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Greenhouse Gases Rise by Record Amount
Levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago
The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide has jumped by a record amount, according to the US department of energy, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.
The figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
"The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," said John Reilly, the co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
The world pumped about 564m more tons (512m metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009, an increase of 6%. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries, China, the US and India, the world's top producers of greenhouse gases.
It is a "monster" increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate department of energy figures in the past.
Extra pollution in China and the US account for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Marland said.
"It's a big jump," said Tom Boden, the director of the energy department's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Lab. "From an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over."
Boden said that in 2010 people were travelling, and manufacturing was back up worldwide, spurring the use of fossil fuels, the chief contributor of man-made climate change.
India and China are huge users of coal. Burning coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that jumped nearly 8% in 2010.
"The good news is that these economies are growing rapidly so everyone ought to be for that, right?" Reilly said. "Broader economic improvements in poor countries has been bringing living improvements to people. Doing it with increasing reliance on coal is imperiling the world."
In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. Boden said the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel. Those forecast global temperatures rising between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4-6.4 Celsius) by the end of the century with the best estimate at 7.5 degrees (4 Celsius).
Even though global warming sceptics have criticised the climate change panel as being too alarmist, scientists have generally found their predictions too conservative, Reilly said. He said his university worked on emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what would happen. The IPCC's worst case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT calculated are likely scenarios.
Chris Field of Stanford University, head of one of the IPCC's working groups, said the panel's emissions scenarios are intended to be more accurate in the long term and are less so in earlier years. He said the question now among scientists is whether the future is the panel's worst case scenario "or something more extreme".
"Really dismaying," Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University, said of the new figures. "We are building up a horrible legacy for our children and grandchildren."
But Reilly and University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver found something good in recent emissions figures. The developed countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas limiting treaty have reduced their emissions overall since then and have achieved their goals of cutting emissions to about 8% below 1990 levels. The US did not ratify the agreement.
In 1990, developed countries produced about 60% of the world's greenhouse gases, now it's probably less than 50%, Reilly said.
"We really need to get the developing world because if we don't, the problem is going to be running away from us," Weaver said. "And the problem is pretty close from running away from us."
117 Comments so far
Show AllWhen we all have to live in a dome, we must kill and eat the global-warming deniers. Otherwise, they'll just befoul the dome.
I wonder if this gave Steven King the idea of his book, Under the Dome.
Kids from another world trapped a whole town under a dome. Like many kids used to do to ants.
It was a great book if anyone is looking for a lengthy novel.
And of course it has the evil Christian in it that won't use foul words, but has no problem making other people's lives hell.
I rather doubt Earth will become Asimov's Trantor--too complex.
Why not? think we'll just roll over and die? not bloody likely! >^^<
The tech Asimov devised for Trantor is far beyond anything that could be constructed here--The power source doesn't exist. Asimov's "atomics" is fusion. But perhaps you've never read the entire "Foundation and Empire" series and have no conception of Trantor whatsoever.
A Gahan Wilson cartoon appeared in the New Yorker a month or two ago, in which a man and a young boy are wearing what look like space suits (with glass domes for helmets). The man says to the boy: "And then some wise men realized that it does not matter what happens to the environment as long as we wear these nice shiny suits."
Good one! And exactly where the wingnut deniers are leading us: the perfect, uber-individual capitalist solution. Just what Ayn Rand would have thought up.
Bullshit!
The situation could well be even worse than this article says.
When the article's subtitle refers to "levels" of greenhouse gases, it seems to mean "levels of output", rather than "levels of greenhouse gas present in the atmosphere". For several reasons, the latter could be increasing more rapidly than the former.
For example (if I read the article correctly), the DOE's numbers for "output" don't include greenhouse gases produced or released by desertification, forest fires, thawing of tundra, etc.
