Consumerism vs sustainability

[Ocean1]

Ah, but Ixion- we have a rather wider range of pollutants available to us now and many of them are for more toxic and also more capable of entering the food chain. In those days there were terrible issues in new industrial centres because of the sudden population growth. Smog was poisonous, but subsided relatively quickly, and better hygiene and plumbing was enough to deal with pollution caused by human waste etc.
The scale of the issues we now face have a much higher potential scale and severity; can we really say for sure that we can turn back and reverse the damage we are doing quite as easily in the future?

We shouldn't be so sloppy about disposal fer sure, but in the long run if we convert a set of components into a dangerous combination we can un-make them, at some cost.

If I was a worrier I'd be far more stressed about likely biological threats than chemical ones, far more difficult to manage.

Every age thinks its own problems are worse than any past age.

Victorian pollution had lots of lovely nasties - lead (in profusion), mercury, tin, hells own concoctions from smelting and blast furnaces. Plus water loaded with microbes. Assuming that you had running water at all, which millions didn't.

Cleaning water isn't that hard, we do it now. Cleaning air, a bit harder , but not impossible even today.

Though none of that actually has anything to do with sustainability.

Yup, easy to lose perspective, our life expectance and quality are far better than at any time in history, and we can thank Victorian England for much of those improvements.

I can agree that the rampant growth in consumerism adds little to either of the above though, and represents an irresponsible element to post industrial revolution tech advances.

[davereid]

Oookay. And if clean, unpolluted air and water becomes scarce, what will we use instead..?

You are quite right. We need good water and air quality.

But you are making the mistake of assuming that because something is SUSTAINABLE that it is better then something that is UNSUSTAINABLE.

With due respect to the previous defnition of sustainable, I would suggest that NOTHING is infinite, except taxes. And everything we do has a cost.

Examples :

We replace unsustainable fossil fuel with biofuels.
.. Biofuels produce EXACTLY the same amount of carbon as fossil fuels.

The claim they are carbon neutral is untrue unless they are grown in an area that was previously desert.

In any other case, they have merely displaced a carbon sink that was being used for some other purpose.

And even then, the desert will require energy to provide water, transport, infrastructure... the list goes on.

Of course biofuel is therefore sustainable, as long as there is desert to convert to biofuel production, water to turn the desert into cropland.

But, we will run out of desert.

What exactly is sustainable then ?

Well, everything is.
The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones.
The industrial revolution didn't end because we ran out of coal.
The oil age won't end because we run out of oil, and the sustainabilty age won't end because we run out of desert.

If oil is really unsustainable, let it run out on its own. (It won't)

Don't ban using it now, so someone else (who doesn't need it) can use it in the future.

Particularly if that means freezing, starving, and impoverishing people who actually still have access to resources that mean they dont need to be freezing starving or poor.

[avgas]

three kids maximum per family.

That is too lenient in my mind. 1 kid per family.
1 dog per family (unless you live on a farm etc), and one cat per family.
Motorbike license pre-test consisting of a pushbike, 80kg weights and some cones. If your too much of a squid to handle that than instant fail.
Car pretest consisting of a small car and carpark of moving bulldozers. If you cant make it to the other end of the carpark you fail.