One of the main things that struck me on reading Collapse was that human society could survive quite a lot of environmental depletion, but that armed aggression wiped out more than half the population of Easter Island and its society never recovered.

I think youngdan has a point in thinking that some governments in a recession or in a situation of environmental pressure may think that wiping out a portion of the world's population was a good move. However use of nuclear weapons does not seem, even for this crew, to be a workable solution, as the land and resources they want would be contaminated for tens of thousands of years.

I do not see Russia as the aggressor. I see them being goaded into an attack. The policy of absorbing a first strike deliberately makes it tempting and I poimt out that it is very doable.

My oft stated opinion is that Russia has decided to resist this globalisation and push for one world government. The plan is to have a nuclear war so that the foolish people will demand a one world government to prevent it ever happening again. Later the population will be reduced by making decent food affordable only to the elite.

youngdan wrote:

I do not see Russia as the aggressor. I see them being goaded into an attack. The policy of absorbing a first strike deliberately makes it tempting and I poimt out that it is very doable.

My oft stated opinion is that Russia has decided to resist this globalisation and push for one world government. The plan is to have a nuclear war so that the foolish people will demand a one world government to prevent it ever happening again. Later the population will be reduced by making decent food affordable only to the elite.

After a nuclear war, no Russia, no US, no people, no government.

youngdan wrote:

You can stay in your fantasy if you think 200 nukes could not destroy America.

Depends on the sizeof the nukes. 200 submarine launched nukes do not have that capacity.

youngdan wrote:

The war plans for many years called for Launch On Warning. When the Russian missiles were seen coming over Canada then America would fire..

The missile launch would be captured on satellite, but by then of course, according to your scenario, the US will have already launched its missiles having been warned by your single submarine firing its missiles previously.

youngdan wrote:

Where do you think Al Queda will get nukes.

The Russians, according to Alexander Lebed, have lost about 100 suitcase nukes.

youngdan wrote:

Do you actually believe there is such a thing as Al Queda

Of course.

Lestat wrote:

youngdan wrote:

You can stay in your fantasy if you think 200 nukes could not destroy America.

Depends on the sizeof the nukes. 200 submarine launched nukes do not have that capacity.

Take out say 150 cities and then 50 important parts of the infra structure like the Hoover dam, add in a lot of fallout and what do you think would be left?

It is unthinkable.

cactus flower wrote:

They tried it for hundreds of thousands of years. We've tried agriculture for a couple of thousand and industry for a couple of hundred.

The anthropologists who wrote the articles?

cactus flower wrote:

The worrying thing about Lestat's view is that it might be shared by some of those in the position to do damage (sorry, Lestat).

I hope it is

Lestat wrote:

The good news is that because both sides are guaranteed to be destroyed, it's never going to happen..

Lestat wrote:

The good news is that because both sides are guaranteed to be destroyed, it's never going to happen..

Can't the hoors live on the ISS or go to Mars or somewhere? There is a reason they are investigating Mars so fervently this weather, I know it.

So, what do we do when the nukes hit Shannon, Knock, Dublin, Cork, Dundalk, Gortahork and Glenamaddy? This nuclear winter will be worse than the Famine I suppose in that there will be no America to bail out to.

Squire wrote:

Take out say 150 cities and then 50 important parts of the infra structure like the Hoover dam, add in a lot of fallout and what do you think would be left?

It is unthinkable.

Yes indeed. As I said, youngdan's submarine launch will cause massive damage and millions of casualties.

Quote :

Potential consequences of a regional nuclear war
A study presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2006 asserted that even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could produce as many direct fatalities as all of World War II and disrupt the global climate for a decade or more. In a regional nuclear conflict scenario where two opposing nations in the subtropics would each use 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons (ca. 15 kiloton each) on major populated centers, the researchers estimated fatalities from 2.6 million to 16.7 million per country. Also, as much as five million tons of soot would be released, which would produce a cooling of several degrees over large areas of North America and Eurasia, including most of the grain-growing regions. The cooling would last for years and could be "catastrophic" according to the researchers.[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_warfare#Potential_consequences_of_a_regional_nuclear_war

Lets assume that the strike will kill 100 million people outright. That still leaves 200 million survivors in the USA. Crucially, guaranteed to survive will be the lads and lassies who will launch a counter-strike. Equally crucially, it leaves untouched the US forces, conventional and nuclear, deployed overseas.