Indeed. The accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is scary enough. However, the release of billions of tons of methane or methyl hydrate from warming Northern biospheres is terrifying. We may end up creating an Earth unviable for people and millions of other species. It never ceases to amaze me when I read the anti-global warming propagandists. One website, which features writing from a former "energy industry executive" claims that the rise in CO2 is a good thing because plants need CO2. The implication is that the more CO2 in the atmosphere the better it will be for our agriculture and the world's growing population. There are numerous examples on the web that refute this simplistic conclusion. Also, this person fails to mention what will happen to the world's oceans when they become increasingly acidified due to the increased absorption of CO2. I read recently that the latest forecast for the world's coral reefs is that most of them will be dead by the end of the century. That would be a biological catastrophe.
Has anyone ever done a study on how wars contribute to emissions? We can't seem to track accurate casualty records, I wouldn't be amazed to learn no one has considered their impact on the environment either.
Good question.
Good idea for a study.
I don't know about the impact of wars per se, but the impact of armament industries shouldn't be hard to quantify, with reasonable accuracy.
There's plenty of data regarding approximately how many of each type of armament are produced each year, by each of the biggest arms producers. For each of the major types of armaments, there's data on the types and amounts of materials needed to make them.
This would be a start. Of course a person might also want to include impacts of operating and transporting all those armaments.
BTW, I spent an hour the other day reading the web page of Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST), the group that investigated (exhaustively!) four possible sources of error in temperature records, and found that those sources were of no consequence. The site is worth a close reading:
http://www.berkeleyearth.org/
(regarding the 4 sources: http://www.berkeleyearth.org/FAQ.php#skepticism)
In its FAQ page (http://www.berkeleyearth.org/FAQ.php), BEST addresses the recent claim that Global Warming has stopped:
http://www.berkeleyearth.org/FAQ.php#stopped
I think BEST demonstrates, convincingly, that there's no basis for making that claim.
BEST has not given science any information that was not already available. For example, NOAA and NASA reported long ago that the so called urban heat island effect was a non issue and that station siting issues had very little impact on the upward trend.
So BEST, at best, is yet another confirmation (among many.
Of course, Richard Muller would tell you it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, but the guy is basically full of it -- and of himself.
And Richard Muller has been spreading misinformation (and outright lies) about climate science and climate scientists for quite a while now.
He's basically a mediocre scientist at best (ha!) who never accomplished much of anything in his own field (phyisics) and thinks he can use BEST as a last ditch effort to make a name for himself.
If there is anything of value coming out of the project, it is almost certainly coming from the other members of the team (eg, Saul Perlmutter and Robert Rohde)
Muller's too busy running around doing interviews -- ie, running his mouth about Climategate, Al Gore and other stuff that has no bearing whatsoever on the science, which was well established before he ever got involved.
He's a clown and should be ignored.
Why do these so-called scientests always forget VOLCANOS! There has been a whole truckload of volcanic activity lately, each one puts out more co2 than a decade of mans evil pollution! >^^<
Why, it's our old friend, the popular "volcanos emit more CO2 than humans" climate denialist myth. All of these tired old lines have been asserted and refuted so many times by now that there's a whole website dedicated to cataloging the refutations:
The burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use results in the emission into the atmosphere of approximately 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year worldwide, according to the EIA. The fossil fuels emissions numbers are about 100 times bigger than even the maximum estimated volcanic CO2 fluxes.
Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?
"RichardsCatz" is a disinformation agent, or else he just thinks it's funny to act like one. It's not funny. It's hate speech, as far as I'm concerned.
I agree. It's too late in the game for this to be funny. I don't think it was ever funny on this topic.
I agree with you. It is worse than hate speech, it is evil, or sociopathic. People like that are advocates of planetary ecocide. They knowingly traffic in lies, and probably get paid handsomely for it by the very forces profiting from global warming. People like that should be banned from this forum--and all forums. 'Free speech' my ass.
"Why do these so-called scientests always forget VOLCANOS!"
Perhaps because they're irrelevant to the question of *whether* the Earth is warming.
Given BESTS's replication/confirmation of global-warming data, we'd be foolhardy to assume that it's not.
