Real Changes?

[Potemkin Villager]

What changes can we make to our lives to deal with the economic and energy crises ahead?

Good question.

Reading many of the comments in these pages it is hard not to come to the conclusion that very many who pontificate the most here, at great length and with a huge need to put down any who dare disagree with them and with a great abundance of debating society skill, are the very least willing and able to actually make any substantive changes at all.

Oh you sad, sad clever, keyboard addicted folk!

I am put in mind of the blessed Jim Kunstler's personal paradoxes and life experiences for example.

"A World Made by Hand" at one level provides great general insights whilst at another level it provides hugely embarrassingly cringeworthy personal insights into the rather f***ed up life and grandiose self perception of the author.........

[emordnilap]

What changes can we make to our lives to deal with the economic and energy crises ahead?

Good question.

Very good.

[biffvernon]

What changes can we make to our lives to deal with the economic and energy crises ahead?

Good question.

Very good.

And the answer is to work to stop fossil carbon being extracted from the ground, thus preventing anyone burning it.

Hence my webpage at http://transitiontownlouth.org.uk/frack.html

[JavaScriptDonkey]

And the answer is to work to stop fossil carbon being extracted from the ground, thus preventing anyone burning it.

No, no, no, no, no.

The answer is to clean up your own mess first and then worry about what the next generation does with their planet afterwards.

Granted that stopping other people attaining your level of lifetime fossil fuel use is easier but it's little more than a sop to make you feel better.

[kenneal - lagger]

...

The answer is to clean up your own mess first and then worry about what the next generation does with their planet afterwards.

...

Our mess is the fact that we are extracting and burning an excess of fossil fuels so cleaning up our own mess would involve leaving them in the ground. If, in several hundred years time, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere had dropped to a safe level again our great, great grand children might be able to start their extraction again without frying themselves.

Have you any better ideas, JSD, about how to clean up our mess?

At the current rate of extraction we won't be leaving our g g grandchildren much to extract. Let's hope that they can develop their own fuel source. God knows, they'll need one if they are to have anything near our lifestyle and affluence. Fusion! Or will it then still be 40 years in the future?

[Potemkin Villager]

.....Granted that stopping other people attaining your level of lifetime fossil fuel use is easier but it's little more than a sop to make you feel better.

Well this sort of hints what I am getting at.

One "big", but unspoken, idea seems to be that not only are the majority of the world's population to be prevented from benefitting from fossil fuel slaves but that the affluent minority, who have been largely responsible for the mess, are to effortlessly segue to equally disproportional benefits from a roughly unchanged level of comfort and ease, but now provided by renewable energy slave gizmos of various types.

[PS_RalphW]

This is of course the bottom line of all on-line discussion of limits to growth.

We are, by fact that we have access to this forum, all in the top 10% of the world's per capita resource consumers, and almost all of us live in societies where most people are in that bracket. That means to radically reduce our rate of consumption we have to emigrate or withdraw from society to an extent that is psychologically and practically very difficult, not least because social welfare is likely to intervene to raise your consumption again. (For example, I would not be allowed to reduce my children's consumption of resources to third world levels).

This is a direct moral question - which of us are brave enough to confront our own unsustainable consumption to the extent of being seen as bizarre by most people in our society, or talk about the true extent of our excesses when we will be seen as deeply hypocritical for proposing cuts we have not made ourselves. Also, if we do withdraw from consumption enough, we would no longer have access to the means of communication to promote our own changes.

At least by promoting and investing in 'renewable' energy sources, we are planting the seeds of technology and culture which are necessary, but not adequate precursor to a society which this planet could support at some population level below 7 billion.

[kenneal - lagger]

The advantage of many of the carbon reduction plans is that they are designed to gradually reduce our use of fossil fuels and other resources. Yes, it will have to be a steep reduction in the case of the affluent west but we wouldn't have to cut overnight.

Our children would have noticeably less than their parents and the same with the next generation but it wouldn't involve plunging everyone into immediate third world conditions. With a planned reduction, use of modernised versions of older technology, new gardening and farming techniques adapted for low energy use and even highly insulated buildings we could live a very comfortable lifestyle with much, much less than we now do. New technology, such a plasma TVs, would make way for older, more energy efficient technologies such as LED screens.

Population would be encouraged to gradually reduce with the introduction of education for all women. This has worked in the advanced economies and we would just have to introduce the idea to our Islamist "friends". That, I can foresee, could result in a war or two, unfortunately, although we are already seeing this happening now. Some of the less advanced cultures in the world could have a problem with the idea that women are equal to men.

Yes we would have to forego a new mobile phone every year: we would have to do with one which lasted for many years. Shame!! It would be the same for most of our belongings and there would be far fewer of them but then we wouldn't need to hire a storage unit to put our stuff in. We wouldn't all own a car. But then we wouldn't be travelling so much. We wouldn't have to work so much either but we would enjoy the pleasures of growing much of our own food (if we had any sense).

We would have to change the banking system and get rid of a lot of "investment *ankers": the gambling would grind to a halt. The banking system would be one of the first things which had to change as the current system of debt created money would not work in a, what would now be called, recessionary economy.

There are many other good things which would happen as well. Unfortunately, pigs might also fly!

[JavaScriptDonkey]

Our mess is the fact that we are extracting and burning an excess of fossil fuels so cleaning up our own mess would involve leaving them in the ground. If, in several hundred years time, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere had dropped to a safe level again our great, great grand children might be able to start their extraction again without frying themselves.

Have you any better ideas, JSD, about how to clean up our mess?

At the current rate of extraction we won't be leaving our g g grandchildren much to extract. Let's hope that they can develop their own fuel source. God knows, they'll need one if they are to have anything near our lifestyle and affluence. Fusion! Or will it then still be 40 years in the future?

That is the point of contention I have with Biff though. He talks a lot about how he campaigns to stop fracking and sundry other oil production/use but it is all futile. He (and of course us) are the products of an industrial society built on billions of tons of CO2 emissions. It's all very well for us to sit in our insulated houses and pontificate at keeping the oil in the ground but by doing that we are keeping prices higher than otherwise which has direct economic impact on the have-nots.

Even his concept of wood-burning is flawed - carbon is carbon is carbon. It's pointless planting trees to reduce CO2 if all you are going to do is put it straight back in the atmosphere again by burning it.

I fully accept my part in increasing atmospheric CO2 and I am unashamed. I firmly reject that doom will come to me and mine by this route (although it may well curse others).
What will impact us is the dwindling of oil reserves and I intend to make as much of the resources available to me while I still can.

[biffvernon]

and I intend to make as much of the resources available to me while I still can.

Which is why you and I are at the opposite ends of any conceivable moral, ethical or political spectrum.