exponential growth Archives

Photo by Chris Jordan depicting actual stomach contents of an albatross in Midway Atoll

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Junk Planet: Is Earth the largest garbage dump in the Universe?

5th March 2018

Robert J. Burrowes writes: Just listing the types of rubbish generated by humans is a staggering task. Nevertheless, I will give you a reasonably comprehensive summary of the types of garbage being generated, the locations into which it’s being dumped and some indication of what’s being done about it and what you can do too….

The 2008 movie 'Wall-E' features a small waste-collecting robot as its protagonist

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Humans are creating a new geological layer of techno-fossils

19th August 2017

From Slate.com: Industrial civilisation’s impact is so massive that it goes way beyond climate change. Earth scientists now suggest that it is creating a distinct geological layer made of ‘technofossils’. The scale of our stuff is so gargantuan, that it is throwing off the quite robust balance of our natural systems—that’s how powerful it is….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Earth’s ‘technosphere’ now weighs 30 trillion tons, research finds

1st April 2017

CBC News reports: A new report has calculated the total mass of all manmade things-from buildings to cars and computers- to be an astounding 30 trillion tons, seven times more than the total amount of living matter on Earth. It shows the sheer magnitude of the human impact on our planet, which is still growing….

Bookshelf

Bookshelf: Shrinking the Technosphere by Dmitry Orlov

18th March 2016

My hypothesis—let’s call it the Technospheratu hypothesis—is that the technosphere, having risen up on top of and in opposition to Gaia and the biosphere, possesses a certain primitive emergent intelligence that allows it to grow in complexity and power and to dominate the biosphere to an ever-greater extent. Unlike Gaia, it is a parasite upon the biosphere….

ENERGY

All Well Aboard The Titanic

30th June 2014

Johnson Dantis on the multiple crises that threatens industrial civilisation, and the many handicaps that prevents us from dealing with them effectively. The piece is also in part a response to recent articles by T. Vijayendra and George Monbiot. Let me give you my own idea of hope in life. Hope propels change and change is constant….