The growth of the industrial technological way of life is out of control. Insatiable.

The oceans were once full of trilobites. Where are they now?

Someday we will be the fossils kids will be busting open rocks for. You can get a preview by watching General Conference.

'Growth', 'out of control', 'much much better', 'insatiable' are all value judgments that don't mean much of anything without a context. There is no chance that we are going to 'destroy the world'. We may manage to make it a place where we cannot survive, but the world will survive just fine. We are not necessary to its survival.

In fact, all you have to do is step outside on a July afternoon in Phoenix or a February morning in North Dakota, to realize that Mother Nature is making a perfectly credible attempt on your life, and wouldn't bat an eye if you turned up dead.


BTW, humans were finally satiated WRT whale oil. When backed far enough into a corner, we can change.

> BTW, humans were finally satiated WRT whale oil.

Yes, but by that time Ahab had already been dragged into the depths by the great whale, all but one of his crew dead.


ETA: my point is that while humanity will likely survive any anthropogenic disaster, the result will be unpleasant for the subset of the species that remains.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2025 12:31PM by Lot's Wife.

More eagle/hawk/owl killing wind turbines. Bulldozing millions of acres of habitat to install solar panels. More miles of animal killing roads. More copper mines to satisfy our addiction to consumer electronics (never owned a cell/smart phone or big screen TV). Building hundreds (thousands?) of water and power consuming data centers. More stadiums. More planes. More drones. More ships. More rocket launches. More dams. More lawyers.

This is called progress.

-------

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. - Edward Abbey

I'm having a difficult time seeing a connection between my post and your reply.

I never said whether the presence of humans on this planet was good or bad, nor anything about environmental destruction or even "progress."

Oops, replied at the wrong location (vs. brother gerry). Really, I'm on the wrong web site.

I'm told that RfM is the Model T of internet technology.

There's plenty of surfaces for solar expansion in developed areas. Some mindsets need to change for a more distributed power generation system with heavy solar deployment. More cooperation between property owners and power grid maintainers would have to be fostered.

Even shading parking lots in solar where we have so many parking lots.

Yes, high density highrises will not have the solar surfaces necessary, but even solar glazing is coming to help those structures contribute more.

Vertical solar works quite well among planted fields offering farmers more income options from their land and so on.

"all you have to do is step outside on a July afternoon in Phoenix"

Proposed slogan for a dispensary: "Phoenix - A great place to get baked."

That's funny!

Phoenix where any bird stupid enough to walk about in the midday sun will get burned up.

Yeah, that's what everybody has already said. But it's still useful for you to chime in!

Oh look, another self-hating human! Or if not a human, a product of human cybernetics. I doubt you are an extraterrestrial or any other such thing!

This insatiable industry is the very reason you are on and able to use the internet in the first place. But some people around here don't understand irony.

If you want REAL irony, I suggest you critique how environmental issues are handled in the real world. The people that make most of the pollution are wanting Regular Joes to pay for the mess they made. Who builds the factories and owns them? Megacorporations and governments, not regular Joes. In the meantime they'll be flying private jets and making carbon, while you will have your energy costs hiked up and you'll barely be able to afford a car.

We need environmental solutions just not globalist powergrabs smashing human rights.

On to your other point, what do you mean by "work"? Nature takes its own course and has complex patterns and networks. However, if the geologists are to be believed, nature has been obliterated a number of times. There have been mass extinctions on a number of occasions and ecological collapse. Humans never even started that and it's arrogant to presuppose that.

Ah yes, Aaron Sherinian again. At least this rant is better than Gary Glitter or the War on Cash.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ah yes, Aaron Sherinian again. At least this rant
> is better than Gary Glitter or the War on Cash.

Aaron Sherinian gets the last laugh, or should I say the last cent? He is like those people leading the Anglican church etc who have driven most of the congregations out the door but will suck them dry of every last penny.

Remember this man used to shill for the tobacco industry.

p.s. It was weird of you to bring up Gary Glitter in this context. Do you sympathize with him or something?

No, Sir, you misunderstand me.

It's just that I had never heard of Gary Glitter until you added him to your shortlist of rants--you know, like globalism, Aaron Sherinian, the War on Cash, the WEF, the Royals, the Kardashians, 1950s anti-communism, the Anglican church, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the need to assert yourself and the corresponding utility of tabloid headlines. It's probably good for your mental health.

So carry on!

Used to be that Flora and Fauna could fight back. Had a chance. But humans have mostly nixed that with their poisons and over hunting and now the plant and animal kingdoms are at our mercy even as we are not merciful.