I think you are missing the point that, of itself a submarine strike on teh US is insufficient to win a war for Russia. It would be like hitting a wasp's nest with a shovel, you will cause damage but you will get stung yourself.

Lestat wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

They tried it for hundreds of thousands of years. We've tried agriculture for a couple of thousand and industry for a couple of hundred.

The anthropologists who wrote the articles?

cactus flower wrote:

The worrying thing about Lestat's view is that it might be shared by some of those in the position to do damage (sorry, Lestat).

I hope it is

Lestat wrote:

The good news is that because both sides are guaranteed to be destroyed, it's never going to happen..

Not sure what your question is Lestat, if you would like to clarify, I'll try to answer it. Do you mean, who are the authors? Jared Diamond is one.
Its surely not contested that hunter gatherer life lasted, depending on how you define our species, either millions or hundreds of thousands of years. Agriculture is seen by a lot of ecologists as an environmental disaster for the species and planet and is only a few thousand years old. The new theory is that it was a response to adverse climate change. Urbanisation and industrialisation is a product of agricultural development and not possible without it. Industrialisation is less than two hundred years old in in that short time is engdangering the viability of the planet for our species.
Most of the reviews of modern history so far have been entirely too flattering.

In the X-Files they engineered people to survive radiation exposure using cockroach genes. Do you think the writers might be onto something?

20/08/2008 - 11:02:37 (Breaking News today)

Quote :

Poland and the the US today sealed a controversial deal to build an American missile base in the country.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski signed the agreement for the base which has angered Russia.

The formal signing came six days after the two countries agreed to a deal that will see 10 US interceptor missiles placed just 115 miles from Russia’s western frontier.

The deal has sparked threats from Russia that Poland is making itself vulnerable to attack – even a nuclear one.

The deal, and Russia’s rhetoric, have further strained Moscow’s ties with the West in the wake of its invasion of Georgia.

Lestat wrote:

Lets assume that the strike will kill 100 million people outright. That still leaves 200 million survivors in the USA. Crucially, guaranteed to survive will be the lads and lassies who will launch a counter-strike. Equally crucially, it leaves untouched the US forces, conventional and nuclear, deployed overseas.

I think you are missing the point that, of itself a submarine strike on teh US is insufficient to win a war for Russia. It would be like hitting a wasp's nest with a shovel, you will cause damage but you will get stung yourself.

Why on earth assume so low? Drop one in the middle of New York and how many do you thing it will kill? TaKe out all the main cities and you are going to have a greatly reduced population who will be dying of fallout and within months will be killing each other for food. Then comes winter. The place will disintegrate into disorder.

You say it leaves untouched the US forces, well why will it? Will they be wearing their cloaks of invisibility or some such as suggested by Audi? It is utterly impossible to predict with any degree of certainty any of this. Believing that you have any reasonable chance at all is utterly dillusional.

Auditor #9 wrote:

So, what do we do when the nukes hit Shannon, Knock, Dublin, Cork, Dundalk, Gortahork and Glenamaddy? This nuclear winter will be worse than the Famine I suppose in that there will be no America to bail out to.

A 20 megaton device exploded 3 miles over Cork, Shannon, Knock, Belfast and Dublin would effectively wipe out the population of the island. The temporary survivors in the south east and midlands would be killed by radiation poisoning quite quickly.

It's preferable to emigrating to the US anyway.

Squire wrote:

Why on earth assume so low? Drop one in the middle of New York and how many do you thing it will kill?.

Beacuse we are talking about relatively small weapons. A submarine launched warhead has a yield of about 100 kt, approximately 8 times a Hiroshima bomb (13 kt). That weapon killed just 70,000 people immediately. Pop one over New York and you might kill a couple of million civilians.

