fifthcolumn wrote:Fresh water is so cheap currently that people won't pay a high enough price for it to bring a solution to market.
???
Just Google "US water shortage" and you'll find that, from Georgia to California, the US is running short of water. There's no absolute shortage yet, except in Atlanta, but water in reservoirs is being used faster than it is being replenished.
Canada may have plenty of water, so you'll be OK fifth, but that is not a lot of good for the US because water is very heavy and therefore expensive to pump. Yes, they can put the price up, but what about the poor people? Those who already can't afford health insurance, are struggling to pay for fuel to get to work and are in danger of reneging on their mortgage payments or rent will have no option but to riot or steal their drinking water. The great unwashed springs to mind. People may do without health care but they'll usually fight for water to drink before dying of thirst. And pumping will use up a lot of that spare gas you keep telling us about.
You *could* get enough water by e.g. buying only bottled water.
You'd need to figure out a way to keep clean with less water of course and figure out how to get rid of your piss and turds without flushing.
Personally I think the flushing toilet is probably the worst invention ever and is the direct cause of much ocean pollution. But that's besides the point.
True, but short of taking it away in a hand cart as the Untouchables do in India there's no more sustainable way of doing it.
As for fish in the sea: pay enough money and ponds will be built where fish are reared in aquaculture. Oh wait... it's ALREADY HAPPENING.
The trouble with that is that in order to feed the farmed fish you have to catch three or four times the weight of the farmed fish to feed those fish on. In order to feed the salmon/cod/etc we are catching three times that weight of sardines/ pilchards/whitebait to feed to the farmed fish. Stupid!! Why don't we just eat the sardines/ pilchards/whitebait.
Meanwhile, fisheries worldwide have already declined by 80%. Africans are leaving their fishing villages in the boats that no longer catch any fish because EU boats have hoovered their local oceans and sailing to Spain or the Canary Islands to find a living in the EU.
The point is mate, that all you non capitalist pigs don't get that it is the mindset inherent in capitalism that solves most of the resource problems.
That mindset has caused our present resource problems as well. By not taking into account the environmental costs of waste disposal we have polluted the planet. Because we have assumed that the earth's resources are infinite we have discarded most of the resources we have so far plundered. Capitalists, in the US especially, have been very reluctant to pick up the tab for their environmental costs.
Consider this: Militaristic (natural) thinking vs Capitalistic thinking.
Militarist: Oh shit, we are about to run out of oil, better invade x country, they are weaker than us.
Capitalist: Hmmm. They're about to run out of oil. What are the applications for oil? How can we meet the customers needs WITHOUT OIL and still make a profit.
The trouble with that argument is that the biggest capitalist country in the world reverts to militarist thinking as soon as it is confronted with a resource shortage.
I suspect most of the doomers are non profit seeking in their mindsets and only see resource grabs and not substitution as solutions.
On the contrary, most of the doomers on this website, me included, are capitalists according to your definition above. We are actively installing solar HW, PV and wind turbines or building ecovillages or growing our own veg.
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