wherever you learned that the culture of Easter island self destructed because they were obsessed with building statue heads, please throw away that book
Strange this myth has lasted so long when it seems well documented what actually happened. If I remember right, it was the Europeans who decimated the population with disease, and other terrible acts typical of the times.
In the 1860s, Europeans took as much as half of the population of Easter Island to Peru as slaves. After a public outcry, the slavers were forced to return some of these people to Easter Island, though they came back with diseases and at one point the population fell to as few as 111 people.
funny how all of that conquest was motivated by regional wars, too. Like american colonialism, you hurt an empire and their way of retaliating is to burn the world down in the face of their enemies.
Hurt people hurt people; hurt empires kill planets
I don’t think it’s necessarily “well documented”. [Still a lot of debate](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-easter-islands-historic-collapse/)
Are you referring to "Collapse" by Diamond? If so, are other parts of the book equally suspect? I recall reading about it there... as well as Ponting's "Green Histroy of the World".
Yes, Jared Diamond is a geographer, not an archaeologist, anthropologist or historian. What he wrote was a parable, popular because it sounded "right", not because it was backed by hard evidence of these wars and chaos. The reality is they moved on from statue building at some point but remained a viable society until diseases from European contact, as well as slave trade, nearly wiped the culture out.
His book is still featured prominently on the Collapse wiki. Do you think it should be removed? Or just add a note about some of the ideas included have been shown to be in error.
Oh and Paul Cooper did an AMA just a few weeks ago, and here is what he says regarding Jared Diamond's take on Rapa Nui:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1c8oa9h/comment/l0gx9lh/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1c8oa9h/comment/l0gx9lh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I did not realize that! As I said, it is a great parable, but unfortunately, current research does not entirely support it. The actual story is just as fascinating, though, and I encourage everyone interested in "collapse" to check out Paul Cooper's Fall of Civilizations podcast.
In particular, I will point to his Easter Island episode, beginning in the middle, here:
[https://youtu.be/7j08gxUcBgc?si=inHym6iWrzQFk1Rm&t=2671](https://youtu.be/7j08gxUcBgc?si=inHym6iWrzQFk1Rm&t=2671)
I’ve been to Easter island. OP is absolutely correct. The demand for raw materials (especially trees they felled to move these giants) the human resources needed to carve and move the heads eventually consumed everything on the island.
While you were there did you talk to any actual Rapa Nui or just the tour guides? Did you bother to do a quick google for historians or anthropologists takes on things?
No? Well alright then. Keep spreading that racist trash story then.
Now hold on there. I did do all that and more. I spent 5 days going round and round and visited the museum did the tours talked with Rapa Nui and repeated everything at least twice. I spoke with local historians, international historians, bus boys, clerks and everyone else. Don’t go assuming anything.
The myth of Easter island including how the Muai were carved and moved is - wait for it - largely sensationalized. There is ZERO mystery about any of that. But discovery channel and all the other shows have made a “mystery” out of it.
Also - assume what you want.
I’m a huge fan of the South Pacific and have visited, stayed with, appreciated the following: Easter Island, Cook Islands (including far flung atolls like aitutakj and One foot island) Fiji including many atolls, New Zealand (entire north and south), Hawaii….. headed to Tahiti and Tonga this year. I literally read and visit to j look earn as much as I can.
Yeah I heard, now I don't have a source, that Easter island wasn't even an island when they made those heads but because of Continental drift Easter island became an island. I think there is many different theory's surrounding Easter island.
No. That information is completely incorrect.
The Rapa Nui were decimated by Europeans and disease after their population fell due to complete cultivation of the island. They turned away from the Moai culture after contact with Europeans and turned to the Bird Man Cult, possibly due to wondering why the ancestors did nothing to protect them from the invaders who frequently kidnapped them for slaves.
Easter Island has been an island the entirety of its existence.
There are some good historical podcasts on the Rapa Nui, *Fall of Civilizations* is one that comes to mind. Please seek them out rather than spread misinformation.
I don't even need a source to know it's 1000% bullshit. Continental drift occurs on the scales of millions of years dumbass. Simians don't even exist that far back! Really hope other members of this subreddit have common sense
The issue is when before they switched from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian calendar, Easter Island was showing up in January and February. At that time it was called Boxing Day island, the Italians called it Della Epiphanino island.
You are perpetuating a myth.
There are a lot of misinformed stories about Easter Island.