Yes. The planet would be fine as it would keep spinning around a shiny object not even knowing that is God's orphanage for his over abundant "produce" but it a shame that we couldn't have all been what John and Yoko Imagined.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> it a shame that we couldn't have all
> been what John and Yoko Imagined.

Not really. Have you read the lyrics of that song? Let's go through them:

"All the people living for today..."

An eternal present with the past and future obliterated.

"Imagine there's no countries..."

The implication here is global government and no right to self-determination. This is confirmed later with the line "the world will be as one".

Why would we want to be as one? The world is corrupt enough as it is without handing more power to the very people who create most of the problems?

"No religion too..."

Religious freedom is a right whatever one thinks of religion. He doesn't explain exactly how he wants to eliminate it.

"Imagine no possessions"

You will have everything taken from you. But bear in mind that this was written by a man who was a multimillionaire, and even had a refrigerated closet for his clothing. That's hypocrisy for you.

"No need for greed"

See last section. Lennon had plenty of greed in his life.

"Sharing all the world"

They won't though, that's delusion. It would be collectivism where some are more equal than others.

The song sums up what is wrong with the world today. Dystopia masquerading as utopia.

John Lennon wrote a much better song about the world, it's called "Mind Games" and is about the illusions around us.

I am he as you are he, as you are me and we are all together.

Perfect. Thank you bradley for getting it.

bradley Wrote:
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> I am he as you are he, as you are me and we are
> all together.

"I am the Walrus" is meant to confuse by John Lennon's own admission. But you can still find references to Lewis Carroll and the British narcotics police in there. Better than a global state which seizes your property.

> Better than a global
> state which seizes your property.

LOL

How can I ever thank you enough for explaining the song to me and proving me soooooo wrong.

Good grief.

It's called "Imagine" for a reason. The point is it is not going to happen. Any of it. Now do you get it? Just a wish to get along, have peace, and listing some of the reasons why we never will. Ever.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How can I ever thank you enough for explaining the
> song to me and proving me soooooo wrong.
>
> Good grief.
>
> It's called "Imagine" for a reason. The point is
> it is not going to happen. Any of it. Now do you
> get it? Just a wish to get along, have peace,
> and listing some of the reasons why we never will.
> Ever.

People think it is a sentimental love note to a better world. They don't listen to the lyrics properly. If you've ever had the (mis)fortune to go to karaoke, then you'll see many people get surprised that the lyrics to their favorite songs don't read the way they thought they did. Seventies songs are some of the worst for that, including "Imagine".

Some of the things it proposes are horrific. They hear the bits about peace and harmony, but miss the bits about no one being allowed to own anything or practise any religion. A multimillionaire telling people to "imagine no possessions"? You couldn't make it up.

The song does not say " no one being allowed to own anything or practice any religion".

It simply says "Imagine there's no . . ."

It's asking you to imagine. Period. You have re-interpreted to your own tastes. You have changed it with your own spin. Customized it. What you are doing is illustrated in this quote by Nikos Kazantsakis:

"I say one thing, you write another, and those who read you understood still something else! I say cross, death, kingdom of heaven, God . . . and what do you understand? Each of you attaches his suffering, interests and desires to each of these sacred words, and my words disappear, my soul is lost I can't stand it any longer!"

The way to help the Earth is to manage it properly. That means small scale organic agriculture, healthier forms of ranching and an end to factory farming. If you're not careful we will all end up eating ground up bugs and genetically modified sludge for our dinner.

You could always join the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

Using ALL the arable land on the earth, organic farming can support about 4 billion humans. That leaves little environment for animals and plants in their natural state. If you want generous natural areas left, reduce the human count even further.

Who decides who gets kicked out of their homes to build the farms.

Who decides who doesn't get fed to get the population down to that level.

And on and on

There were a million more deaths than births in Japan last year.A lot of places have birthrates going down. The impact, if the trend continues, is too far off though.

They say a lot of people can't afford to have large families. But I also see a lot of the younger generation just don't want children. For some reason the Religious Right want you to have as many as possible. Others just want to keep their tax base high to support their power. Wherever we land it just seems like too little too late. Even as I try to do the "right thing" it feels like it's useless.

Just seems the beauty of the natural world will continue to slip away no matter what. With the 8 billion consumers on the planet, even if humanity becomes more responsible, there is just no way as illustrated by the estimates you list.

Sad when you have to consider that a giant meteor may be our only hope of a do-over.

Pray for a meteor?

Or perhaps an asteroid would be a better choice.