Squire wrote:

TaKe out all the main cities and you are going to have a greatly reduced population who will be dying of fallout and within months will be killing each other for food. Then comes winter. The place will disintegrate into disorder.

Yes. But you are failing to differentiate between instant destruction and the after effects of a small nuclear strike.

Squire wrote:

You say it leaves untouched the US forces, well why will it? Will they be wearing their cloaks of invisibility or some such as suggested by Audi? .

Actually I said it will leave untouched the nuclear forces who are all located in bunkers far underground, safe from those tiny little submarine launched war heads. NORAD forinstance is buried 2000 feet under a mountain in Colorado. They won't even hear a bang if a 100 kt bomb explodes on top of their bunker.

The lads on the surface in Fort Bragg and the Pentagon will die. Unless your submarine commander decides to waste his missiles on non -military targets like New York that is.

Even poor old Ronald Reagan moved past the idea that a nuclear war was winnable., although he came very close to wiping out the entire human population.

John Gaddis he let slip in his recent book that in 1984, during the course of operation Abel Archer , we were brought to the brink of nuclear war between the US and the USSR. Reagan and many of his generals believed in first nuclear strike as the way to deal with Russia. At the time he made the "Well start bombing Russia in five minutes'" quip on live television his fingers were itching to press the button. His religious beliefs, interestingly described by Gore Vidal in "Armageddon", were that the good people would be transported to the next world whist the Evil Empire of Gog Gorbachev would be obliterated by nuclear war.

This whole story of Abel Archer was excellently told in a recent Channel 4 documentary and is confirmed by Gaddis himself.

Depending on who you listen to, Abel Archer was either a very elaborate exercise for a NATO first strike nuclear attack against Russia, or it was a NATO exercise used to mask preparations for a real attack by the US.

At the height of this excercise a junior Russian guy called Petrov refused to press the button in response to an apparent incoming attack.

Along with Petrov, the other people responsible for saving the planet and us, were Carl Sagan and the makers of a US drama documentary "The Day After", watched by 100 million Americans. This showed the devastating effects of nuclear war and nuclear winter in a way that even Regan could understand (it was said that he only really understood movies). After seeing the documentary and receiving reports from Gordiev in the Russian embassy in London and intelligence on the battle readiness of the USSR to respond, his eagerness for a first strike waned. Also the other NATO leaders including Thatcher refused to take part in the ultimate stage of Abel Archer which involved their personal pressing of a dummy button simultaneously. Nonetheless, Reagan went ahead and left the US with his nuclear briefcase in his hand and went ahead with the exercise from Korea.

After Abel Archer, Star Wars then became his big story. This hastened the end of the USSR, by some accounts, but I think personally that Abel Archer itself probably frightened Gorbachev to death.

C:\Documents and Settings\L2\Desktop\Iofficer_files\Salon_com Books Did Reagan win the Cold War.htm

C:\Documents and Settings\L2\Desktop\Iofficer_files\Generation Bomb - Page 2 - Salon_com.htm

http://archive.salon.com/books/review/2006/01/25/gaddis/index1.html

It is hard to believe that anyone thinks nuclear war is "winnable".
The poor bastards on Mars would starve as soon as the baked beans ran out.

cactus flower wrote:

Even poor old Ronald Reagan moved past the idea that a nuclear war was winnable., although he came very close to wiping out the entire human population. .

I know, even worse is that Youngdan thinks that one submarine can do it.

Just to remind ye of what some of the earlier ones looked like

https://machinenation.forumakers.com/general-history-f4/the-face-of-the-devil-t1010.htm

The chances of nuclear war have been increasing steadily over the past 10 years. More countries have nuclear weapons, there are more ideologoical divisions in the world, there are defined economic blocks in the world, there are resource shortages, there is a breakdown of international law and an increase in unilateralism.