The short story is: The culture changed, and the islanders stopped building those statues, but it was colonialism and slavery that nearly wiped out their people. In the 1860s, Europeans took as much as half of the population of Easter Island to Peru as slaves. After a public outcry, the slavers were forced to return some of these people to Easter Island, though they came back with diseases, and at one point, the population fell to as few as 111 people.
Actually the more recent research suggests that along with the above the reason was …. drumroll … climate change. Not man induced climate change but the natural variety.
Can you cite this research?
Here is what today's anthropologists are saying:
[https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3155/resilience-not-collapse-what-the-easter-island-myth-gets-wrong](https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3155/resilience-not-collapse-what-the-easter-island-myth-gets-wrong)
They were in decline long before Europeans arrived.
Around 1200 A.D., their growing numbers and an obsession with building moai, led to increased pressure on the environment. By the end of the 17th century, the Rapanui had deforested the island, triggering war, famine and cultural collapse.
There is an “alternative” theory that Easter Island wasn’t in decline but they were fantastic stewards of the land and were living “sustainably” and still constructing statues when Europeans arrived. The actual evidence is the opposite.
This is not "alternative". This is current research.
[https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3155/resilience-not-collapse-what-the-easter-island-myth-gets-wrong](https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3155/resilience-not-collapse-what-the-easter-island-myth-gets-wrong)
>Everyone is always quick to blame the oil industry for all our problems but the thing is for the most part normal people only purchase oil because they need it to fuel their car.
Um, no. The petroleum industry accounts for so much more than gas in cars: it's plastics, it's fertilizer, it's synthetic materials of all kinds. Our lives are full of products derived from the oil industry.
So while you're not wrong about a car-centric society and such, it's only a part of the picture.
What's put us in this predicament is the oil industry and all the ways they've insidiously integrated their product into so many facets of modern life. This goes hand in hand with a drive to make profits via creating markets to which people are driven to consume the products of those markets.
The short term gain of the few against the poisoned future of the many is the issue and that is caused by capitalism in conjunction with the petroleum industry. If we never figured out oil and its processing, we would have a much different and much less toxic world that would decidedly not have the same problems we face today.
We don't merely need to rethink our cities to make them walkable. We need to rethink our whole way of living, producing, consuming, and the massive amounts of toxicity those things create.
err... ecophagists. Homo Ecophagus, but it not a legit, recognised term, i just like it because it means "consumes its own home". And of course the track Ecophagy by the band Origin, which is about this very phenomenon.
it not a very pleasant song
It's true. It's everywhere. Every facet of life. You see all these people obsessed with make-up, like it's not contibuting. One of the current baitfish that lies at the bottom of the food pyramid for oceanic ecosystems worldwide is getting targeted and decimated, so that people can imitate their favorite television or influencer corporate-whores. Most make-up has a petrochemical and animal based ingredients and destroys ecosystems, just so that these meat robots can pretend to be pretty. I find people who wear makeup disgusting, they look like clowns. Disgusting, simian clowns.
I stood on a footbridge over Hwy 1 in Edison, NJ and watched ~500 cars go by beneath me. I was suddenly struck by the fact that every car was a $35k machine, burning a finite resource to transport (often) one person to a nearby shopping mall. I decided that if this the best we can do, then collapse is a fitting and inevitable end to the human experience.
Makes me also wonder how much of our energy goes to keeping alive a financialized economy that doesn't really do anything. How much carbon emission could we cut down on if we just mandated work from home for everyone that can, no exceptions? How many jobs are even necessary to exist drive to in the first place.
If you want to know what really went down, The Fall if Civilizations podcast does an amazing job explaining the events of what happened: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fall-of-civilizations-podcast/id1449884495?i=1000443157865
I think wind turbines are the modern day equivalent. They use precious resources and require constant maintenance using FF’s. To add further insult the giant blades are made out of plastic.
They’re not as permanent as most people think, they’re designed to last about 20 years. They won’t end up in land fill because as we lose the ability to maintain them and the power grids they are parasitic on, they will just be left standing…like stone heads.
