has a species do have the ability to overcome our animal urges but if you don't solve the power problems you are doing to need everyone to do it and the failure mode of that is massive suffering. There are various sustainable living and back to nature and even so called luddite movements and have been for quite a while but I still don't see them being a significant force.

There is nothing wrong with what you are doing at all but do you think you can convince everyone you know outside of your community to join in?

I think you are right. But, I'm not sure.

Perhaps it's better to look at "destroying our planet" (or whatever) as a byproduct? Like you said, we didn't decide this in Africa, it's just a result of our drive to advance our way of life. But, now preserving our environment and adopting more sustainable practices is the next frontier in advancing our way of life.

Also, isn't the basic animal instinct to survive? Scientists claim with the 2C threshold (I think this covers it slightly, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8023072.stm) that we are at a time where without change, we may not survive (in large numbers at least, and in some years)? Maybe the instinct doesn't act on a tribal or global scale, but only personal. Like when a tiger is coming after you.

And, of course, I don't expect everyone to grow their own food. But, there are people who love farming, and if we help these young people get into it, they can provide on a smaller scale, within each community.

I suppose my point is, sure humans have the instinct to advance their way of life, but that does not necessarily go against producing ones own food, or living a quieter and simpler life.

So I do agree that the tipping point will be when the danger is in our collective faces. I also agree there is a good chance it might be pretty bad indeed with as you say large numbers dying.

I don't believe that sustainable ways of life will prevail before any fall. Look at the fishing in the North sea - despite the stocks being pretty much destroyed the fishermen who have taken the fish continue to argue their case to take the very last few because they don't want to change their way of life. This is sadly all too common.

There are people who can see all this working on tech - I think the best bet (ie the one were more of us survive) is if there are some decent breakthroughs. Knowing what I do about projects in progress and the work being done I think there is a good chance this will work out. The reason is that this isn't just a stopping us dying scenario this is making lots of money for lots of people scenario.

If we have to sort ourselves out after a fall - well you may be right. But only for a while. It is almost certain that sooner or later some person or other will look at the next valley or over a sea and think: "hmm what would happen if I went over there. I guess I'll need X Y Z" where X Y Z is some bit of basic tech that doesn't exist yet. and the human race will be off again.

We're tenacious buggers us humans. I don't think it's time to give up and sit quietly by the fire just yet....

(oh and also the very diversity - look at what you are into and what say, I am into - an entrepreneur, a technologist and an optimist - and our different views. That very difference means that we have a "portfolio" strategy as a species. Our eggs are in millions of baskets. There may be a catastrophe and you with your abilities to cope on your own resources will just carry on trucking. Something else my happen and some other group may thrive. It will be a damn hard job killing the lot of us - even for something as resourceful as the human race itself)

We CANNOT overcome our animal urges. NEVER. Don't try it. Which does not imply that we cannot be intelligent and civilized. But the animal in us wants to live and no technology can change that fact.

I don't like cities either. Who tells us that we need to live there? We tell it to ourselves, and probably we fail. We are not coming from a world of traffic noise, air pollution, overproduction, overarousal by all kinds of sensual stimulus. And I am sure that this life can destroy the human species on the long run. HOW do we know if we are made for this life, for this artificial Lebenswelt that we create for ourselves? Evolution is running slowly. This is the problem of tech: that we can totally adapt the environment to us. But what are we? We are living creatures that needed to adapt to the environment in the past. Never the other way round! How will we look like after many generations of as we live today. We are NOT going to look as we look today, and one thing is sure: Living in a world where every ressource is just some steps away, we will not live healthier. The huge thirst for energy is corresponding to this lifestyle, that Stanley Kubrick wants to critizise in "A Clockwork Orange". So your view of disgusting cities - for me it's totally justified! And so your comment is less off-topic than one could think, because needing less energy to live will mean that we surround ourselves more with an environment that is healthy for us and the future generations. This goes hand in hand.

This kind of technical view is religious but is usually not called religion. Of course it is OK and important - especially for the poorer countries - to make power cheaper. But NEVER at all costs. The problem with renewable energies is that they need itself rare materials that will not be available for all times. We need a circular flow of recycable materials. The way companies are looking for cheap energy is predisposed to come to a dead-end, because they exploit materials that can be exhausted and so will cause new - global - conflicts.

So explain why it is a "religion".

I am looking at human nature and saying that you are not going to change it and therefore you are going to need to work around it.

"We need a circular flow of recycable materials" is a technical solution too. And perhaps is the right answer.

Then only thing I am saying is that this lovely green view of us all living in harmony with the planet is complete rubbish. Because it does not take into account human nature. Yes I agree that some people can live like that - some very well indeed. But you can not make all do so.

You also have a very fixed idea of what cheap energy involves: "because they exploit materials that can be exhausted". I had in mind things like photovoltaics, wind - I live surrounded in all directions by wind farms and there is an immense amount of investment going on, modern nuclear tech - have you seen Bill Gates talk on this?

This is not a dogmatic view. If you came to me and could show that you could genuinely do it in a different way without relying on mass education and changing the way people normally behave then cool - I'll be on board.

Your idea that my views are a religion is a dogma in itself

What is worse is that this is why we are likely to be more screwed than we should be this problem: for a lot of solutions they some how need to stop all of the other solutions because they don't match ideals. I am not advocating a single solution - I want as many people as possible trying. I am not even saying don't try to get everyone living in a sustainable way - I recycle, when I finally get round to buying a house I have every intention of having a crack at doing my own power generation. All I am saying is that any plan that involves changing the behaviour of every single human being on this planet is not going to work under any circumstances - and when the failure mode of that being your only plan is so serious then people need to be pointing this out.

The time of cheap power is over.

The challenge will be to have enough power at all.

I'm not totally sure about that. There is a lot of investment in this area (albeit tossed and blown on the winds of political trends). Things like photovoltaics are only a few years off being viable on a large scale (at current levels of investment which turns out to be the biggest problem).

But I agree it's going to be a struggle and one that may go badly wrong for a while.

But the key thing here is that we have to get the knee jerk politics out of it. It doesn't matter if there is global warming or not because if we stay dependant on fossil fuels there are just going to be endless conflicts over the them, if the greens can persuade everyone in the whole world to live a life of abstinence that's cool - but we need to bet that they can't - because their failure mode is that we all die horribly.

>>The time of cheap power is over.

The time of cheap oil seems to be over.

For the rest: You know that you don't know what will happen. So why do you make blanket statements like that?

For example: Some analysts claim that solar energy will solve all energy problems in ten years. Maybe some of the small fusion projects will work? Thorium? And so on.

Edit: Yeah, since Germany has panicked like a herd of cattle, the time limit is so short that there is very little to do. But the way the electricity prices will go, solar will become attractive earlier.

That solar energy is cheap in ten years, does not mean that it is suddenly deployed everywhere. It will take decades to roll that out.

Germany plans to roll out the whole set of renewables (wind, hydro, solar, biomass, geothermal, ...) over the next FOURTY years to get from 16% (actually currently it may already be at 20%) near to 100%.

Thorium is providing a contribution to generating electricity in an amount worth mentioning when? In fifty years? Thirty? How many Thorium reactors will be online within the next ten years? One? Two? Three? That's nothing that would be contributing to the energy needs we have in 2020.

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