I don't think a sadistic God would make it that easy.

dogbloggenli Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Using ALL the arable land on the earth, organic
> farming can support about 4 billion humans. That
> leaves little environment for animals and plants
> in their natural state. If you want generous
> natural areas left, reduce the human count even
> further.
>
> Who decides who gets kicked out of their homes to
> build the farms.
>
> Who decides who doesn't get fed to get the
> population down to that level.
>
> And on and on

Yeah, this is what you've been told all your life. The average human doesn't need a high calorie count. There is enough food out there already.

You will hear veggie apologists tell you that crop growing is more efficient than livestock raising. You will never hear them point out that you can raise animals on land which can't grow crops on. Then you have fake milks like almond juice which use more water to produce than real milk.

We have lost agricultural land to urban development and bad farming methods. Livestock fertilize the soil naturally. Wheat growing takes out and does not put in, plus there is the issue of gluten creating IBS and other bowel problems which reduce mineral intake.

Raising crops for food for the various herd animals needs to be factored in.

According to a 2023 article in Scientific American, the world's 940 milion cows are the single source of methane, a gas that causes global warming and climate change. Cattle are responsible for nearly 10 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, mostly through dung and belching.

Please don't be offended that I give more weight to Scientists than you. Eat your steak. No one cares.

Thankfully, General Authorities are low enough in number that their BS and hot air don't make a significant contribution to global warming.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> According to a 2023 article in Scientific
> American, the world's 940 milion cows are the
> single source of methane, a gas that causes global
> warming and climate change. Cattle are responsible
> for nearly 10 percent of all greenhouse gas
> emissions, mostly through dung and belching.
>
> Please don't be offended that I give more weight
> to Scientists than you. Eat your steak. No one
> cares.

Why would I be offended? Like most people on this board, you get someone else to do the thinking for you while pretending to be a free thinker. If you listen to the same people you'll be eating sludge grown in a vat somewhere and candy made up of ground crickets (already available).

Scientists are partly responsible for that methane problem. They have created cattle and cattle feed that produce more methane than traditional breeds do. Buy meat off a local farmer who uses organic methods, not a genetically modified freak or one pumped full of more steroids than a body builder. Unnatural cattle feeding practices gave the world BSE in the nineties. That happened because sick industrial farmers kept feeding cattle bits of other cattle etc that are not in their natural diet. But hey, "trust the science", bro!

The North American plains used to be COVERED with buffalo. Some of the herds were so big that it took people three or four days to ride a horse through them. . So cattle-like creatures were always a part of the native ecosystem. There were vast herds of herbivores on every continent apart from Antarctica. Africa still has vast herds of animals like antelopes, zebra, wildebeest and so on. Guess what? They all fart too.

Of course you fail to factor in so many other things:
* Methane is produced naturally in vast quantities by wild animals, plant decay, swamps and so on. Volcanoes also produce far more emissions than farm animals.
* Cattle continuously fertilize the ground they are raised on and put something back. The same for sheep, pigs, deer and other livestock.
* Scientists are devising disgusting forms of food to replace meat that will probably be as unhealthy as any previous ultraprocessed food. Eat meat not ultraprocessed food.
* Plant protein is much harder for your body to deal with than meat. You will also risk anemia and obesity by stacking up starch heavy junk food and baked goods.
* Livestock eat underbrush which lessens the risk of bush fires.

I challenge you to eat a keto/carnivorous diet, and cut the carbs and plants for a month and see how you get on. Proof is in the pudding not what the Word of Wisdom tells you. You will lose weight and your mood and demeanor will improve.

Yawn. But . . .

I don't need to lose weight. My mood is great and as demeanor I have a great time with so many people and am very proud of my accomplishments.

Very telling about your personality that you assumed otherwise and accused me. Why on earth would you assume that my diet choices have anything to do with that ridiculous word of wisdom?

Which prods me to assume that your meat diet has done this your demeanor and it certainly isn't praiseworthy or of good report because no matter what I am eating I wouldn't do it at a table with you.

If only Joseph Smith were here to try and maybe lead us all out of any terrible mess!

Laughter, is sometimes the best medicine.

I'm sure Rusty will have it solved by his 110th birthday.

Although this thread is irresistible snark bait, it brings up a good point. Did humans invent meaning or is it intrinsic in existence?

To quote Joe Dirt, "Well, huh, might as well ask why is a tree good? Why is the sunset good? Why are boobs good?"

Nature produces beauty for reasons we don't understand. They transcend our knowledge. Science does not concern itself with meaning, as it subjective. So, religion fills the gap.

Does it create meaning out of nothing, or does it discover meaning that is baked into reality? Or both? Maybe the church can have it both ways rather than denying that Joseph made it up from bits and pieces that may have transcendent truth.