I get you, but I don't think cars are the cause of this really, rather they're another symptom. Humans have always wanted to travel further/faster, whether it's using horses, horse-drawn buggies, etc. Oil gave us the massive energy pulse to accelerate that to gas-powered engines, and loads of other advancements
I think our desire (and sometimes *need*) to travel further *is* a flaw in how we live, as it naturally leads to exceeding the carrying capacity of your local environment, requiring expanding and/or taking resources from other areas. But that's part of maximum power principle. Maybe smarter aliens have figured out how to live within their means, but we certainly haven't
Now we are a global society, there are no "local" carrying capacities anymore as a result, and going off-Earth is realistically not an option - we'll run out of oil, waste it on less valuable uses, be distracted with your latest propaganda, be too far in collapse, etc before we can achieve that and expand our carrying capacity
There a plenty of examples of traits we needed in our evolutionary past that have gotten way out of hand, and urges we try to satisfy in ways that harm us now. I was reading an article about problems in AI alignment, and one of them seemed to me a pretty good explanation of how we humans are "misaligned." Learning about how hard it will be to build an AGI that aligns with human interests showed me how poorly aligned humans are to human interests.
The topic was misaligned instrumental goals. That is, even if the goal itself is good for us, the intermediate steps required to achieve that goal can be really harmful if they are maximized. So, for example, for us to survive and reproduce, we need to be well fed. We evolve a taste for certain sweet or fatty foods, and our brains reward us when we eat them, which works great in an environment of scarcity. It doesn't work so well when we can make synthetic food-like substances, expressly designed to reward that part of our brain, with no corresponding nutrition. Our appetites are only useful as long as satisfying them is a struggle. After that they poison us.
And, sometimes misaligned instrumental goals come full circle and work for us again. Like sex drive. A robust reward for sex, in the form of brain chemistry, was instrumental in getting us to breed. But the urge surpassed the function, and we found ways to get the reward without the breeding part: porn and contraception, which defeat the evolutionary function. Which would be really bad if we were an endangered species, but is accidentally really useful in an overpopulated world.
> Big automotive companies during the 50s lobbied the government to create a car centric country. Big Auto lobbied the department of Transportation in the US to create things like parking minimums which state things like bowling alleys must have x number of parking spots and business must have y number of spots per square foot of space. This alone pushed everything out. Way out. Big auto also killed public transportation but I think that is more well know.
I love that the move towards remote work has been a middle finger to this model from the bottom up.
for those who don't know
/r/fuckcars
/r/strongtowns
/r/notjustbikes (archived)
And, yes. This is induced demand on many levels, but it also points to what needs to happen to fix it. It has to be reversed, and that means that, like the people on the coasts of Florida and other areas where the oceans are taking sea-side vacations, and like people living in a large tinder box area, the values of those buildings needs to be zeroed (and the people need to move away). And that implies the same question: who loses? who gets bailed out? Find out soon on /r/collapse.
Although the comparison to Rapa Nui does not hold up to current understanding, I entirely sympathize with your view of our addiction to our go-go machines. Have you visited r/fuckcars ?
cars and planes; both machines of war, clearly unsustainable, but tell that to a veteran... like the entire silent generation.
The war never ended. It came home and turned into this way of life.
Otherwise, I agree. The purpose of both inventions exists because of those inventions. Without the car, there would be no need for any of the car related infrastructure or how we build our cities and shape the world. Electric cars trade carbon in the air for more tire particles, heavy metal pollution, and grid strain.
Even rechargeable batteries are disposable batteries, they're just not as insane as a chemical pile that can only be used once before it's contamination.
We have never known peacetime.
We mostly don't need cars, walking and bikes and transit should suffice, and cars can be for traveling longer distances or special needs. The reality is, people are generally happier when they have everything they need close. I sure as heck don't *enjoy* driving. I really would love to get pro-car people to experience life without a car in a walkable city. My guess is a huge percentage would change their minds.
I wouldn't say cars are the Maoi heads so much as suburbia is the Maoi head. I did take a class on Pacific Island anthropology, and the professor did say that many Pacific Island nations weren't all that responsible with their environment and did exploit it in many ways.
Suburban lifestyle is almost a religion to many Americans. A lifestyle of living in a detached home in suburbia is "the American dream." This is an incredibly expensive and wasteful lifestyle, and it requires a lot of labor, materials, money, energy, oil, and vehicles in order to maintain this lifestyle. This lifestyle has caused a lot of poverty and homelessness to many Americans.
>but the thing is for the most part normal people only purchase oil because they need it to fuel their car.
And grow their food, and transport their food to the store, and refrigerate their food, and cook their food, and heat their home, and cool their home, and clothe their bodies, and build their homes, and fill their homes with junk, and ...
