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Living On a Carbon Budget: The End of Recreation As We Know It?
Lasrick writes Dawn Stover looks at unrealistic expectations and the distribution of limited energy resources: 'This is a question that should move from the fringes of the energy debate to its very heart. Economists and energy experts shy away from issues of equity and morality, but climate change and environmental justice are inseparable: It's impossible to talk intelligently about climate without discussing how to distribute limited energy resources. It's highly unlikely that the world can safely produce almost five times as much electricity by 2035 as it does now—which is what it would take to provide everyone with a circa-2010 American standard of living, according to a calculation by University of Colorado environmental studies professor Roger Pielke Jr. The sooner policy makers accept this reality, the sooner they can get to work on a global solution that meets everyone's needs. First, though, they need to understand the difference between needs and wants.' Not something most people even think about.
Also, I bet computer gaming uses a lot less carbon than most pre-computer leisure activities.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
While environmental studies professors continue to pump out ready excuses for imposing increasing economic feudalism in Europe and North America, China and India are going to build out nuclear power and produce energy. I doubt they'll be dissuaded from trying because of anything this professor says.
When people like this say, "the world can't" remember that they actually mean, "we aren't going to let you."
Yep, good luck convincing everyone that they should live on only what they "need" to survive, because the mud-hut dwellers in third world countries "deserve" to live like 2010-era Americans.
I'll play the asshole in this comic bit: Why should everyone in the world have 2010 American standard of living? We're wasteful, bigoted, conspicuous consumers at (or near) the top of the consumption food chain. This is like expecting everyone to be a 1%er (in American parlance), somehow, or for all of us to be above average drivers. We can't all be rich and good looking. Remember - when everyone is special, no one is special. We need classes just to keep the system churning.
Of all the possibilities, striving for the American 2010 standard makes no sense on so many levels.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"It's highly unlikely that the world can safely produce almost five times as much electricity by 2035 as it does now"
In the 7 years I have lived in my house, I have reduced my electricity consumption by 50%. There is nothing magical about what I've done. Insulation, replacing AC units with energy efficient ones as they wore out, LED light bulbs, energy star appliances. I used a "TED" (The Energy Detective) to figure out what my big users of electricity were. These upgrades have already paid for themselves in lower energy bills. Last year the addition of solar PV and a solar water heater have further reduced my electric demand by 2/3. These upgrades will pay themselves back in about 12 years.
My overall demand is 1/6th of what it was 7 years ago and I have sacrificed no enjoyment of life to get it. If anything, my house is more comfortable and better lit and my appliances work better. And there are still planned improvements that will further reduce my demand, probably by 1/2 over the next few years. I live in a 75 year old 3000+ sq ft house and my energy usage is lower than the median energy usage in Florida, while being 50% larger than the median house size.
I agree it's foolish to try to increase global electricity production by a factor of 5. What we should do is relentlessly pursue efficiency until we reach the threshold of diminishing returns.
First, though, they need to understand the difference between needs and wants.
i.e.
We the central planners will determine what you need, because anything you think you need, is just a want -- at least that's what we think -- and since we're in charge, we decide. This is just not something you little citizens think about enough!
I think the idea that by 2035, we should expect every country in the world to have a comparable standard of living to America today is nothing short of laughable. So that blows a big hole right through the main premise.
Furthermore, aren't there figures that show that we could supply enough energy to power the entire world with a solar farm of a few (few dozen, few hundred, whatever) square miles in the Sahara, or something like that? Obviously that in itself isn't necessarily a practical solution, but it should demonstrate that the idea that we can't provide enough power to the entire world to match America's level of consumption right now is, at best, a shaky one.
It sounds to me like they picked an arbitrary date when we were somehow supposed to get everyone's standard of living up to America's, without considering what would actually be required to do that (hint: it includes stopping an awful lot of violence that's not likely to stop any time soon). If you are going to assume that we can raise everyone's standard of living like that in the first place, why would you not also assume that we can build out solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources to match?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Close enough that we have to DO SOMETHING NOW!, but far enough that no one will ever be called to account for being wrong, but not so far away that it's not in our life time and can be ignored. Having lost track of the number of such deadlines for the point of no return that have already passed in my life time let me just say I am a little skeptical.
And you know the Indians, the Chinese, and many others could care less and are going right on growing their populations and carbon production and there is no chance they will do anything but grow for the next 30 years. So if the author is right and we have only that long before we have irrevocably ruined our environment, then the choice for those of us in the industrial world is clear.
Enjoy all the vacations and recreational activities you can now. No seriously, if they are right then we are doomed, so you might as well enjoy it while you can, and they are wrong then you will have the last laugh while they sit around entertaining themselves doing the crossword puzzles, while they suffer without air conditioning.
