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Re: Yuri receives hypocrite of the week award (was Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy)



This topic came up originally in trying to discuss jw's contention that the
solar system could support trillions of people.  Assuming some of those
trillions (even one trillion) resided on earth, it makes sense (to me) that
most of this population would reside in cities.  The problem with cities is
that they are high-density consumers of resources, those that produce
energy, food, raw materials, etc.  My particular area of concern is energy.
 Cities require high density energy production (or conversion) centers. 
Today these are provided in a number of ways that won't necessarily be
available in the future.  Energy sources such as solar and wind ARE NOT
well suited to high-density demands.  My argument was that this is ONE
factor that will effectively limit the size of cities and consequently the
sustainable population of earth--(there are of course many other factors). 


DLJ  wants to argue that cities somehow 'produce' resources--food, energy,
etc.  While I see a vague logic in his arguments (if one accepts that
technology, consumerism, advanced society, etc. is spawned in cities--and
wouldn't be without), I really don't follow much of the rest.  Cities
didn't form originally until agricultural technology had produced food
surpluses.  Up until then, you either grew you OWN food, or hunted for it. 
Only when stable excess supplies became available were cities able to form.
 If the coal, oil, and natural gas disappeared tomorrow, the cities would
be the first to die (and quickly--shut down the transportation system for a
month and the cities starve).  The rural areas could survive (with very
small populations) using other resources.  It is becoming possible (through
advanced communications technology) to have an advanced, technological
culture WITHOUT cities--a culture that still needs food, energy, and other
resources--so I don't see DLJ's insistence that cities 'create' these
resources.

RWT

John McCarthy <jmc@Steam.stanford.edu> wrote in article
<JMC.96Dec10133854@Steam.stanford.edu>...
> I'm confused about what this argument is about.  Cities get supplies
> from the rest of the world, and the rest of the world gets many things
> from cities, e.g. equipment, government, entertainment.  Is there an
> argument that one could get along without the other?  If they were
> separated, the cities would starve, the rest would have a big die-off
> but would survive and would then re-create cities in order to get the
> services cities supply.
> 
> Is there some deeper issue that I am missing?
> -- 
> John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
> During the last years of the Second Millenium, the Earthmen complained
> a lot.
> 



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