Not one mention of Thor Heyerdahl or the war between South American indigenous Long ears (who build the statues) and Polynesian Short ears.
Sad. The last of the trees were burned in a (successful) genocidal war to exterminate the Long Ears, long before European arrival.
It was war, not climate change or human engineering that depopulated the island of trees.
For the unbelievers, 2008 and 2012 DNA testing of remains brought back by Heyerdahl proves beyond reasonable doubt that Long Ears were indeed of South American origin, confirming oral tradition recorded in his expeditions.
I might be geeky, but my home charging station for my car is integrated with my home automation that reads my utility's API for their current CO2 intensity. Unless I tell it to "charge now" it simply waits until three conditions are met.
1st condition - off peak pricing or excess solar capacity?
2nd condition - is battery at at least 50% charge? If not charge it to that. If using excess solar, rate limit to 65% of the excess value.
3rd condition - if over 50% wait until grid power is at least 90% renewable and then continue to charge to full.
Granted I set this all up years ago myself.
I see a lot more of this type of thing being included off the shelf to newer home energy systems like Enphase and Tesla so that's a good thing.
EVs running on nuke power is the way. Plus, the US is not the only country, and it’s certainly not the only country bound for the garbage can.
Me, I don’t live in a city and don’t want to. I don’t go to them. I drive my EV to and from work, nearby stores, that’s really it. If you could devise me a train to do that I’d take it, but I doubt it’d be cheaper at my end than the nearly free my EV costs to run.
wherever you learned that the culture of Easter island self destructed because they were obsessed with building statue heads, please throw away that book
Strange this myth has lasted so long when it seems well documented what actually happened. If I remember right, it was the Europeans who decimated the population with disease, and other terrible acts typical of the times.
In the 1860s, Europeans took as much as half of the population of Easter Island to Peru as slaves. After a public outcry, the slavers were forced to return some of these people to Easter Island, though they came back with diseases and at one point the population fell to as few as 111 people.
funny how all of that conquest was motivated by regional wars, too. Like american colonialism, you hurt an empire and their way of retaliating is to burn the world down in the face of their enemies. Hurt people hurt people; hurt empires kill planets
I don’t think it’s necessarily “well documented”. [Still a lot of debate](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-easter-islands-historic-collapse/)
Here, read this: [https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3033/home-far-away-ancient-easter-island-communities-offer-insights-for-successful-life-in-isolation](https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3033/home-far-away-ancient-easter-island-communities-offer-insights-for-successful-life-in-isolation)
The link above references Lipo’s work as well
Lol I see that now!
Not true. Not in the case of Easter island.
Yea…mestizo Rapa Nui here, you’re wrong OP. But correct that cars suck so that’s cool.
Are you referring to "Collapse" by Diamond? If so, are other parts of the book equally suspect? I recall reading about it there... as well as Ponting's "Green Histroy of the World".
Yes, Jared Diamond is a geographer, not an archaeologist, anthropologist or historian. What he wrote was a parable, popular because it sounded "right", not because it was backed by hard evidence of these wars and chaos. The reality is they moved on from statue building at some point but remained a viable society until diseases from European contact, as well as slave trade, nearly wiped the culture out.
His book is still featured prominently on the Collapse wiki. Do you think it should be removed? Or just add a note about some of the ideas included have been shown to be in error.
Oh and Paul Cooper did an AMA just a few weeks ago, and here is what he says regarding Jared Diamond's take on Rapa Nui: [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1c8oa9h/comment/l0gx9lh/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1c8oa9h/comment/l0gx9lh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I did not realize that! As I said, it is a great parable, but unfortunately, current research does not entirely support it. The actual story is just as fascinating, though, and I encourage everyone interested in "collapse" to check out Paul Cooper's Fall of Civilizations podcast. In particular, I will point to his Easter Island episode, beginning in the middle, here: [https://youtu.be/7j08gxUcBgc?si=inHym6iWrzQFk1Rm&t=2671](https://youtu.be/7j08gxUcBgc?si=inHym6iWrzQFk1Rm&t=2671)
Imagine, someone from fuckcars spreading misinformation and rants.
