Yale: A Scarcity of Rare Metals Is Hindering Green Technologies

[hunter]

5. Buying more "stuff" won't solve any problems.

Solar panels, wind turbines, whatever...

The only lasting robust solution is growing stuff, making stuff, and building stuff using mostly local materials.

Many animals have solved basic resource problems by migration. Birds, whales, tuna, butterflies...

...but humans are not that sort of animal. Our migration capabilities are small in spite of our modern (last 40,000 years) dispersal capacities.

If we apply our minds to the problem we may be able to keep some kind of worldwide electronic information and communication infrastructure. But the big container ships will stop coming. Flying across oceans or continents will become a rare thing for anyone who doesn't have wings.

Humans are a remarkable species but we've not yet crossed the threshold of being the engines of our own creation.

For now we are just eaters of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources. Consumers.

Until we master telepathy and teleportation, or until smart phones grow on trees and can be disposed of in compost heaps, I'm not terribly optimistic about our future.

Odds are good we are just another one of those experiments in evolution (and there have been many these past billions of years) that won't make it down the long road.

Human exceptionalism is as silly as any nationalistic exceptionalism.

Nations don't last, and even less so, species.