If volcanos are contributing significantly to greenhouse-gas emissions, then that's all the more reason to reduce anthropogenic emissions, soon.
I don't think you understand but the scientists took volcanos into account when they studied global warming. They also took the sun into account and many other variables. CO2 emissions can be tracked to their source, either of human or volcanic action. The resulting conclusions was that volcanos did not add anywhere near as much as humans.
Actually volcanos have been seen as having a cooling effect on the world. Which has helped to slow the process of global warming. The ash clouds tend to block the sun and reflect the heat back into space. So no volcanos, sun spots, or any other mechanism has been found to be causing global warming except for man.
No, that's not true. Do you have any actual evidence to support your opinion?
US Geological Survey tell us that in 2008, human emissions of CO2 were 100 to 300 times the estimated amount of volcanic emissions, as can be seen here:
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php
Volcanic emissions don't explain the huge increase in CO2 in the atmosphere since 1950, but human activity does.
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Every indicator: atmospheric CO2, average global surface temperature, melting Arctic sea ice, loss of Antarctic land ice, and rising sea levels shows that our world is warming up.
http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/
Yes, Global Warming really is happening, and the evidence is overwhelming.
Unsubstantiated opinion does not outweigh actual evidence.
"For example, NOAA and NASA reported long ago that the so called urban heat island effect was a non issue and that station siting issues had very little impact on the upward trend."
Checking other scientists' results to see whether those results are replicable is an important part of science. That's what BEST did, using stricter standards, and the results did indeed prove replicable.
Best did a valuable thing, and I, at least, am grateful to them.
"He's a clown and should be ignored."
But of course you'll have no objection if other people spend an hour reading the BEST website so they can form their own opinions?
The claim was made above "That's what BEST did, using stricter standards, and the results did indeed prove replicable. "
Perhaps you would like to spell out precisely how their standards were "stricter." Their work has not even been peer reviewed -- and the statistician/blogger Tamino has already found significant problems with one of Richard Muller's submitted papers (on AMO)
Unless you can spell out precisely how BEST is somehow "better" /"stricter" than the work that has already been done and confirmed by many many other scientists (eg, at NASA and NOAA), I suggest you not make claims that you can't back up.
So, put your money where your mouth is, eh?
BEST used a different method -- and it is always good to do that in science.
Does that imply stricter standards?
No, it does not. Not necessarily.
I don't take issue with the fact that BEST has undertaken to independently confirm or falsify the work of others. Indeed, that's how science works.
My problem is with the way the project leader -- Richard Muller -- has gone about the whole thing.
He has been bad mouthing scientists for some time now and just making things up (eg, about climategate and polar bears).
And since he began, he has been hyping the whole BEST project as if he was going to "show climate scientists how it should be done."
And now rather than a world shaking result, we find a basic confirmation o f what so many other scientists have said.
No surprise to anyone who knows ANYTHING about climate science (which does not include Richard Muller, by the way) -- though he obviously thinks he does.
But, of course, I would not advise that anyone simply take my word for it. His misleading and false statements have been well documented by others (eg, at Climate Progress and Climate Crock and even Real Climate).
Of course, people are free to formulate their own opinions but they can't formulate accurate opinions simply by reading what Richard Muller says on his own (BEST) website ( I will assure you that much).
Quite frankly, until the science produced by BEST is peer reviewed, it should be taken with a large block of salt (ie, not trusted). That's not just my opinion. That's how science works. It does no t work by taking someone's word for it (Richard Muller's or anyone else's)
Then again, I was trained as a scientist, so I guess that's why I am so skeptical of folks like Muller who has made a lot of exaggerated and outright false claims in the past.
But by all means, take his word for it, if you like.
I really don't care. He IS a clown, in my opinion -- a dishonest, arrogant clown with nothing to even justify the arrogance.
And by the way, it is perfectly possible to ignore Richard Muller and all his BS while not ignoring any peer reviewed science that comes out of the BEST project. The two are not the same. Not even close.
The single greatest emitter of greenhouse gases is the U.S. military.