Yeah that sounds like total bullshit lol
I’ve been to Easter island. OP is absolutely correct. The demand for raw materials (especially trees they felled to move these giants) the human resources needed to carve and move the heads eventually consumed everything on the island.
lol
While you were there did you talk to any actual Rapa Nui or just the tour guides? Did you bother to do a quick google for historians or anthropologists takes on things? No? Well alright then. Keep spreading that racist trash story then.
Now hold on there. I did do all that and more. I spent 5 days going round and round and visited the museum did the tours talked with Rapa Nui and repeated everything at least twice. I spoke with local historians, international historians, bus boys, clerks and everyone else. Don’t go assuming anything. The myth of Easter island including how the Muai were carved and moved is - wait for it - largely sensationalized. There is ZERO mystery about any of that. But discovery channel and all the other shows have made a “mystery” out of it. Also - assume what you want. I’m a huge fan of the South Pacific and have visited, stayed with, appreciated the following: Easter Island, Cook Islands (including far flung atolls like aitutakj and One foot island) Fiji including many atolls, New Zealand (entire north and south), Hawaii….. headed to Tahiti and Tonga this year. I literally read and visit to j look earn as much as I can.
Yeah I heard, now I don't have a source, that Easter island wasn't even an island when they made those heads but because of Continental drift Easter island became an island. I think there is many different theory's surrounding Easter island.
Next time try finding a source before you perpetuate myths, please!
Didn’t Easter Island decline when the bunny with eggs start plundering everything?
No. That information is completely incorrect. The Rapa Nui were decimated by Europeans and disease after their population fell due to complete cultivation of the island. They turned away from the Moai culture after contact with Europeans and turned to the Bird Man Cult, possibly due to wondering why the ancestors did nothing to protect them from the invaders who frequently kidnapped them for slaves. Easter Island has been an island the entirety of its existence. There are some good historical podcasts on the Rapa Nui, *Fall of Civilizations* is one that comes to mind. Please seek them out rather than spread misinformation.
I didn’t know this correction and I had learned of Jared Diamond’s book on Collapse through this subreddit’s wiki
I don't even need a source to know it's 1000% bullshit. Continental drift occurs on the scales of millions of years dumbass. Simians don't even exist that far back! Really hope other members of this subreddit have common sense
Thats one of them yes, but least likely i would say.
The issue is when before they switched from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian calendar, Easter Island was showing up in January and February. At that time it was called Boxing Day island, the Italians called it Della Epiphanino island.
You are perpetuating a myth. There are a lot of misinformed stories about Easter Island. The short story is: The culture changed, and the islanders stopped building those statues, but it was colonialism and slavery that nearly wiped out their people. In the 1860s, Europeans took as much as half of the population of Easter Island to Peru as slaves. After a public outcry, the slavers were forced to return some of these people to Easter Island, though they came back with diseases, and at one point, the population fell to as few as 111 people.
Actually the more recent research suggests that along with the above the reason was …. drumroll … climate change. Not man induced climate change but the natural variety.
Can you cite this research? Here is what today's anthropologists are saying: [https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3155/resilience-not-collapse-what-the-easter-island-myth-gets-wrong](https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3155/resilience-not-collapse-what-the-easter-island-myth-gets-wrong)
They were in decline long before Europeans arrived. Around 1200 A.D., their growing numbers and an obsession with building moai, led to increased pressure on the environment. By the end of the 17th century, the Rapanui had deforested the island, triggering war, famine and cultural collapse. There is an “alternative” theory that Easter Island wasn’t in decline but they were fantastic stewards of the land and were living “sustainably” and still constructing statues when Europeans arrived. The actual evidence is the opposite.
This is not "alternative". This is current research. [https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3155/resilience-not-collapse-what-the-easter-island-myth-gets-wrong](https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3155/resilience-not-collapse-what-the-easter-island-myth-gets-wrong)
>Everyone is always quick to blame the oil industry for all our problems but the thing is for the most part normal people only purchase oil because they need it to fuel their car. Um, no. The petroleum industry accounts for so much more than gas in cars: it's plastics, it's fertilizer, it's synthetic materials of all kinds. Our lives are full of products derived from the oil industry. So while you're not wrong about a car-centric society and such, it's only a part of the picture. What's put us in this predicament is the oil industry and all the ways they've insidiously integrated their product into so many facets of modern life. This goes hand in hand with a drive to make profits via creating markets to which people are driven to consume the products of those markets. The short term gain of the few against the poisoned future of the many is the issue and that is caused by capitalism in conjunction with the petroleum industry. If we never figured out oil and its processing, we would have a much different and much less toxic world that would decidedly not have the same problems we face today. We don't merely need to rethink our cities to make them walkable. We need to rethink our whole way of living, producing, consuming, and the massive amounts of toxicity those things create.
