“Is the technology accelerating to collapse the society?” Essay

I on that point was a time when people utilize to go bad a very misfortunate life and had to work sturdy in the fields to produce food for themselves. yet for the last hundred years or so our quality of life has been in stages improving and today we throw away forward-looking machines that rat do either that hard work for us and make our mankind relatively easy and comfortable. Without a doubt, we owe this all to the fast evolution of our engine room. However, the addition of technology has been made possible referable to sporty zip which started to be addressable a little less than terce hundred years ago when fogey fuels came into use.Thanks to this abundant and relatively cheap aught provided by dodo fuels humanitykind stick been able to exploit a rich variety of resources which created favorable conditions for the phylogenesis of technology and improved their quality of life. Fossil-driven technology has particularly contributed to the development of fit husbandry which has allowed an insignificant number of farmers to work gigantic tracts of land and produce food in abundance.Sufficient amounts of food have direct to a wild offshoot of universe just about 1800 populace creation was peerless gazillion by 1930 it r from each oneed two unrivalled thousand thousand by the beginning of the 1960s it was trinity billion in 1975 four billion in 1986 five billion and the innovations hold population is advance six billion. In otherwise words, the advance of our high society has been based on the development of fossil-driven technology. entirely the exhaustion of fossil fuels is non far off and there is no other nil source which would be abundant and cheap exuberant to supervene upon them.It federal agency that our society as we make do it today is plausibly to whirl. (Price, David. vigor and kind-hearted Evolution) The Age of Exuberance is over, population has already overshot carrying subject, and prodig al Homo sapiens has drawn down the lands savings deposits. (Catton, William. industrialization Prelude to fragmentise) II end-to-end human history galore(postnominal) societies have prospered and break awayd their collapses have direct relevancy to the worrys we face today. The ancient Maya, for example, were one of the or so originatorful and advanced societies of the past.Eighty sh ar of Maya society consisted of peasants who practised intensive chuck and burn agriculture, growing mostly corn. (Heinberg, Richard. Meditations on Collapse) During the Classic period of Maya history which arose approximately A. D. 250 the Maya population change magnitude almost exponentially and reached the highest poem in Page 2 the eighth century A. D. (Diamond, J atomic number 18d. The Last Americans. environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization) One evidence why the ancient Maya collapsed was population growth which outstripped available resources.While Maya population wa s steady increasing, the ara of farmland was decreasing as a result of deforestation and hillside wear. A nonher author was constant warfare which peaked earlier the collapse as to a greater extent(prenominal) and more Maya people had to crowd over fewer resources. These problems were as well exacerbated by a series of droughts. And the final reason for the Classic Maya collapse was policy- do. The coming crisis was non recognized and responded to by the kings and nobles.It can be explained by the fact that the Maya elite remained fixated on the short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with one a nonher, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities, and did not focused on long-term problems. (Diamond, Jared) they did not have the leisure to focus on long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them Today there are more signs of the above-mentioned strands in the fall in States, the innovation s trail power, which is also at the peak of its power and is suffering from legion(predicate) environmental problems.M both parts of the United States, for example, face locally severe problems of pee system restriction (southern California, Arizona, the Everglades, the Northeast), forest fires which result from put down and forest-management practices (intermontane West), losses of farmlands because of salinization, drought, and climate change (northern bully Plains). It is a fact that the environmental problems which last right awayadays in the United States are still modest compared with those of the rest of the world. But the problems of environmentally devastated and overpopulated distant countries are now American problems as well.(Diamond, Jared) Globalization means nothing more than improved planetary communications and transport systems and at pre displace America is tightly connected to umpteen oversea countries. Intentionally or unintentionally, such(prenominal) things as terrorists, diseases ( support, SARS, cholera, West Nile fever), unstoppable numbers of legal and illegal immigrants can advantageously travel or be sent from the Third Page 3 universe of discourse to the United States. Modern America computes substantially on the rest of the world and semi policy-making stability anywhere in the world now affects the USA and its trade routes, overseas markets and suppliers.The ancient Maya were globalized only within the Yucata? n because of their dit which was slow, short-distance and had low cargo capacity. We live today in a globalized world because our transport is much more fast and has much higher cargo capacity. (Diamond, Jared) The reasons why past societies failed to anticipate and exculpate problems before they developed, still can be seen operating today. On the one hand, it is obvious that the possibility of collapse is not interpreted seriously by our political elite and society.And even when this problem is recogniz ed, those in power may not feat to solve it because of a clash amidst their short-term interests and the interests of the rest of us. Pumping crude, in the altogether down trees, and catching fish which is dying out bring the elite gold and prestige but it is bad for society as a whole in the long run. On the other hand, when the problem is recognized and action is being taken it may be difficult for us to ac subsistledge the wisdom of policies that clash with some(a) of our current benefits.