No in fact it's the Monalua Volcano in Hawii its been erupting for over a decade, every day putting out more co2 than all cars in any given year! >^^<
I wish the fossil fuel multinationals could scrape up a better class of person to parrot their climate denialist talking points here on CD. It's Mauna Loa, Hawaii; it isn't even pronounced "Monalua". Its most recent eruption was in 1984.
Recent Mauna Loa Status Reports, Updates, and Information Releases
Human-made CO2 emissions are at least 100 times larger than those of worldwide volcanic activity.
For any people that are paying attention, it is quite obvious that the human race and the planet as we once knew it, are done for. There will be no meaningful steps taken to cut our greenhouse gas emissions. It is pedal to the metal, full speed ahead into the immovable wall of disastrous climate change.
Our "leaders" only exist to funnel as much money as possible, as fast as possible to that richest 1%. This is what these perverts exist for, that's it, that's all. Talk about a totally worthless, meaningless thing to expend your life's energy on. Yup they are only on this earth for a fraction of a second in the grand scheme of things and they want to spend that time enriching those that already have an obscene amount of wealth.
Yea baby that's time well spent. I wonder how their offspring and their's will look back on how they spent their lives. Allowing the planet they will inhabit be raped so the Koch bro's can make a few billion more before they take their last worthless breaths, and their destructive lives come to an end.
I thought that large scale destructive climate change would occur after I was dead, but man was I ever wrong. It is pretty amazing how our "media" and "leaders" are ignoring and/or brushing off what is happening. I cant even count how many times over the last several years that I have heard that a weather event is a once in a 100 years event, a once in a lifetime event, or the worst ever. But there is never an effort to put it all together, to wake up the public and pull them out of their Amercon Idol, Facebook, and iphone induced stupors.
The other night the NBC shills for the rich were discussing climate change. And they made it official. The climate change deniers that are funded by the Koch brothers finally said that climate change is real, and is caused by humans. Their response? One said; "Well we never had weather like this when we were kids!", and then they both laughed. I don't think any of those that are living through the floods, the tornados, and the droughts that are the result of our folly find it funny at all.
" It is pretty amazing how our "media" and "leaders" are ignoring and/or brushing off what is happening. "
Though they balk when anyone calls them a "denier" (saying it has Holocaust overtones), their behavior is the very definition of "denial".
Public TV is so strapped for funds, so debased in mission, that the Koch brothers fund their science series. There are embedded eugenics messages. "There has always been change." "Change is good". "Change favors those who know how to adapt". "The universe is going to end anyway". Not that these things are untrue, per se. But so much is left out.
Adaptability on these programs is presented as the brutal survival of the fittest on an individual level, subtext being the 1%. But the part about how "change" affects the poor and the ordinary person are absent. Adaptability and change do not include seeing what is happening, how the rates are accelerated by our activities, or if they are it is "so what, that's just the way it is". It certainly does not deal with what we can do to make life on earth more viable for a couple more centuries. Adaptability and change to not include making social and economic moves. They have no trouble accepting the doom of many species, the suffering of humans, as long as the system chugs along keeping them wealthy and comfortable.
I hadn't thought about this influence, but it makes sense in all the subtle ways the messages are being shaped. This comment should be expanded into a full essay.
I agree that none of this is a laughing matter. Regarding your statement that
"The climate change deniers that are funded by the Koch brothers finally said that climate change is real, and is caused by humans."
I think you mean the BEST report. (Please see my comment above, at Nov 4 2011 - 1:55pm.)
Actually, BEST didn't say that climate change is caused by humans. That's a question that BEST has not yet investigated. (For example, see this link: http://www.berkeleyearth.org/FAQ.php#skepticism).
I don't remember what the M$M folks were quoting from. Their cavalier ness about the whole issue at the end just really bugged me.
Well I haven't seen dollar 1 from the evil Koch Bros!!
I tell you straight until these self-appointed "Climate Scientists" can show a COMPLETE record including, Volcanoes, Orbital instability, Solar varience! and random animal output of co2 included in I continue to call them religiously deluded, self-important fools!!! >^^<
Random animal output would be one way of describing these droppings from "RichardsCatz."
