Do you know overshoot?
Overshoot means extracting raw materials from the Earth faster than it can replenish and wasting faster than the Earth can absorb. Manufactured goods (c...) require overshoot.
Increasing human population contributes to overshoot.
Once people have clean water, food, toilets and a livable indoor temperature, antidotes to overshoot include Extracting Less, Smelting Less, Building Less, Buying Less, Consuming Less, Less Videos, Less Social Media, Generating Less Data. Let's go for Strengthening Libraries, Locally-Grown Food and Making Do with What We've Got.
When geologists find mineral deposits ("necessary" for e-vehicle batteries, solar PVs, computers, et cetera), we've got to choose between keeping them in the ground or ravaging the Earth and nearby human communities. Mining to manufacture more industrially-produced goods gives the idea that highly-consumptive living can continue. Alas. Geologists have found very large lithium deposits at the Nevada-Oregon border, not far from Thacker Pass. How would wildlife habitats be impacted by mining this part of the caldera? How much water would it require, and where would it come from? For an overview about lithium mining at Thacker Pass, read my June Substack, "When Land I Love Holds Lithium." Read Max Wilbert's comments to the Bureau of Land Management about mining Thacker Pass.
Here are other under-reported, under-discussed issues regarding the technosphere.
Surveillance Capitalism
Tech libertarians consider government intrusion online an outrage but what about corporate surveillance? When companies gather data about consumers, is that simply an inevitable precursor to online advertising and internet corporations' soaring profits?
Last March, Zoom users agreed that "Zoom may redistribute, publish, import, access, use, store, transmit, review, disclose, preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use, display, copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create derivative works, and process Customer Content." Users also give Zoom "a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights required or necessary to redistribute, publish, import, access, use, store, transmit, review, disclose, preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use, display, copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create derivative works, and process Customer Content and to perform all acts with respect to the Customer Content: (i) as may be necessary for Zoom to provide the Services to you, including to support the Services; (ii) for the purpose of product and service development, marketing, analytics, quality assurance, machine learning, artificial intelligence, training, testing, improvement of the Services, Software, or Zoom's other products, services, and software."
Yikes!
Read Steven Vaughan-Nicholas' analysis about Zoom's AI privacy mess and Dave Karpf on corporate surveillance.
Wind and solar power
Jonah Markowitz's documentary, "Thrown to the Wind," reports hundreds of whale deaths likely caused by offshore wind turbines. Conservationists funded by an industrial wind corporation claim the deaths are caused by rising ocean temperatures. See also:
In May 2023, the Sierra Club began restructuring away from reducing extraction, disposability or racism; toward strengthening an "extractive economy;" toward the goal of "electrifying everything." Hop Hopkins and Michelle Mascarenhas, laid-off Sierra Club organizers, share their analysis.
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