not a food post: the problem

i'm sure this happens to everyone: you're busy laminating dough, or mixing the same 58K of whole wheat you mix every day, or shaping that 100,000th batard, and your mind gets to wandering. here's the obvious-but-not-spoken-often-enough epiphany i had the other day - i figured i'd write it down, even though it's not going to play well in peoria.

so i was thinking about the general state of affairs here on the planet. i read a fair number of left-wing and radical blogs, and a whole bunch of people are concerned about a whole bunch of things. the problem is global climate change, they say. the problem is peak oil. the problem is habitat loss. the problem is extinction. but the really sad fact of the matter is, these aren't really the problem. they're symptoms, sure.

but we're the problem. us. all of us. humanity.

right away i want to take all pains to point out that this is not a moral issue - it's entirely neutral. is an algae bloom an immoral thing? of course not. we just happen to be an algae bloom, writ large. we're the best complex organism on the planet when it comes to consuming energy and reproducing. and no matter how much you, reader, recycle or cut back or eat compost, you're not changing that fact. if there are resources to extract then we, as a species, are going to extract and use them. no amount of hand-wringing will do a whit of good.

that said, i can see about three possible outcomes:

1) things stay pretty much the same - all the r&d money gets thrown into ethanol and "clean" coal and other quick-fix bullshit. meanwhile we start fighting harder for the less and less that's left, until someone decides it's worth throwing nuclear weapons. the population declines drastically - whether or not any groups hold on to some measure of civilization is up in the air. depends on how bad the war is, i suppose. much worse for humanity if the oil infrastructure gets torched in the fighting. on a geological time-frame, at least, the planet will be fine.

2) we catch a break and someone produces a feasible fusion reactor, or the chinese start putting up solar satellites, or something else of that magnitude. while this seems like a utopian scenario, all it means is more input for the algae. how many people can this planet really sustain? i see this as a "take the kids to the zoo to see a real live cow, then treat them to some yeast from the vats" kind of world. we hang around for awhile longer at the expense of the planet. worst case, we live long enough for some idiot to build nano-scale assemblers without building in controls. that'd be worse than a nice quick nuclear war, i fear.

3) the pie-in-the-sky never-going-to-happen scenario - we get fusion quick, cheap enough carbon nanotubes to build a space elevator (also probably in china), solar satellites, the works. the energy bounty translates to a real endeavor to get off-planet. education and falling birth rates in the post-third-world actually stick. long, long, long-term we get enough people off-planet that we can think about country-sized preserves - you know, for all the species that are left. boy, this is rosy. oh yah, and nano-scale research is banned on-planet. that too.

all in all, i'm putting the odds at 60% 1, 35% 2, and that last 5% on 3. but that's me being exceptionally optimistic.

i promise i'll post a recipe or a beer review or something real soon, kids. sorry to waste your time.