The point was that some things are irreversible, it is ~already~ unacceptable, and each step in that direction is a worse condition for that time.
I tend to be an optimist on things like this... I'd say we there is never a point of no return and that we can turn the tides if our technology advances to such a level. From the information I have gathered, solar power will take off in 2007 or 2008. I was suprised the other day driving down the highway and saw a single house in Philly with electric (not the heating water type) solar panels on its roof in the middle of South Philly. Hopefully the technology will get cheap enough to be able to do what we need to do.
Ray Kurzweil speculates we only need to be able to capture 2% of the Sun's energy that hits the earth to meet today's power requirments with soloar cells. It just needs to get cheap enough. Like Moore's law this technology will get that cheap. Anyways... Thats why I think the Singularity Institute is that important. Mostly if we can create intelligence more powerful than ourselves or at least integrate it in our tools (you know like Google on steriods) we'll be able to overcome or reverse any problem.
Re: Depends on your definition of environmental
I tend to be an optimist on things like this... I'd say we there is never a point of no return and that we can turn the tides if our technology advances to such a level. From the information I have gathered, solar power will take off in 2007 or 2008. I was suprised the other day driving down the highway and saw a single house in Philly with electric (not the heating water type) solar panels on its roof in the middle of South Philly. Hopefully the technology will get cheap enough to be able to do what we need to do.
Ray Kurzweil speculates we only need to be able to capture 2% of the Sun's energy that hits the earth to meet today's power requirments with soloar cells. It just needs to get cheap enough. Like Moore's law this technology will get that cheap. Anyways... Thats why I think the Singularity Institute is that important. Mostly if we can create intelligence more powerful than ourselves or at least integrate it in our tools (you know like Google on steriods) we'll be able to overcome or reverse any problem.