SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the we're-doomed,-I-tell-you,-doomed dept.
Anonymous Coward writes:
"I've heard this theme repeated many times in debates and economic discussions, but this NASA-funded study seems like one of the more well researched studies in this area. This article contains more links to other studies that provide more empirical and less theoretical models."
The report continues:
A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilization could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.
Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that 'the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history.' Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to 'precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common.'
The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:34PM
There's another policy approach that the US in particular plainly could have used and utterly failed to do so: Energy conservation.
For example, the United States basically gives away at least $10 billion a year to major oil companies, not counting the money spent on wars to gain cheap access to oil supplies and pipelines. For that $10 billion, we could have set up a program for homeowners to improve the insulation of about 4 million homes annually (covering every single-family residence in the US in about 25 years), not only reducing our energy usage but also a lot of gas or electric bills.
That's not even getting into the atrocious (lack of) urban planning that creates lots of unnecessary car traffic and the associated emissions and accidents.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Funny) by emg on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:35PM
Conservation is for suckers.
For $10,000,000,000 a year, we could be getting off this rock, at least if the money was given to folks like SpaceX rather than NASA.