The rhetoric between the USA and Russia is not a facade for scheming intelligent and pragmatic diplomats. Recent history and more distant history has proven this. More worrying is that the populations of the most powerful countries are becoming entrenched behind their leaders and will probably be ready to go to war. The populations of China, Russia and the USA are all subject to an upsurge in nationalism and distruct of other international powers.

The trend is clear but the leaders and the people don't remember the consequences. The peacocks in charge of France, Russia and the USA are a particular worry. Gordon Brown, who previously announced to boom-bust economics, may also be suspect.

Another factor is that there are now many smaller countries willing to align themselves with one side or the other. This is partly a spin off of globalisation, partly the result of the fall of the Soviet Union in Europe, partly the result of the USA's questionable foreign policy in the Americas and in the Middle East, partly the result of environmental and resource degradation and probably partly the reult of a few more things.

All in all it looks like that ubercliche of recent cliches - a perfect storm.

Lestat wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Even poor old Ronald Reagan moved past the idea that a nuclear war was winnable., although he came very close to wiping out the entire human population. .

I know, even worse is that Youngdan thinks that one submarine can do it.

200 of these is going to give you a severe headache.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1797130921363959855&hl=en

And perhaps something larger gets through.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2046393742348211186

Or they could land just offshore or if they take out Dams just think the consequences not just for power supply but down river.

Truly any retaliation would be a Peric victory. Indeed just pointless. You killed a lot of us so we are going to kill a lot of women and children too. That is pointless. Psychopaths make more sense than that.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

The chances of nuclear war have been increasing steadily over the past 10 years. More countries have nuclear weapons, there are more ideologoical divisions in the world, there are defined economic blocks in the world, there are resource shortages, there is a breakdown of international law and an increase in unilateralism.

The rhetoric between the USA and Russia is not a facade for scheming intelligent and pragmatic diplomats. Recent history and more distant history has proven this. More worrying is that the populations of the most powerful countries are becoming entrenched behind their leaders and will probably be ready to go to war. The populations of China, Russia and the USA are all subject to an upsurge in nationalism and distruct of other international powers.

The trend is clear but the leaders and the people don't remember the consequences. The peacocks in charge of France, Russia and the USA are a particular worry. Gordon Brown, who previously announced to boom-bust economics, may also be suspect.

Another factor is that there are now many smaller countries willing to align themselves with one side or the other. This is partly a spin off of globalisation, partly the result of the fall of the Soviet Union in Europe, partly the result of the USA's questionable foreign policy in the Americas and in the Middle East, partly the result of environmental and resource degradation and probably partly the reult of a few more things.

All in all it looks like that ubercliche of recent cliches - a perfect storm.

All in all, we need another way to do business. I like youngdan's idea of World Government. It seems to me that the Nation State at this stage is becoming nothing but a nuisance.

Lestat is still dreaming I see. 1 sub launchs 200 nukes which impacts in a matter of second to minutes. Then the only decision to be made would be how many if any of the 8000 icbms would they need to send on the 40 minute journey. I would say none would be needed. The Russians could just wipe the military and demand surrender maybe

I don't know cactus flower, if you look at your second link and study the occupational hazards of hunting-gathering you'll see it's far from a walk in the park.

4. Accidental and traumatic death rates vary greatly among hunter-gatherer populations...

7. Ample evidence is available that "social mortality" has been and is significant in the population equation for any hunting and gathering society.

In the above, social mortality refers to warfare, cannibalism, sacrifice, infanticide, etc. These are rare or non-existent today, though they may have been significant factors among certain hunter-gatherer populations in the not-too-distant past.

Hmmm... not my cup of tea. Got to be honest.

But... two broader points. Firstly, since mortality rates are high in hunter-gatherers, and life span short (approx 30 yrs) it's hardly surprising that cardiovascular diseases and cancers didn't present in any significant quantity. These are diseases of age. This isn't to deny that aspects of a h-g lifestyle aren't healthy. I agree, I think the diet is particularly healthy.

