Believe me I’d be more than happy to live without it but my lifestyle manager has demands.
Not if we go back to those can on a string variety. The future sounds different! 
But not nylon string?
Example number 5,674,982
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Cotton string of course. Every hipster will want a hand painted and woven cotton string phone. Welcome to 2043, it’s the future 
Hemp would be cooler! 
Silk more expensive.
Sheep you numpties.
Return power to the sheep.
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Them and cows are worse than Chelsea tractors.
Exterminate them all
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No I’m not. That’s the opposite of what I’m doing.
I’m arguing - actually, fuck that. I’m stating we are living on a natural system based on physical laws, and we have absolutely no choice but to live within the limits of that system.
I don’t want understand what you find obtuse or difficult about that.
You can point to loads of examples of things that get produced with fossil fuels, and obviously those things are really useful to us - but the fact remains that unless we can produce these things within planetary limits then we don’t have a future.
You’re saying ‘but medical equipment’ to a planet that is cold and indifferent to the lifestyle we’ve become accustomed to.
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Replace “really useful” with vital, essential or crucial and I might start giving your all or nothing take some credibility.
Alternative means of manufacture isnt happening in your lifetime, but I’d agree change does need to be accelerated.
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It may or may not. It’s surprising how fast a technology can be replaced when it is an obvious improvement on what went before.
The flip side is something like fusion energy, which looks great on paper but is perpetually 30 years away.
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There’s a huge amount of waste and inefficiency in our present economy and plenty of room for savings in energy and resources. Do we really need a new phone every two years? Must it be meat with every meal? Can’t you just take the bus to work instead of driving?
We’ve become conditioned by the forces of capitalism to want and expect more and more and putting a break on that is going to be painful for a lot of people. We aren’t going to accept it until the consequences are staring us in the face. Already there are fires and floods, droughts and destructive storms, these will only get worse until the tipping point in our minds. By that time the climate’s tipping point will have passed and we will face forces way beyond our ability to handle.
I always thought that when I reached my sixties I’d envy the young, but now I have, I fear for them.
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I mentioned electric cars in a previous post, no-one 20 years ago would have thought it possible that so many are being used now.
Unless something groundbreaking happens soon, no-one is building an electric car without including shit loads of plastic in their manufacture.
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My take isn’t ‘all or nothing’. We just have to live within planetary limits. I’m not setting those limits. The planet is.
I’m not sure you are really understanding my point on this.
The problem I have with this discussion about things being vital or essential is that it keeps missing the bigger point.
Those things are vital and essential to our civilisation, and it’s continuation. However, the fact is Planet Earth does not give a shit about our civilisation, any more than it cared about Trilobites. If we cannot wrestle our civilisations impact to with planetary limits, then it’s all over.
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Anyway, today Farage said that the West had provoked Russia into attacking Ukraine.
That should finish the chinless cunt, but it won’t. People are balls deep on this cult. Nigel is laughing all the way to Couts.
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And then there’s this…
The public really need to be aware of just what kind of people Reform attracts.
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There are two challenges: scale and cost.
We live on an oil dependent society. Let say you buy a 100% cotton jacket. Something most people don’t associate with oil.
First off, the cotton itself. Cotton is relatively cheap because of the high yields from oil based fertilisers and pesticides. Without them we would use roughly 5x more land. The harvesting is done by machines which keeps cost low, are fuelled by machines rather than people doing the heavy lifting.
That cotton needs some color, right? Enter oil-based dyes. And those sturdy threads holding it all together? Probably nylon or polyester - often not counted in that “100%” claim. You probably need buttons or toggles ( or those little bits and the end of pull cords). They are probably plastic. And that soft feel or water-resistant? Thank a chemical wash for that. Oh, and to keep it wrinkle-free? Thats formaldehyde. All coming from oil.
The jacket needs to go where it’s cold and cotton does not grow. It goes on a diesel ship which to prevent rust is painted in an oil dervived paint.
Finally, it lands in a store, hanging on a plastic coat hanger. We swipe our plastic card or hand over some polymer cash, and pop it in your “bag for life” (that’ll last a year if you’re lucky). Let’s say you spill some fizzy drink on it? Even those bubbles come from oil-derived CO2. You need to wash it. Your machine’s probably powered by fossil fuels, and that laundry detergent. Again full of chemicals that come from oil.
My point is it’s a complex web.
As a society we have a huge challenge shifting our dependence. It’s why numerous technologies are needed. From solar panels to genetic engineering. For some things today there are no alternatives. Others need to be scaled and optimised to bring price down. It requires step change improvements in multiple areas (which is what I am trying to do).
Oil is far more than fuel, almost everything in our home today has been dependent on oil.
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You what?
Sure. But who are you addressing this to? Me or the planet?
If it’s me, I’m entirely irrelevant. I don’t set planetary limits. If it’s the planet, good luck getting it to listen to you.
On the subject of oil, the most important thing in terms of global warming is to stop pumping it’s trapped carbon into the atmosphere, which means regardless of all the supply chain issues, we need to decarbonise energy production as quickly as possible.
Plastics are another problem entirely. But as micro-plastics have just been found to have a large role in increasing rates of erectile dysfunction, I expect that one to be sorted quite quickly. Nothing stirs our patriarchal societies to action like a clear and present threat to penises. 
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Ha Ha…
my mind went straight to Eddie Murphy…
‘i think playtimes over’
Vast majority of the world fertiliser is made through the Haber Bosch process (basically combing nitrogen with hydrogen).
That hydrogen (methane) comes from natural gas and oil.
That’s why the war in Ukraine pushed up food prices. Because it became much more expensive for our farmers to pay for fertiliser
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