A little candle is a blog dedicated to my views on faith and world events that are inescapibly tied together moving humanity toward a conclusion that most people are not aware of. It is my desire to help people see the world differently and how practical, essential and real Christianity is.
This is absolutley the most incredible lecture I have ever heard. It explores the idea that one of the hardest things for humans to understand is the exponential function in relation to how fast the world population is growing and the resources humans use. It’s titled Arithmetic, Population and Energy and is given by Dr. Albert Bartlett a professor from The University of Colorado in Boulder Colorado.Please watch it and leave some comments.
Here are some great quotes from the end of the lecture. The last one I have pulled from a documentary that I posted previously titled Money as Debt which has become painfully clear as true after having listened to the video above.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect, has intended us to forgo their use. Galileo
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. Aldous Huxley
It is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting. H.L. Mencken
The chief source of problems is solutions. Eric Sevareid
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. Kenneth Boulding
This video is fairly old now as it’s stated in the video that they are on day 53 of the oil spill which made it to a stunning 87 days before being capped. If you think there weren’t major PR efforts on BPs part to try and control the situation from a media standpoint you’d sadly be mistaken.
You know I remember some simple truths that I was taught as a kid when it came to making a mistake and being in trouble. That lesson was that it was better to admit it and seek help rather than hiding it or lying about it. I guess that doesn’t apply to a company when billions of dollars and the opinions of the many shareholders and the entire human race are at stake. It’s my two cents that I would be more sympathetic of a company that would just admit how bad the problem is and say we messed up and we need a lot of help to fix this. But that isn’t what they did. They decided to buy search engine search terms to try and control what information people we’re getting when the searched for “oil spill” and other relevant terms.
At the end of the day an estimated 18 million gallons of oil has spilled into the waters of our planet. And those are the modest low end estimates. That figure is based on the belief that the well was spewing about 5000 barrels worth/day into the gulf (a barrel contains 42 gallons). A senior BP offical admitted to congress that the well could have been flowing as much as 60,000 barrels/day. If that is true the total in gallons would be in the neighbourhood of 219 million. It’s so disgusting to think what has happened to our planet because of our dependence on this substance.
Did you know that North America (U.S and Canada) used 21.7 million barrels worth of oil/day in 2008 according to rates posted in a wikipedia page? Using the high estimates, the recent spill would total 5.2 million barrels. That means the spill only represents 24% of our daily… yes daily use as a continent. I am not saying that in anyway to downplay the size or severity of the spill. Rather I am using it to contrast it to the astronomical volume we use. Where is the desperation for using a cleaner or renewable energy source(s) by our leadership?
Now consider if that oil had not been spilled into our water it would have been used in products that pollute our ground and add to the volume in landfills. Or it would have ended up in vehicles, machines and power plants that emit pollution into the air. So at the end of the day we have 21.7 million barrels/day (911,400,000 gallons) that end up hurting the planet in one way or another any way. Does that fact taint the luxury that we enjoy as a continent at all? I know it does for me.