What If

[Jiro]

I ain't no expert scientist or nothing, so bear with me here. But have you considered how mako energy actually works? There's not an explanation about the process, and examining the reactors doesn't lend much a hint either. However, from their appearance and name, I am reminded of both nuclear and geothermal energy plants.

So

What if

we were wrong and Shinra is actually the good guys with renewable energies? What if FF7 is not an example of the cruel money hungry corporation sacrificing the environment for its own benefit, but rather a parody where the ecoterrorists are resisting more sustainable methods of energy production. I mean after all Barret is a coal miner, and we all know how bad fossil fuels are for the environment.

Maybe we were wrong. I mean obviously Shinra are jackasses but maybe they've got good hearts.

I mean think about it. If the lifestream creates life and then life returns to it once dead, there's a cycle. How does changing that cycle mean that it doesn't actually complete? There's no explanation of how mako energy is used, so we could very well have a renewable energy source that everybody just mistook for something evil. Surely, once converted into energy, the mako would simply return to the planet anyway. Perhaps the biggest problem is that we don't have enough reactors and so the strain on individual areas is too high. I mean Midgar has a bunch of reactors but it also has a huge population. Imagine that they're only somewhat more effective than wind turbines. The more you have, the better, right?

I DON'T KNOW GUYS THIS IS ALL SHAKING MY VIEW ON THE WORLD

[Sephex]

I think the idea is no matter how many reactors there are at any output level, the lifestream energy is converted to mako energy and it can never be reused.

I also thought the coal thing was a bit off, too. Coal may not rob the planet of its energy, but it's harmful in other ways.

[VeloZer0]

All I got from that is that Geothermal Energy is evil and I am a hero if I start blowing up Geothermal plants.

[Alpha2099]

I've tried to think about exactly how the world runs on Mako energy before, but I usually can't get far. The game doesn't say a whole lot on the subject, probably because it's not a huge deal to know what it does. All we need to know as players is that extracting it from the planet is a bad thing, and that's the catalyst for the game.

[Sephiroth]

The problem is that the planet is a living creature. The more life power, memories and knowledge it gets by every new life which is born after the life it has lived before and given the memories to the planet, the more experienced the planet gets. But when Sephiroth or ShinRa take the energy which contains the saved life, memories and knowledge, there cannot be new life which new experiences collected and the planet stays how it is.

[silentenigma]

Looks pretty renewable to me:
Midgar[1].jpg

I'm thinking that when they're converting mako into other energies, it's separating the usable energy from the spirit-essence, the latter of which is just a by-product and builds up at a high concentration...resulting in huge materia formation.

[Skyblade]

The Lifestream is a big circle. A bit of it forms a creature, the creature grows up, dies, and rejoins the circle, which flows around again and again.

Mako energy does not properly return to the circle. Thus each time you siphon some off, it gets trapped apart and lost. Making the circle smaller. This is what materia is, it's lifestream energy that has been cut off from rejoining the flow.

Of course, this seems to happen naturally, as there is natural materia, but at a much slower rate. Maybe that's what determines the planet's lifespan?

[VeloZer0]

There may also be an equally slow process by which materia decompose and return to the planet.

[Sephiroth]

Looks pretty renewable to me:
Midgar[1].jpg

I'm thinking that when they're converting mako into other energies, it's separating the usable energy from the spirit-essence, the latter of which is just a by-product and builds up at a high concentration...resulting in huge materia formation.

My explanation is the official explanation from the Ultimania Omega. So it is definitely the truth. The planet cannot grow because there is no new knowledge to get since the energy does not go back to it when it is continuesly drained by the Mako Reactors. So even when people or other beings with new knowledge die the planet does not have anything from it, cannot grow and this is bad for it.

I ain't no expert scientist or nothing

Final Fantasy VII is no science either.

[silentenigma]

My explanation is the official explanation from the Ultimania Omega. So it is definitely the truth.

>Ultimania
>integrity
Pick one.

Also my reply was mostly toward Jiro's original post, and I forgot to make my sarcastic tone more obvious, but uhhh... I don't think our explanations contradict anyway.. Just interchange "spirit-essence" with "life power, memories, and knowledge" and we're basically describing a similar situation.

[Sephiroth]

>Ultimania
>integrity
Pick one.

The Ultimania "is integrity". There are a few mistakes because things which should be obvious are not mentioned and explained like they are mentioned in Final Fantasy VII but it is definitely the book. Logical and true.

And I did not answer you because of the last part of your post but because of "Looks pretty renewable to me". I thought that was a reply to my very first post. The rest of it is correct indeed.