Beauty is another human value judgement.

Without humans to observe does beauty remain?

It's much like good and evil. Absent humans, good and evil cease.

Meaning, again the same. Human values, constructs.

Botanist Rupert Sheldrake gave a talk about beauty in nature. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fidhVu_7W3c

There are other examples of platonic values, or virtues seemingly baked into reality.

Dogs and cats bred as domestic pets will love you unconditionally (cats being more transactional about it). Pet rats and pet birds too. Animals feel love independent of human subjective judgments.

Mathematics was discovered by humans. You don't see chimps doing Calculus. But again, is it intrinsic or extrinsic to existence?

So now we come to religion, the doctrines of meaning. Religion is there because humans don't live long enough to independently discover and utilize intrinsic meaning. It sets up guardrails for the youth.

The problem of our age is the corruption of religion, the thing Thomas Jefferson warned about. Whether it's Christian Fascism, prosperity gospels, or thought control cults, there is enough to give religion a bad name. Conditioned credulity makes churches a feeding ground for predators. The devil does indeed go to church. Religious practice becomes an exercise in pretending to trust people you actually don't.

The reason I don't attend my local ward is because I don't want to play that game. I dunno, is that selfish? My disdain for religion does not make platonic "reality" go away, however.

It's the epitome of Western Civilization.

Nothing western about Stranger Tides, with regards to maybe envisioned mermaids!

Those captains apparently enjoy the scented reminders fish seem to stir.

The screenwriters were channeling the sealed portion of the Golden Plates. Joseph would have loved it.

Aaarrrrgggghh matey! That bilge-sucking carouser best be keeping his hands off of mine own buried treasure!!

It's landlubber klinks in his breed that really stirs the wrath of this Buccaneer. Have you, I've got a chase-gun ready and waiting for just the likes of his kind.

Blow me down, if that scoundrel ever crosses me path, my lad.
He be feeding the fish's in no time wasting.

Yeah, we are not special in the scheme of things. We could definitely go the way of the dinosaurs. This is why I think we definitely need to have a plan to live off-planet one day -- not just in floating laboratories, but also on the moon and Mars. We need a plan B in case things go south on our home world.

I love all of Andy Weir's novels, but his first one was a very realistic scenario for what an early, developing Moon colony might look like. It's called, "Artemis." All of his novels are based on usable, real-world science.

You really want to spread the contagion? There is no place on Earth you won't find garbage, tin cans, plastic, or some other detritus.

We’re almost at the end of the Little Season (Revelation 20)
We won’t have to put up with garbage much longer!

What if "they" are using Revelations as a script to mess with your head while they rob the world blind?

It is unnerving to realize that a large chunk of our fellow citizens look forward to, and hope to accelerate, the end of the world.

I came for the Mormonism, stayed for the human extinction.

A little stoicism isn't a bad thing, especially if the end of the world doesn't happen.

Using your game theory approach, if you think you are saved and God is going to destroy the earth and its inhabitants, the winning strategy is to abuse the planet and its resources in order to make your own pre-apocalyptic life as comfortable as possible.

Whether they are smart enough to recognize it or not, that logic informs a lot of the Christian nationalists' behavior.

That's what the American Anomie described by Chris Hedges has morphed into. My gallows humor is unfortunately no match for reality. Christian nationalists live in a world of magical thinking that they think will save them.

Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow Jesus will fix everything.

Like the undertaker at the beginning of The Godfather, I love America. I want America to continue, and it will, but not as a global empire. Massive capital flight will leave the treasury unable to service the debt, let alone fund anything close to what we are accustomed to.

So there is a strong temptation to burn it all down with WWIII. I worry about people who want to push the button to force the appearance of the Messiah, like some kind of head case out of Dr Strangelove. Nuking the world would be very tough to pull off just because it has such a repulsive future pole. I don't think they can do it.

My guess is that there will be a transfer of financial power and we will cut deals with China to rebuild our decaying infrastructure. Shucks, we might even get modern trains.

> So there is a strong temptation to burn it all
> down with WWIII. I worry about people who want to
> push the button to force the appearance of the
> Messiah. . .

And so post-Jesus Christianity embraces nihilism, or its closest approximation--the real "f" word--and the curse inherent in a nation that was midwifed by religious nuts materializes.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/26/2025 02:42AM by Lot's Wife.

The whole Christian world has been deceived. Jesus returned already, in the first century, just as he promised!
Next comes the final Great War, and then the final Judgement!

Take heed that ye be not deceived!