L4 - Operating Spaceship Earth

Question 1

What is Buckminster Fuller’s view of Spaceship Earth?

Answer 1

Superbly designed, able to keep life regenerating on board despite entropy.

Question 2

What about Kennetch Boulding’s view of Spaceship Earth?

Answer 2

Earth is a closed system not an illimitable plane. We havn’t made the moral, political and psychological adjustments yet.

Question 3

What are the two types of economies considered with respect to the spaceship Earth theme?

Answer 3

• Cowboy economy
• Spaceship economy

Question 4

What is a cowboy economy?

Answer 4

• Limitless frontier
• Reckless, exploitive, romantic, violent
• Production + consumption = Good!
• Success of economy measured in throughput based on the “factors of production” or GNP.

Question 5

What is a spaceship economy?

Answer 5

• Closed system with finite resources and interdependance between people and systems
• Human integration with cyclical ecological system
• Thoughput is not desireble
• Success is measured by nature, extent, quiality and complexity of the total capital stock, including human bodies and minds

Question 6

What is the Holocene?

Answer 6

The current ara, in which humans have evolved.

Question 7

What is the current ara called? (where we have evolved)

Answer 7

The Holocene.

Question 8

What is the name of the era in which humans have become the primary agent of environmental change on the planet?

Answer 8

Anthropocene.

Question 9

What is the Anthropocene era?

Answer 9

The new geological era in which humans have become the primary agents of environmental change on planet Earth.

Question 10

What is techno-optimism?

Answer 10

A view of the world where abundance is possible thanks to the creative potential of human minds. (Peter Diamandis)