(Diamond, Jared) III The scientific conclusion of many respected geologists, physicists, and investment bankers around the world as to the future of the state society is not encouraging at all civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. (Life afterward the cover Crash) Our technology-driven economic system is characterized by a high consumption of renewable and non renewable resources from food to forests, from fresh piss to s crude embrocate which are disappearing quickly . (Ehrenfeld, David.The approaching Collapse of the Age of Technology) Modern societies depend on technological development and each part of our technology depends on the energy which comes from fossil fuels and they emerge nearly 75% of the worlds energy. At the graze of consumption that we have today know reserves of petroleum give be gone in about 35 years natural bollix in 52 years and coal in some 200 years. And the demand for energy is expected to grow at an ever-quickening step.(Price, David) Modern food output is fossil fuel Page 4 and petrochemical provide commercial fertilizers are made from ammonia, which in turn is made from natural gas farming machines such as tractors and trailers are constructed and powered using oil. Goods are manufacture in oil-powered plants and factories and then distributed across oil-powered transportation networks. Apart from transportation and agriculture which are dependent on oil, modern medicine, water distribution, and national defense are each entirely powered by oil and petroleum derived chemicals. embrocate is required for all plastics, all computers and all high-tech devices.Tin, iron, gold, silver, copper, platinum, etc are each discovered, extracted, transported, and fashioned using oil-powered machinery. We have no way of producing even secondary systems of energy without an abundant and reliable supply of oil as well as of scaling them to the degree necessary to power the modern world. (Life After the Oil Crash) As we can see from these examples, oil plays the most important part among other fossil fuels in modern technology. However, a rapid decline of oil production capacity can be discovered in nearly two twelve countries and more than half of the worlds supply has already been used.The global oil peak is likely to sink before 2010 and it is expected to be a elicitation for global economic crisis. (Heinberg, Richard) IV each this points out that our present society is thus heading towards a certain approach pattern of collapse. Starvation, social strife, and disease are likely to be operative mechanisms in the collapse of the human society. They are all importations of only resources and dense population and interact in complex ways. (Price, David) Starvation leave behind be a direct result of the depletion of energy resources.Todays dense population depends for its food supply on mechanized agriculture and efficient transportation. Energy is used in the production and physical process of farm equipment and as well as in the transportation of food to market. With the light of efficient energy resources food will be bound to grow more expensive and the circle of privileged consumers to whom an fair to middling supply is available will keep open to shrink. Social strife will be another important consequence of the rising Page 5 monetary value of commercial energy. When goods are plentiful and per-capita irritate to goods is increasing, social tensions are or dinarily muted.But when goods plough more and more scarce and per-capita access to goods is decreasing, heathenish tensions surface, governments often become authoritarian and goods are usually acquired by criminal means. (Price, David) man health systems will be halt by a shortage of resources, too. In the meantime, a dense population will encourage the spread of contagious diseases. Throughout human history there have been many examples of large and dense populations leading to the appearance of contagious diseases that evolved to exploit them (smallpox, measles, the dismal death).Today, our population is extremely dense and all parts of the world are tightly linked by air travel. wholly of this facilitates for new diseases such as AIDS to spread rapidly throughout the world. Moreover, a virus as deadly as AIDS but more easy transmissible could appear at any time. (Price, David) We could go even further to state that environmental problems, depletion of energy resources and increased population growth prove that collapse has already begun and all we can do is to make the best of it. It can occur slowly or quickly, be neck or partial, and controlled or chaotic.What we still can and should do is to make a conjunctive effort to manage this collapse. It would require changes that mustiness be implemented by political leaders and the whole society large-scale national and international cooperation is necessary in order to allocate essential resources to stay fresh deadly competition for them as they become scarce. (Heinberg, Richard) These changes are well within our human and technological capacity. First and foremost, the rate at which resources are being consumed and wipe out is being generated must be stepwise decreased.Our resource use and the rate we are polluting the environment can be considerably reduced if we shift to proven more-efficient technologies. It is decisive that our modern society start making these changes now while fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources still exist. They could be invested into building a society and economy based on renewable energy, the careful recycling of materials, and the frank economic institutions required for a sustainable society. (Gilman, Robert. Reclaiming Page 6.Politics) We should also give up striving for uninterrupted economic growth and adopt lifestyles of willing simplicity. (Heinberg, Richard)BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Diamond, Jared. The Last Americans. Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization, http//www. mindfully. org/Heritage/2003/Civilization-Collapse-EndJun03. htm (November, 16 2005) 2. Ehrenfeld, David. The approach path Collapse of the Age of Technology, http//garnet. acns. fsu. edu/jstallin/complex/readings/Ehrenfeld. htm (November, 17 2005) 3. Gilman, Robert.Reclaiming Politics, http//www. context. org/ICLIB/IC30/Gilman. htm (November, 30 2005) 4. Heinberg, Richard. Meditations on Collapse, http//www. museletter. com/archive/154. hypertext mark-up language (November, 16 2005) 5. Life After the Oil Crash, http//www. lifeaftertheoilcrash. net/ (November, 17 2005) 6. Price, David. Energy and gracious Evolution, http//www. energybulletin. net/3917. html (November, 16 2005) 7. Catton, William. Industrialization Prelude to Collapse, http//www. energybulletin. net/4632. html (November, 17 2005).