Fossil fuel extraction and combustion -- slowly killing us all.
"After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, I've come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty."
And that's him being optimistic.
Mairead is quoting, verbatim, the last paragraph of Chapter 10: The Venus Syndrome from Storms of My Grandchildren by the great James Hansen.
The climate science community is one of great intellectual diversity. Despite his venerable stature, Hansen remains quite a maverick on many issues. On the likelihood of the runaway greenhouse, affectionately known as the Venus Syndrome, Hansen disagrees with many. (See, for instance, discussion of this issue on RealClimate.)
From the paragraph just above the one Mairead quotes:
Methane hydrates are likely to be more extensive and vulnerable now than they were in the early Cenozoic. It is difficult to imagine how the methane hydrates could survive, once the ocean has had time to warm. In that event a PETM-like warming could be added on top of fossil fuel warming.
Hansen's implication is that the combined forcings of fossil fuel emissions and methane hydrate releases would be unprecedented, and enough to bump the earth into a disequilibrium where the end-point is a dead planet. Other scientists disagree, but this is James Hansen, for crying out loud.
For any who think there's no way to stop CO2 emissions, as Dirty Harry said:
You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk?
Industrial society is a suicide bomber.
The problem with peak oil is that enslaved people will then cut down every last stick of wood in their nation (in Haiti, for example), or the rich will mine tar sands which puts an extreme amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for every gallon of glop produced.
gardenernorcal and SSJJ are both right. Wars are seriously carbon-intensive, and the world's forests are now dying off from climate change as a blanket statement. Darwin would tell us that the various forests will mostly adapt to the new climate in 1000 years, but what happens in the meantime?
can't think of anything to say really .......... except maybe: consequences.
The only solutions that would (or that may?) work will be considered "drastic" by most people, including by most people who post here on CD. Shutting down coal and nuclear power plants will reduce the electricity generation capacity by about 65%. But reducing overall consumption by 2/3rd in the US will still leave the consumption levels per capita above those of many other countries.
People will seriously need to imagine if they can live with a drastically reduced ecological footprint (and carbon footprint), as in pre-industrial times, but retaining only the most essential of modern technology and convenience.
The rich nations will have to take the lead. There is no way that other countries are going to cut back on their "development" when they see the rich nations enjoying all these luxuries and the people that live there working not nearly as hard as themselves.
And what's needed in most countries is wealth redistribution and equitable access to critical resources such as land and water. Meat and dairy production have to go back to pre-industrial levels or even less, now that the science on eating these is clearer. After a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, people can figure out how best to move forward. This is a crisis like no other. People should urgently start experimenting what's the least they can do with.
Yes, the rich people are still there, and it's the rich that always start the destruction before everyone joins in, while the rich would have moved on to more destructive consumption. But the people who are fighting about inequality should remember that the primary fight should be for a basic, decent life with dignity and with no fear and NOT for increasing consumption to the level of the rich. The rich should be made to understand that their high consumption days are OVER!!! When supplies run short and there is a crisis in a ship, it is time to remove special privileges to the first class passengers, while everyone agrees that EVERYONE has to consume less.
The crisis is major and the solutions required are nothing short of drastic. But if undertaken in the right spirit, life could turn out to be better for all. The people in the rich nations have to take the lead.
" The only solutions that would (or that may?) work will be considered "drastic" by most people, including by most people who post here on CD. Shutting down coal and nuclear power plants will reduce the electricity generation capacity by about 65%. But reducing overall consumption by 2/3rd in the US will still leave the consumption levels per capita above those of many other countries."
No, the only solution that will permit the continued survival of the human species is the immediate cessation of production of ALL industrial CO2 and other GHGs. To wit, the end of technological civilization, coupled with a drastic drop/cull of the human population.
And you can bet your ass NO ONE in the West is going to tolerate that...