Point two. Yes, it did last many thousands of years longer than our current era. But... the dinosaurs lasted many millions of years longer in what was essentially a static relationship with the biosphere. One asteroid, or perhaps supervolcano, or whatever and down comes the biosphere and no more dinosaurs and near disastrous damage to said biosphere. I fear that an h-g approach would lock humanity into a terribly vulnerable situation where there was no means of dealing with existential crises. It could also possibly lead to an over adaptation in evolutionary terms to the environment where intelligence ultimately wasn't necessary. I think that would be a very real danger, there is no particular reason why intelligence has to survive as an aspect of humanity and in a constrained environment the possiblity that it might fade seems rather high in the long term.

Then, considering static relationships consider agriculture, take indeed feudalism and consider the social stasis of the Middle Ages where quite frankly nothing very much happened for centuries other than a grinding train of human misery for those forced by societal structures to work the land or wait on hand for the elites.

More to the point I tend to think that for all its flaws technological society is an improvement. The creation of art/design/literature/entertainment requires societal complexity far in advance of what an h-g society could deliver, and these are 'things'/products of our society quite distinct from materialism, or indeed material objects which are rightly critiqued as an aspect of excessive consumerism. But even there I worry that taking too pejorative a view can shade dangerously close to a sort of 'know better' elitism.

Oddly enough Kim Stanley Robinson in his Mars trilogy wrote about a terraformed Mars where h-g lifestyles were adopted by large groups of people. But, rather like the relationship between squats in London which I have direct experience of in the late 1980s and early 1990s and the broader capitalist UK society, his point (I think) was that such an approach could only really exist in relationships to a high technological society underpinning it and providing, as it were, a guarantor status.

Incidentally, interesting link to Beyond Vegetarianism.

Russia has a perfectly tenable nuclear deterrent which would survive a first strike. It's not merely the submarines, but strategic bombers and cruise missiles. And, again, the rhetoric from the Russians, as much as the boosterism from the US defence establishment on the missile shield is way over the top and hugely propagandist by both sides. The reality? It doesn't amount to very much either way.

Another small question. What evidence is there that the US was prepared to use a first strike in the 1980s? I've never heard of anything serious in that. This isn't to say the US wasn't testing Soviet defences (as the Soviets had done right through the 1960s/70s) but the idea that the US would seriously contemplate a nuclear war - I'm wondering what actual evidence there is of it. Even before Sagan et al coined the term 'nuclear winter' for the climatic after effects of a nuclear exchange the general sense was that a nuclear war was in any real terms 'unwinnable' Furthermore, although US rhetoric was hardline, it came in the context of what was seen as a failed detente in the 1970s, the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet forces and the imposition of a de facto military coup d'etat in Poland. So the US response was hardly an isolated provocation. Quite the opposite.

Quote :

[quote="WorldbyStorm"]I don't know cactus flower, if you look at your second link and study the occupational hazards of hunting-gathering you'll see it's far from a walk in the park.

4. Accidental and traumatic death rates vary greatly among hunter-gatherer populations...

7. Ample evidence is available that "social mortality" has been and is significant in the population equation for any hunting and gathering society.

In the above, social mortality refers to warfare, cannibalism, sacrifice, infanticide, etc. These are rare or non-existent today, though they may have been significant factors among certain hunter-gatherer populations in the not-too-distant past.

Hmmm... not my cup of tea. Got to be honest.

I'm not suggesting that we should voluntarily return to the hunter gatherer life. I do think it is worth contemplating that the human species lived for hundreds of thousands of years (or longer) without depleting the resources of the planet. It quite clear that we will not be able to continue living much longer the way we are now.

Hunter gatherer populations were low density and in the long run determined by food sources rather than random violence. In Tikopeia, where there was some agriculture as well as hunter gatherer livelihoods (Collapse, Jared Diamond) infanticide and abortion was practised to stop the population growing beyond the resources of their little island.

Modern society has wars and starvation that have killed millions.

A real change worth thinking about is that now we have contraception.

I'm not convinced that everyone died by 30. High infant mortality is usually the main factor in a low average life expectancy. If they died after child bearing age the population would have grown faster. A lot of Travellers in Ireland who have a very hard life live to their 50s or 60s.

