Archive

The Conversation #40 – Mary Mattingly

It’s interesting and scary to think about an Earth that could be completely controlled by humans, but it seems like it’s definitely possible. I could find fun thinking about living under the sea or all the places that humans really haven’t been able to sustain themselves in very well. Like, if we could really get control of that. I mean, it’s definitely a dark future, but I think something that I could embrace if we did go there.

The Conversation #22 – Wes Jackson

You’re dealing with timescales that are beyond humans’ interest. I mean, it’s sorta like global warming. The heat that we have now built up, that carbon was burned thirty years ago. It’s going to take a while for the correction process. So, if you have the elements of the phosphorus, the potassium, the manganese, and so on, it can be built back pretty fast. But a shorthand way of putting it is that soil is as much of a non-renewable resource as oil. And, more important than oil. I mean, we’re talking about stuff we’re made of. So that’s why I’ve said that the plowshare has destroyed more options for future generations than the sword.

The Conversation #6 – Jan Lundberg

If we are looking at what oil really provides to society, and what keeps us going for essential services and goods, then our life support system is in jeopardy. We are not preparing for peak oil. We are not reorganizing ourselves for a degraded ecosystem. So we are heading headlong into collapse, and this is something that is not being discussed. It is taboo to imagine that the whole growth scheme somehow comes to an end or that there is something like peak oil that doesn’t translate into some transition of renewable energy to make possible a green consumer society with this level of population.

The Conversation #2 – Max More

My main goal is not to die in the first place. I hope to keep living, hopefully long enough that science will have solved the aging problem and I won’t have to die. But since I don’t know how long that’s going to take, cryonics is the real backup policy for me.