Yes, Galenwainwright, I didn't mean "shutting down coal and nuclear power plants" as the only solution, though the sentence order could have been better, or I should have said "For example...".
As to your last sentence, what does it say about the so-called "progressives"? Aren't they, and the so-called "left", only marginally better than the right-wingers, from an ecological point of view?
I don't agree with the part about "drastic drop/cull of the human population", although I agree on the crying need for a steady decline in human population. Simply cutting down on meat and dairy production and diverting the farmland and water for food production - that is, food that can be eaten directly by humans and not routed through cows and pigs and chicken - will suddenly make a lot more food available, ENOUGH for all humans today. Of course, this food will have to be made available to all those who need food, no matter whether they can afford to pay or not. Eliminating wasteful use of land, water and other resources should immediately take care of the food needs of all human beings. Massive switch to a predominantly vegan diet would have a phenomenal effect towards drastic reduction of greenhouse gases and other pollution.
Most people don't want simple solutions. And that's part of the problem.
People in the developed world are going to have to learn to live with smaller houses, smaller cars, less air conditioning, less heating, less driving, less meat consumption, less travel (domestically and internationally), more compact communities that are friendly to pedestrians and bicycles, and ... well ... fewer people, period. I'm not optimistic. But we could at least give it a serious try, rather than continue living in a state of childish denial.
After the Revolution, the Koch Brothers and Rush Limbaugh will have to go to the very end of the line. Alas, it's a long, long, wait when you're number 7,000,000,002.
The rich / devoloped nations use Hydro and Nuclear power heavily, the so-called developing world inc China, India and Korea use coal, wood anything they can, China is adding 100 coal-fired electricity plants a year for the next 10 yrs.. Go tell Mao to cut it out lol!!!! >^^<
Anthropologists have found that man evolves more during periods of rapid climate change. I am thinking we're in for some major evolving. Hopefully it will be towards a more intelligent, kinder and gentler man. But I fear it may just be the opposite.
There is hope though. With all the pollution of plastic in our diets, we may find the next evolution of man to be much more effeminate. All those plastic bottles of tap water we see our kids running around with, all those can goods packaged in plastic lined cans and packaging, may just be a positive.
" I am thinking we're in for some major evolving..."
Count a massive human die back/cull in your evolutionary plans.
The only sustainable technology for humans is late Paleolithic.
The only sustainable technology for humans is late Paleolithic.
Untrue. We can use modern technology — if we're careful. Not every post-lithic techology is destructive. What we definitely cannot afford is lunatic religions and a viral birthrate. But computers, modern housing, clothing, artificial lighting, medicine, education, and transportation? They need not be destructive, though they are destructive today because of our hubris and the psychopathic Capitalist hegemony.
As Alcyon says, we can have a sustainable civilisation that's more personally rewarding for more people than this one is. All we need do is choose it ...and remove those from power whose greed stands in our way. Before we start the big die-off that will collapse everything.
"But computers, modern housing, clothing, artificial lighting, medicine, education, and transportation."
Every single one of the technologies you list IS UTTERLY DEPENDENT upon the extraction, processing and use of hydrocarbons. Period.
It is the very act of extraction and processing of those hydrocarbons that is killing us! Those technologies, as benign as you may wish them to be, are incredibly destructive, leaving behind a toxic legacy that will last for thousands of years.
We have become slaves to the convenience of these technologies. Who wants to spend hours raising the source for the fibers to spin the threads to weave the cloth to make the clothes, when you can just drive to the mall to buy the latest fashions? Doesn't modern (industrial) medicine guarantee the 'viral birthrate'? Doesn't modern electrical artificial lighting absolutely require the destruction of the environment no matter whether the source is a hydro dam, coal or natural gas burning power plant?
Technology is NOT the answer.
Technology breeds complexity. Complexity ensures failure.
The 'Big Die-off' that leads to Collapse is already well underway, especially for other species, most especially the entire eco-system of the Ocean.. It's just that at this point, it's not radically affecting humans! At the moment, we are no more than mildly inconvenienced. Once that changes, you will see how humans really behave under extreme pressure. Rapa Nui (Easter Island) anyone?