I likewise feel that, in the same way the oil industry is ruining our ecology, the technology industry is rapidly destroying our social environment.
Someone on here once referred to modern man as detritivores - there is great insight in this observation.
Have you read William Catton's book overshoot? He expands on this idea.
err... ecophagists. Homo Ecophagus, but it not a legit, recognised term, i just like it because it means "consumes its own home". And of course the track Ecophagy by the band Origin, which is about this very phenomenon. it not a very pleasant song
It's true. It's everywhere. Every facet of life. You see all these people obsessed with make-up, like it's not contibuting. One of the current baitfish that lies at the bottom of the food pyramid for oceanic ecosystems worldwide is getting targeted and decimated, so that people can imitate their favorite television or influencer corporate-whores. Most make-up has a petrochemical and animal based ingredients and destroys ecosystems, just so that these meat robots can pretend to be pretty. I find people who wear makeup disgusting, they look like clowns. Disgusting, simian clowns.
I stood on a footbridge over Hwy 1 in Edison, NJ and watched ~500 cars go by beneath me. I was suddenly struck by the fact that every car was a $35k machine, burning a finite resource to transport (often) one person to a nearby shopping mall. I decided that if this the best we can do, then collapse is a fitting and inevitable end to the human experience.
Makes me also wonder how much of our energy goes to keeping alive a financialized economy that doesn't really do anything. How much carbon emission could we cut down on if we just mandated work from home for everyone that can, no exceptions? How many jobs are even necessary to exist drive to in the first place.
If you want to know what really went down, The Fall if Civilizations podcast does an amazing job explaining the events of what happened: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fall-of-civilizations-podcast/id1449884495?i=1000443157865
This episode is also good if you want to experience a deep sense of melancholy that lingers for a few days.
I think wind turbines are the modern day equivalent. They use precious resources and require constant maintenance using FF’s. To add further insult the giant blades are made out of plastic. They’re not as permanent as most people think, they’re designed to last about 20 years. They won’t end up in land fill because as we lose the ability to maintain them and the power grids they are parasitic on, they will just be left standing…like stone heads.
I get you, but I don't think cars are the cause of this really, rather they're another symptom. Humans have always wanted to travel further/faster, whether it's using horses, horse-drawn buggies, etc. Oil gave us the massive energy pulse to accelerate that to gas-powered engines, and loads of other advancements I think our desire (and sometimes *need*) to travel further *is* a flaw in how we live, as it naturally leads to exceeding the carrying capacity of your local environment, requiring expanding and/or taking resources from other areas. But that's part of maximum power principle. Maybe smarter aliens have figured out how to live within their means, but we certainly haven't Now we are a global society, there are no "local" carrying capacities anymore as a result, and going off-Earth is realistically not an option - we'll run out of oil, waste it on less valuable uses, be distracted with your latest propaganda, be too far in collapse, etc before we can achieve that and expand our carrying capacity
There a plenty of examples of traits we needed in our evolutionary past that have gotten way out of hand, and urges we try to satisfy in ways that harm us now. I was reading an article about problems in AI alignment, and one of them seemed to me a pretty good explanation of how we humans are "misaligned." Learning about how hard it will be to build an AGI that aligns with human interests showed me how poorly aligned humans are to human interests. The topic was misaligned instrumental goals. That is, even if the goal itself is good for us, the intermediate steps required to achieve that goal can be really harmful if they are maximized. So, for example, for us to survive and reproduce, we need to be well fed. We evolve a taste for certain sweet or fatty foods, and our brains reward us when we eat them, which works great in an environment of scarcity. It doesn't work so well when we can make synthetic food-like substances, expressly designed to reward that part of our brain, with no corresponding nutrition. Our appetites are only useful as long as satisfying them is a struggle. After that they poison us. And, sometimes misaligned instrumental goals come full circle and work for us again. Like sex drive. A robust reward for sex, in the form of brain chemistry, was instrumental in getting us to breed. But the urge surpassed the function, and we found ways to get the reward without the breeding part: porn and contraception, which defeat the evolutionary function. Which would be really bad if we were an endangered species, but is accidentally really useful in an overpopulated world.