Hunter gatherers are not stupid, but have a different range of skills and knowledge and are tuned in differently. A healthy diet, a short average life and a much shorter working day than we have - and proven sustainability.
Hunter gatherers had music, ritual, dance, religion and decorative arts.

If a meteor drops on us, there is nothing to say we won't go the way of the dinosaurs, is there ?

Agriculture was the turning point. With agriculture, we got the grim lives and bad diets you refer to. We also got the invention of numbers and writing to record agricultural surpluses. Society stratified, slavery and serfdom arrived. The elite got the art and poetry.

Whereas you are making a case the technological/industrial society is an improvement (for some?), you don't make one that it is sustainable.
For those of us who live privileged lives, the year 2008 is still confortable, but for how long, and what about the rest?

On the first strike, the best source was a Channel 4 documentary on Abel Archer. The Soviet Generals believed that a first strike had been considered.
Gore Vidal's "Armageddon" is a fascinating take on Reagan at the time.

For the rest, I've no immediate reply, but I have it in mind to start a thread on the fall of the U.S.S.R. as its a long and complex history.

Well I didn't really think you did Or perhaps I hoped you didn't.

Re lifespans. It's fairly easy to tell from bones what age people were when they died. I'd suspect the lifespan is accurate and isn't based on an a straight average. And it stands to reason, lifespans have increased with a number of fairly straightforward elements, including good hygiene, medical intervention, etc. Even something as simple as keeping clean, washing hands and suchlike is a significant step forward yet is only an artifact of the very recent past (frighteningly recent, Florence Nightingale was one of the first to make the link between sanitary conditions and increased health outcomes). And again, infanticide and abortion as population control methods? That's pretty dark, it might not be random, although I suspect that competition for food sources might lead to clashes with other groups of h-g's, but it's not exactly an advertisement for this, sustainable or not.

I think there is a qualitative as well as a quantative difference between hunter-gatherer societies cultural output and that of - say post-prehistoric societies and civilisations. It's not that I dismiss their output, simply that it is constrained by their circumstances.

I take your point about meteors, but the thing is that we are in a position to actually do something about it (already there are limited monitoring systems in place and serious consideration of how to deal with threats), and as time progresses we will be in a better position to ensure not all our eggs are in the one planetary basket, so to speak. And we have a responsibility to protect the biosphere, not merely because it's the only one we've got, but because it's the only one we know of so far and the rich and varied nature of life, sentient and non sentient is precious beyond many peoples comprehension. You need a technologically advanced society, though, to do that. It's the only way. For example one very sensible move recently has been the Svalbard Global Seed Vault which preserves plant seeds in case of global crisis, but that's a reactive measure, not a proactive one - and it is utterly dependent on some level of technological sophistication remaining in the event of such a crisis.

Speaking about seedds I'm not sure agriculture is the fly in the ointment. It is true that that led to cul-de-sacs or a short-term slowing of social development, although, compare and contrast the situation between the length of time of hunter-gatherers and all that has come after. Massive changes in a much much shorter period of time. But the thing is that it hasn't been uniformly downhill since then. I think there's a strong counter argument that particularly in the past two centuries standards of living have broadly improved. I was very struck by a statement on NPR radio recently by an American how China has managed - despite its authoritarian bent - to put the welfare of its people, a massive population, largely front and centre of its social policy, hence one has a highly educated population, living in increasingly better standards, etc, etc. This isn't to dismiss that authoritarianism or many many of the negative impacts but it is to say that for - what is it - a billion people or so life is less hard than it was twenty, thirty, forty years ago and before that.

I completely agree sustainability is key, but sustainability is only possible through a combination of technological advance and careful/sane resource utilisation. At least if we want to preserve the best of what we have which broadly is democracy, culture, etc, etc. And really, what other choice do we have? Short of totalitarian programmes to do away with those billions who have every right to better standards of living trying to turn the clock back is impossible. It would be resented, regarded as a second colonialism, generate wars and so on. And the solutions to our current problems are so easy. Can I recommend Victor Papanek, a proponent of socially engaged design? He propounded the following which I ripped off a website...