Every single one of the technologies you list IS UTTERLY DEPENDENT upon the extraction, processing and use of hydrocarbons. Period.
It is the very act of extraction and processing of those hydrocarbons that is killing us! Those technologies, as benign as you may wish them to be, are incredibly destructive, leaving behind a toxic legacy that will last for thousands of years.
I'm sorry, Galen, but I honestly believe you haven't thought it through as carefully as usual.
Consider a steady-state earthly population of 1000. Can you imagine anything such a small group could do (short of being frankly suicidal, as by building and detonating a cobalt bomb) that could trouble Earth?
It seems clear to me that all our problems stem ultimately from overpopulation: there are so many humans that we've overwhelmed Earth's ability to source our needs and sink our wastes. Reduce our population to a level where our demands on Mama are at a level she can meet, and our problems go away.
It's not technology x that's the problem, it's that Capitalism exists to create unlimited wealth for the few regardless of cost to everyone else.
There is no reason (I know you know this, I'm saying it pro forma) to manufacture something that weighs 2000 lbs and can travel 110 mph to transport a 180 lb human in stop-and-go traffic. That's ridiculous. It should be criminally ridiculous!
Similarly, there's no reason for houses to leak heat like mad in the winter, or require artificial cooling in summer. Nor is there any reason for zoning laws that make it impossible for people to grow their own food, limit their water use, or do a thousand and one other things that have no purpose other than to make the too-wealthy even more wealthy.
You know where I'm going with this, so I won't bother laying it all out explicitly. We are forced to do things for the benefit of the few, to the detriment of the rest of us. I haven't seen any studies (have you?) of what our western footprint would be like if we simply stopped being mindlessly wasteful and wealth-for-the-few focused, but my intuition, from looking around, is that our footprint would decrease in size by a factor of Lots.
We have become slaves to the convenience of these technologies. Who wants to spend hours raising the source for the fibers to spin the threads to weave the cloth to make the clothes, when you can just drive to the mall to buy the latest fashions? Doesn't modern (industrial) medicine guarantee the 'viral birthrate'? Doesn't modern electrical artificial lighting absolutely require the destruction of the environment no matter whether the source is a hydro dam, coal or natural gas burning power plant?
So? That "slavery" isn't genetic, it's learned behavior and can easily be unlearned. And will be, if we want to live. But that doesn't mean we've to live in chance-met caves, or hunt our dinner with flint-tipped spears.
There's a poster appearing in various places, I'm sure you've seen it, that makes me laugh. It's the one that says something like "if a man has a houseful of old newspapers or a woman a trailerful of cats, we recognise that there's something wrong with their thinking. But if a man is obsessed with amassing more money than he can ever use, we laud him as an example to all." I laugh because I've been trying to make the same point in discussion fora, albeit not so cleverly and certainly not so successfully, for years: greed is a serious psychopathology. Greedy people are dangerous to us all. If we want to stay in business as a species, we must begin to recognise that fact and act accordingly to remove them from power and put them into treatment instead.
An essential step in the process of creating a successful civilisation that doesn't involve living in caves or chipping arrowheads out of flint is to establish anti-psychopath filters in our political lives. Once we have that in place, we'll find that, just as we do in our private lives now, we will make things out of need or joy, not for someone else's profit.
If we abandon feudalism in all its forms, we can have anything we value enough to work for, as long as it's not factually impossible. If we want decorated clothing, then we have to be adult enough to recognise that someone --by default ourselves-- will have to (as you almost said) care for the non-humans/fields, spin and dye the thread, weave, cut, and sew the cloth, study art to develop decoration ideas, and create the decoration. Every time. Likewise, mutatis mutandis, with modern medicine, computers, roads, or whatever the case may be. It'll be up to each of us to decide what we really value.
But that's not a dreadful prospect, except perhaps to the lazy or hard-of-thinking.
Well said.
And brilliantly argued. Thank you.