[ExI] jobs created or saved

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 12:06:34PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote:

> This tends to confirm my concern that expected tech developments have
> not taken place, and risk not to take place unless at a very slow pace
> which cannot be defined as "exponential" by any means, simply because
> they money is not there anymore.

That is one of the problems we face: we failed to start a number of critical
innovations around 1970s, when  money and talent was plentiful. By now
we would have little to none issues if critical infrastructure and
R&D work (nuclear, aerospace, synfuel, electrochemistry, photovoltaics) 
would have been started back then. Well, we blew it.

*The* most critical areas right now are energy and food, with mineral
resources trailing close behind. To address this now requires a world
war scale effort. No, I'm not exaggerating. We need to move to crisis
mode yesterday. As far as I can see awareness for this is close to zero.
Obviously the gap will appear to be sudden and painful, and wars for
resources won't be far behind. By the time you're in nuclear/bioweapon
conflict territory you're no longer trying to solve problems, but
trying to stay alive. Recovering from that will be extremely difficult. 

The longer we wait, the more people will die. I have no idea how to
address it. Politics is more than useless, and very little is happening
at the grassroots.

Assuming we here can do something, what should we do? Forget personal
attacks at climate science or dangers of tobacco. This is too important.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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