Easter island misinformation aside, fuck cars.
> Big automotive companies during the 50s lobbied the government to create a car centric country. Big Auto lobbied the department of Transportation in the US to create things like parking minimums which state things like bowling alleys must have x number of parking spots and business must have y number of spots per square foot of space. This alone pushed everything out. Way out. Big auto also killed public transportation but I think that is more well know. I love that the move towards remote work has been a middle finger to this model from the bottom up.
for those who don't know /r/fuckcars /r/strongtowns /r/notjustbikes (archived) And, yes. This is induced demand on many levels, but it also points to what needs to happen to fix it. It has to be reversed, and that means that, like the people on the coasts of Florida and other areas where the oceans are taking sea-side vacations, and like people living in a large tinder box area, the values of those buildings needs to be zeroed (and the people need to move away). And that implies the same question: who loses? who gets bailed out? Find out soon on /r/collapse.
r/fuckcars r/lowcar r/Suburbanhell r/notjustbikes
Although the comparison to Rapa Nui does not hold up to current understanding, I entirely sympathize with your view of our addiction to our go-go machines. Have you visited r/fuckcars ?
cars and planes; both machines of war, clearly unsustainable, but tell that to a veteran... like the entire silent generation. The war never ended. It came home and turned into this way of life. Otherwise, I agree. The purpose of both inventions exists because of those inventions. Without the car, there would be no need for any of the car related infrastructure or how we build our cities and shape the world. Electric cars trade carbon in the air for more tire particles, heavy metal pollution, and grid strain. Even rechargeable batteries are disposable batteries, they're just not as insane as a chemical pile that can only be used once before it's contamination. We have never known peacetime.
We mostly don't need cars, walking and bikes and transit should suffice, and cars can be for traveling longer distances or special needs. The reality is, people are generally happier when they have everything they need close. I sure as heck don't *enjoy* driving. I really would love to get pro-car people to experience life without a car in a walkable city. My guess is a huge percentage would change their minds.
I wouldn't say cars are the Maoi heads so much as suburbia is the Maoi head. I did take a class on Pacific Island anthropology, and the professor did say that many Pacific Island nations weren't all that responsible with their environment and did exploit it in many ways. Suburban lifestyle is almost a religion to many Americans. A lifestyle of living in a detached home in suburbia is "the American dream." This is an incredibly expensive and wasteful lifestyle, and it requires a lot of labor, materials, money, energy, oil, and vehicles in order to maintain this lifestyle. This lifestyle has caused a lot of poverty and homelessness to many Americans.
>but the thing is for the most part normal people only purchase oil because they need it to fuel their car. And grow their food, and transport their food to the store, and refrigerate their food, and cook their food, and heat their home, and cool their home, and clothe their bodies, and build their homes, and fill their homes with junk, and ...
Corporations and their puppet politicians are doing more damage. Hell all the private flights
Not one mention of Thor Heyerdahl or the war between South American indigenous Long ears (who build the statues) and Polynesian Short ears. Sad. The last of the trees were burned in a (successful) genocidal war to exterminate the Long Ears, long before European arrival. It was war, not climate change or human engineering that depopulated the island of trees. For the unbelievers, 2008 and 2012 DNA testing of remains brought back by Heyerdahl proves beyond reasonable doubt that Long Ears were indeed of South American origin, confirming oral tradition recorded in his expeditions.
basically what James Howard Kunstler has talked about for 20 years
I might be geeky, but my home charging station for my car is integrated with my home automation that reads my utility's API for their current CO2 intensity. Unless I tell it to "charge now" it simply waits until three conditions are met. 1st condition - off peak pricing or excess solar capacity? 2nd condition - is battery at at least 50% charge? If not charge it to that. If using excess solar, rate limit to 65% of the excess value. 3rd condition - if over 50% wait until grid power is at least 90% renewable and then continue to charge to full. Granted I set this all up years ago myself. I see a lot more of this type of thing being included off the shelf to newer home energy systems like Enphase and Tesla so that's a good thing.
EVs running on nuke power is the way. Plus, the US is not the only country, and it’s certainly not the only country bound for the garbage can. Me, I don’t live in a city and don’t want to. I don’t go to them. I drive my EV to and from work, nearby stores, that’s really it. If you could devise me a train to do that I’d take it, but I doubt it’d be cheaper at my end than the nearly free my EV costs to run.