"Firstly in the area of design for the Third World. Papanek considered that in a world where billions lacked the appropriate and sustainable technologies to improve their lives. He pointed to the lack of development in lighting or in upgrading or making more sustainable simple technologies such as paraffin or oil lamps.

Secondly in the area training and educational devices for those who are disabled. His particular focus was on simple products which improve life, such as hearing aids. The costs of such items were extremely expensive, but through a more rational allocation of resources such costs could be cut. Yet this would demand a political and social will.

Third he looked to design for medicine and health. Topical this, indirectly in an Irish context. He noted that at the time medical instruments were either over designed or extremely crude. He sought a more measured approach.

Fourth he considered design for research was a necessity. Here we see an interesting, almost techno-utopian strand in his thinking. The idea is that much experimental equipment was over designed or badly designed thus inflating the costs of research. Again, he sought social and political change, but also accountability on the part of those who commissioned such products.

Fifth, he saw the design of survival systems in hostile environments as a crucial priority. This included underwater, deserts, polar areas and space environments. With increasing pollution and a global environment under significant pressure he considered that it was necessary to ’sustain human life under marginal conditions’.

Sixth, he looked to design for ‘breakthrough concepts’. This is in some respects the most radical of his ideas. What he sought was rather than continual marginal improvement in products, instead a complete rethink about the purpose and function of items in order to make them more sustainable. So if you design a kettle you create one which allows for more precise control of the amount of water boiled in order to save electricity, and so on and so forth extended outwards to encompass all products."

I'd argue that we throw in sustainable energy sources, a shift away from ecologically detrimental transport technologies to cleaner more efficient ones (say hi to trans continental trains and goodbye to aircraft except in extremis), products that are smarter from basic consumer products such as cookers which are low energy using/long lasting to luxury goods that don't need to be replaced every three or four years (or have a modular construction so that as some parts wear out they can be replaced in situ, rather like RAM in a computer), food production closer to home, etc, etc and suddenly we can keep much of what is good in contemporary society and dispense with that which is bad. And in tandem we refocus our political institutions to be more local and global because that's the only way we save the planet, and as importantly ourselves.

Sorry, on a less happy note I'm not a huge fan of Vidal, his recent inserts on C4 say it all, the waspish (in all senses) quips to demonstrate his omniscience and the pitiful lack of knowledge/class of others. I think he's an old snob to be frank - whatever about some of his writings which were pretty good.

As regards the Soviet Generals,it doesn't matter that they believed it, what evidence did they have? My reading is that they misinterpreted nearly everything. And this on the back of their own provocations which entirely undermined Jimmy Carter and his bid for reelection - a man who made genuine efforts to improve the world. This isn't to say that Reagan was right, indeed clearly he too had far too flippant an attitude, nearly seeing it all as a rhetorical game (hence his bomb Russia quip), but that doesn't come near to his being in favour of a first strike.

Quote :

Sorry, on a less happy note I'm not a huge fan of Vidal, his recent inserts on C4 say it all, the waspish (in all senses) quips to demonstrate his omniscience and the pitiful lack of knowledge/class of others. I think he's an old snob to be frank - whatever about some of his writings which were pretty good.

To put one easy thing to bed, I'm certainly not a fan of Vidal's, and he certainly was an outrageous snob - but his arrogance made him fearless: I still recommend his piece on Reagan.

On the hunter-gatherer question, I'm not making a case that any stage of our history is better or worse than the present, just the point that it was sustainable (and not so grim as people sometimes assume) and that our current society is not sustainable.

I'm all in favour of smart incremental adjustments and try and make them in my own life, but I don't believe that incremental voluntary change will sort it out, or that we can necessarily go on consuming resources the way we do now - over 4,000 litres of water a day per person in the UK, according to a post in the Water Shortage thread here.

Looking forward to going back to the 80s, but I've an early start, so I'll have to do it another time.