🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <l3in3pINN32v@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM> jdr@starflight.Corp.Sun.COM writes:

>We get the first by the simple observation that if we reduce the amount
>of some initial quantity by the same fraction n each time period for n
>such time periods, then for values of n larger than about 10, the amount
>remaining converges on a fixed number, which just happens to be about
>what you would have left from most resource stocks if you had originally
>designed the things out of which they were made with about a 200 percent
>safety margin.

	Yet,  I think you are taking a few of these concepts just a little
bit too far.  I don't see why an arcology on earth needs to recycle it's
air.  A human being does not inherently produce pollution,  other than than
an amount of CO2 which is much less than that emitted by his automobile,
and really,  really tiny amounts of methane and things of this nature.  The
carbon in the CO2 ultimately comes from plant matter (prehaps processed
by animals) and was removed from the air,  so this isn't all that bad.
Nature has operated very well for at least ~300 million years with this
integrity loop,  and I don't see how/why humans would/should modify it.

	Similarly,  many kinds of technology that we use seem to be
becoming less and less dependent on rare materials.  Solar cells can be made
from ubiquous silicon and only microgram quantites of dopant materials.
With nanofabrication,  we might be able to get rid of the dopants (and
with nanofabrication,  we might be able to make strips alternating organic
dye molecules in an organic-semiconductor diode matrix that would essentially
rectify AC light waves to DC electrical current).  We really don't need to
do anything with materials that fundamentally destroys them -- and nature
has maintained a 100% closed loop system on the planet for millions of
years.  I don't see why we need to entirely separate ourselves from it --
prehaps concentrating a good part of our population in arcologies might
help,  but I would not want to live in an arcology if I didn't have some
kind of reasonable access to natural spaces.

	Similarly,  to the guy in California who wants to exclude humans
entirely from natural spaces,  I agree that we need to create continuous
corridors of functioning biomes.  I'd also like to see you say this in
front of a real radical environmentalist.  Most of the radical
environmentalists that I've know feel a strong connection to natural
spaces...  They get a great deal of joy out of being in them.  A human
being on foot who carries his food in a backpack and who packs out his
trash puts a minimal impact on the environment in most places.  And
in places that are really marginal (say the Alpine Gardens in the
WMNF),  where footsteps would do serious damage to plants,  humans
can concentrate their damage into narrow trails that still are safe
for wildlife package.  People like him give environmentalists a bad
reputation

>---
>
>jdr@starflight.corp.sun.com, starflt@uunet.uu.net
>Jon Roland
>Starflight Corporation, 1755 E Bayshore Rd #9A,
>Redwood City, CA 94063-4142, 415/361-8141


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