There's No Tomorrow

Discussion of books relating to oil, sustainability and everything else talked about here.

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Cabrone
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There's No Tomorrow

Post by Cabrone »

If you have a spare 1/2 hour here is a decent film on peak oil and our general levels of unsustainability.

Takes a pretty pessimistic line IMO (what about 4th gen fission plants like Thorium reactors + IFR, fusion, fracking, future human ingenuity etc??) but nevertheless does cover the main issues that have been discussed on these BBs down the years in a clear and concise manner.

Well worth a look IMO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrR ... r_embedded
The most complete exposition of a social myth comes when the myth itself is waning (Robert M MacIver 1947)
frankd2689
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Post by frankd2689 »

It's a bit USA centric as expected, but as an introduction to the basic concepts discussed here and without the usual talking heads I thought it was excellent and I certainly wouldn't miss the opportunity to watch it or better still use it to get friends and family on board.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg

Cheers
Frank
Aurora

Post by Aurora »

Thanks Cabrone. The best yet. :D
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RenewableCandy
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Post by RenewableCandy »

Good stuff. Took me ages to realise though that that's not an American accent!
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biffvernon
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Post by biffvernon »

Well it's not Yorkshire :?

Is she Canadian?
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RenewableCandy
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Post by RenewableCandy »

No, that she's not (to be sure!)
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biffvernon
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Post by biffvernon »

Oh! I see. :)
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nexus
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Post by nexus »

Mods, this film is on two separate threads :

http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/vie ... c&start=15

(my post from Feb 16th onwards)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Frederick Douglass
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UndercoverElephant
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Post by UndercoverElephant »

biffvernon wrote:Well it's not Yorkshire :?

Is she Canadian?
Sounded Irish to me.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
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jonny2mad
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Post by jonny2mad »

Dermot the guy who made the films Irish so most likely shes Irish
"What causes more suffering in the world than the stupidity of the compassionate?"Friedrich Nietzsche

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UndercoverElephant
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Post by UndercoverElephant »

Listen to the piggy squeal...

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/paul-wilso ... z1nhb8H5od
The solutions “There’s No Tomorrow” proposes for these drastic problems are stark. The film suggests the elimination of the capitalist economy and economic growth. The “Happy Ending” proposed by the film declares that economies should become localized, declaring that viewers should “consider the use of local currencies should the larger economy cease to function.”

The dire predictions of “There’s No Tomorrow” echo the cries of eco-extremists like Paul Watson, who called for a return to sail-powered ships and a decrease in population to less than 1 billion. Its solutions mirror the cries of radical environmentalists such as Lierre Keith, Derrick Jensen, and Aric McBay, who sought the destruction of human civilization.

“There’s No Tomorrow” claimed to address arguments that humans will technologically adapt to changing conditions by arguing that today’s challenges are too drastic to be solved, and even argued that “more advanced technologies may make the situation worse.” Essentially, the film rehashed the tired 200-year-old argument that humanity is doomed because it there is no possible way humans can adapt to the challenges they face.

Despite the filmmakers’ claim that “every care has been taken to insure the accuracy of the data,” the film is riddled with inaccuracies and distortions. Discoveries of new methods of retrieving oil have further called into question the already highly speculative theory that we have reached “Peak Oil” propounded by “There’s No Tomorrow.” Developments in hydrofracking (opposed by environmentalists and their liberal political allies) have drastically decreased natural gas prices since 2007.

The inaccuracies inherent in “There’s No Tomorrow” are unsurprising, considering its reliance on flawed sources. Incubate Pictures notes that the making of “There’s No Tomorrow” was assisted by the Post Carbon Institute’s Richard Heinberg and Tod Brilliant. The Post Carbon Institute questions “whether or not human beings are unsustainable by nature” and declares that “institutionalized perpetual growth together with an exponentially-growing global population is a recipe for disaster.”

The idea that the world will run out of resources has haunted the fears of environmentalists since Thomas Malthus’ dire prediction that food production would fail to feed a burgeoning human population – in 1798. In modern times, biologist Paul Ehrlich has been among the most prominent proponents of imminent human and environmental collapse – famously claiming in 1970: "I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." Despite his track record of failed predictions, he still preaches the dark gospel of economic catastrophe.

The media have entered the controversy on the side of the doomsayers, amplifying the argument that the earth’s ever-growing legion of consumers will one day destroy the environment. Both environmentalists and the media ignore that people are creative and can solve the challenges they are faced with, myopically focusing only on the problems humanity faces.
These are the words of a person who believes in a conspiracy between the MSM and the environmental movement. A truly extra-ordinary claim on its own, but minor compared to the following sentence.

"Environmentalists are myopically focusing only on the problems humanity faces"?

EH?
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
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Mr. Fox
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Post by Mr. Fox »

UndercoverElephant wrote:"Environmentalists are myopically focusing only on the problems humanity faces"?

EH?
I read it as '...as opposed to the solutions' - techno-cornucopian fantasies. e.g:
a commenter wrote:We have a bunch of supposedly intelligent "experts" whom see human progress on a plateau as opposed to a steadily-rising line, or more accurately, an exponential curve.
The rest of the comments are pretty funny...
another nutjar wrote:The leftist secularists need something to replace Revelations with. This is it.
You can almost see the flecks of spittle running down their screens. :)

@nexus: Good enough for it's own thread, though - no? :)
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