Best decade in human history - seriously!

[razz]

There is so much manipulation of our perceptions by politicians, media and gloom and doomers of all kinds. We hand over our thoughts, our hopes and sense of joy to these negative hypnotists. I deliberately monitor and control my intake of their efforts.

I also actively search out the actual truth and find so much to counteract the hypnotic manipulations that depress our lives. We have that power!

So sharing:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/12/...ory-seriously/

Quotes:
As for Britain, our consumption of ‘stuff’ probably peaked around the turn of the century — an achievement that has gone almost entirely unnoticed. But the evidence is there. In 2011 Chris Goodall, an investor in electric vehicles, published research showing that the UK was now using not just relatively less ‘stuff’ every year, but absolutely less. Events have since vindicated his thesis. The quantity of all resources consumed per person in Britain (domestic extraction of biomass, metals, minerals and fossil fuels, plus imports minus exports) fell by a third between 2000 and 2017, from 12.5 tonnes to 8.5 tonnes. That’s a faster decline than the increase in the number of people, so it means fewer resources consumed overall.

If this doesn’t seem to make sense, then think about your own home. Mobile phones have the computing power of room-sized computers of the 1970s. I use mine instead of a camera, radio, torch, compass, map, calendar, watch, CD player, newspaper and pack of cards. LED light bulbs consume about a quarter as much electricity as incandescent bulbs for the same light. Modern buildings generally contain less steel and more of it is recycled. Offices are not yet paperless, but they use much less paper...

Also:
https://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/Nat...utm_source=mec

Also:
I bought the Kindle version of this book
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0756J1LLV...ng=UTF8&btkr=1


Stop feeding the hypnotic gloom and examine and support the positive!

[SteveinMN]

Not to be "that guy" but Goodall's accounting likely is somewhat incomplete.

If this doesn’t seem to make sense, then think about your own home. Mobile phones have the computing power of room-sized computers of the 1970s. I use mine instead of a camera, radio, torch, compass, map, calendar, watch, CD player, newspaper and pack of cards. LED light bulbs consume about a quarter as much electricity as incandescent bulbs for the same light. Modern buildings generally contain less steel and more of it is recycled. Offices are not yet paperless, but they use much less paper

Not everyone has a mobile phone that has replaced all of the items Goodall has replaced with his. And how many mobile phones will I own (and have to dispose of) in the time I would own one camera, radio, torch, compass, watch, CD player, etc.? Sure, the phone probably saves some paper calendars, maps, and newspapers, and all of those individual items have their own production and disposal costs (though most of them are not considered hazardous waste as mobile phones are). If I buy a companion watch (Apple Watch, Fitbit, etc., ), as millions have done, what happens to the equation? Does it matter if buildings use less steel if it is shipped from half a world away rather than a country or two away? What is the cost of handling (hazardous waste) LED bulbs (special collection points, special disposal) relative to incandescent bulbs?

I'm not saying we aren't making strides toward efficiency because I believe that, in the long run, most of us (here) are. But in a world in which cradle-to-grave cost estimation is a dark art and in which several billion people are striving for the material things that us Westerners and some other societies are throwing away, I would be surprised that the overall trend is less resource utilization.

[Rogar]

Without a doubt we are living in a pretty marvelous time and it's not all doom and gloom. I suspect when historians look back in our advances, digital media will mark some sort of giant change in history not so much because of the cell phone, like the guy mentions, but because of the global ability to communicate and to share and store information. The first article refers to The Limits to Growth book. It was required reading for one of my college economics courses. Indeed somehow science had stayed ahead of the curve, but there are some eventualities that we will have to recon with some day.

However, I think it's just silly to mark the cell phone as the landmark of the best decade ever when we have things like the mapping of the human genome. And the green revolution saved us from some of the dire Limits to Growth predictions or massive food shortages. In return we got modern fertilizers that pollute, various other chemicals, and mono crops of GMO products. Plastics. Imagine cell phones made of wood or metal, though I doubt the engineering would even be possible without some plastics variation. But now it's a persistent pollution issue, not to mention disposal issues of short lived electronics. There's promise of phasing out fossil fuels and maybe even replacing or reducing industrial scale meat production with pant based diets.

I think we have a mixed bag of good and bad, but industrialized countries, or at least us in the U.S. and Canada consume way to much. Some of the 20th century technologies are not going to be tenable moving forward and there are hints of change. A lot of it is like the weather and out of our control on the macro level and there are plenty of things to be thankful for.

[pinkytoe]

And then again like all the civilizations before ours...if history is any gauge, there is a great deal of prosperity before the decline. Humans just keep repeating the pattern. I remain optimistic however...

[Yppej]

reducing industrial scale meat production with pant based diets.

How about skirting the issue?

[Alan]

How about skirting the issue?

Ha Ha, I see what you did there.

[Rogar]

I probably deserve a cuff on the cheek for my poor spelling.

[kib]

How about skirting the issue?

It would be great to combine two ills: fast food and fast fashion, into one solution. I'll have the culottes with ketchup on the side, thanks.

[kib]

In regard to Razz's original post, I do feel like my life and that of those around me peaked around 1998 in terms of the glorification of accumulation. I have a feeling that might not be the direction the general populace headed, though.