08-30-2022, 03:26 AM
(08-29-2022, 11:05 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:Quote:Meanwhile reversing the trend toward destruction of our climate is job one of THIS fourth turning. Our survival depends on this, which is why it is the crisis of this 4T. Neoliberalism is the chief culprit in this, and has to end. Reagan was wrong! Government is part of the solution; not the problem!Our quandary over this issue isn't about if climate change is real or if we should do about it. From the get go, it's always been "is this particular solution tenable or sufficient?"
First of all, we need world-wide Zero Population Growth. Any population growth in any country will necessarily be from immigration. Second, we need to get off the heroin habit that is conspicuous consumption. We could live very well with the same material inputs per person that people knew in the 1950's. Remember: technology allows us to generally do more with lesser cost of materials. A hint: the typical reader-tablet, iPad, video-game unit, or even cell phone has more computing power than a refrigerator-sized mainframe computer in use in the late 1940's, and it obviously uses far less power. Don't let me get into a discussion of the extreme cost (by standards of the time) of the first color televisions. I remember selling televisions back around 1980, and people often chose a TV based upon the costly furniture surrounding the CRT. We need also give up the carnivorous part of our appetite... at least if we are to afford to keep carnivorous pets. (Maybe we will have good synthetic substitutes for meat. Cats will be delighted to get simulated mice and sparrows; dogs will love simulated mutton; and we humans will get to enjoy simulated everything from abalone to ... zebra? Solar power will have to supplant fossil fuels.
Quote:The analogy I would is: Just as you want to end slavery for the sake of slaves, you want to end (man made) climate change for the sake of humans. Most of the measures I've seen from most liberals sound like the equivalent of shooting down the slave ship before the slaves even have a time to get to free land. The economy will never magically transition away from fossil fuels overnight. If you try too many aggressive bans too quickly to stop the engines of the economy, you'll just end up making everyone poor, potentially to the point of starvation. Halting climate change at the expense of ruining the standard of living of the entire developed world is a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.
Slavery lasted so long as it did because it depended upon a lust for the economic benefits of economic superiority over helpless people -- so long, of course, as one is the master. American slavery lasted almost into the age in which the telephone, phonograph, electric light, and motion pictures were invented. It lasted almost into the time in which John D. Rockefeller II started building refineries. Know well that given the chance, economic elites bring it back if it is possible. Just look at the Hell that was Nazi Germany; despite the economic prowess and technical modernity of Germany, the Nazis were able to establish a slave system that ended only when the Allied Armies emancipated the slaves. Churchill and FDR both sought to have themselves together with an image of the first Great Emancipator.
Slavery died because it could not underpin the more complex and flexible economy of the Union. The Confederacy failed because slaves fled the plantations for places that the Union Army had liberated. With the soldiers off in battle and slaves abandoning the plantations. Confederate agriculture could no longer reliably feed "Johnny Reb". Troops without food or running out of ammunition surrender.
Quote:Edit: Just after posting this, I found a recent news clip that perfectly illustrates my point. When faced with the potential for poverty and societal collapse...of course Germany switches back to previous sources of fuel. Developing countries around the world have felt pressure from the EU to try to phase out their own carbon emissions, but given recent events, they're clapping back and saying "You're turning back to fossil fuels because you have no way of avoiding poverty? Great, so how the hell can you expect us not to do the same when already live EVERY DAY in poverty and rely on these fuels for transport and agricultural inputs?"
No political figure dares risk another Great Depression, a certainty if the energy supply collapses.
The developing world can avoid many of the costly failures of the advanced economies and the costly 'middle stages'. A country like India or Indonesia can avoid making some of the mistakes that the USA did. Leaded gasoline is one such mistake. Assuming that one could pump pollutants into deep groundwater without consequences is another. Gas-guzzling vehicles is another.
Real prosperity is not so much using more resources as it is the creation of experiences -- but those experiences all have material basis. So as Russia cuts off natural gas, coal returns in Europe.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.