-jon
The problem is purely political/cultural (okay, it boils down to biological, but who's counting?). The technology is comparatively easy. Right now we create poverty out of abundance, simply to support the financial systems we have surrendered control to. All our energy is spent putting up barriers.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Shit, I *WISH* I could live like Al Gore. The guy has a fleet of SUV's, a mansion with a power bill that makes mine look like a joke, and closets full of nice clothes, rooms full of expensive shit, etc. Were that we could *ALL* live as "sustainably" as environmentalists like Al Gore or Leonardo Dicaprio.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It's highly unlikely that the world can safely produce almost five times as much electricity by 2035 as it does now
We could if environmentalists and NIMBY's would stop blocking new nuclear power plant construction.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Most forms of recreation don't consume much natural resources compared to production of food and other basic necessities. On the other hand, unchecked population growth is the most fundamental cause of today's social and environmental problems. We need to get serious in combatting religious and cultural superstitions that prevent billions of people from using effective birth control. Then wealthy nations need to make access to condoms and birth controls pills free and ubiquitous worldwide. Then we just have to desperately hope this will work, else the future is tens of billions of people living and dying in misery.
We need to stop thinking of this like a disaster that's suddenly going to happen. There's no magic date where the climate is going to be "destroyed". What's going to happen is the climate is going to change, and much of our way of life and infra-structure is going to suffer because of that. We can't "destroy" the climate, we can only make it harder on ourselves and have to do a lot of work to adapt. But there's not exactly an armageddon that's going to unfold. Food production is going to be harder, and the places to grow crops are going to shift.
The article itself is a little silly. Climate scientists don't debate whether global warming is real, and human caused. But they DO debate like hell about what's going to happen, how much carbon is "too much", etc. So to make any decisions about "30 more years" or making some silly prediction about everyone living like Americans in just 20 years is incredibly stupid, and counter-productive. Those issues are FAR from settled, unlike the clarity that the article presents.
As far as wants and needs, that'll be settled like it always has, through cost. It's already happening. The SUV craze of the 90s through the 2000s is already on the wane. Gas is more expensive and is going to remain so for a while, and that gas-guzzling Suburban is not only expensive to fuel, it makes you look like a bit of a pig now. People in European countries aren't somehow more altruistic, and care about others more than the US (and therefore drive smaller cars), it's just that gasoline is quite expensive, and the streets are smaller. So the giant car thing is totally impractical. Eventually Americans are going to start driving smaller cars just like they do in much of Europe.
AccountKiller
Living On a Carbon Budget: The End of Recreation As We Know It?
Oh my god! Whatever will we do?!? We'll have to come up with some way to allocate scarce resouces based on competing wants! If only there were a science that studies economic activity to gain an understanding of the processes that govern the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services in an economy. If we had that, then it would imply we already have an enormous, global system for handling this exact problem.
Not that it doesn't need tweeking, and we need to internalize the cost of carbon emissions, but this isn't just a solved problem; it is one of the most intensely studied and tested fields of sociopolitical theory that there is. And it doesn't mean we banned recreation. As it turns out, some recreation is actually good for the system, because it increases productivity.
And can we produce five times as much energy? Ummm, yeah. Real easy. There is a shitload of energy falling out of the clear blue sky at all times. If we have the resources, we can grab more of it. So that completes the whole "productivity" loop back to increasing production of energy.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Spoilers: It will tell us that the rich have all-consuming, all-important needs and the rest of us merely have trifling wants. Act surprised.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
slashdot is home to GOP'er FUD...it's not a big problem, but it's a problem
imho, it goes to false equivalence...the idea that to be fair you have to give each side "equal time" by having 3 'liberal' and 3 'conservative' leaning major contributors...that's a guess but it appears that way when reading slashdot
rarely is it this blatant...but i still think slashdot is good and relevant even though sometimes we see stuff like this story
Thank you Dave Raggett
There are a lot of assumptions going on here. First, that anyone in the first world would even seriously consider living the "mud hut" life in the name of climate change. Second, that the ruling class in the first world would ever permit the rest of the world entry into the first world. Third, that energy consumption must be severely restricted since there are no safe ways to produce first world quantities of power absent carbon-based fuels.
The world's present energy mix, and consumption practices are built on a history of cheap, readily available fossil fuels. Properly incentivized (read: the external costs of carbon-based fuels captured), the world's production would quite naturally swing towards "green energy." Any gaps in technology would be researched and quickly filled. Efficiency can and would be found. There's no reason we can't do things differently and yet maintain a high standard of living except that entrenched interests on the production side like it the way it is.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I believe that University of Colorado environmental studies professor Roger Pielke Jr.should start us off by reducing his carbon footprint to 3rd world levels as an example.
-Styopa
In 1890 a similar egg-head "predicted", Manhattan will be feet-deep in horse manure by 1930. A similar prediction was made for London of 1950 — the number of horses required to bring in supplies necessary for the growing population and its growing demands was calculated, along with the amount of excrement the beasts produced. The volume was then divided by the area of the city's streets to produce the depth of "coverage". An easy mathematical problem, a high-schooler solve it, so it had to be correct — and any attempts to argue against the conclusions were, of course, "anti-science".
Of course, as we know now, the automobile arrived to save the environment. But the fear-mongering did not cease...
Why exactly is humanity "highly unlikely" to be producing as much electricity as it wants to by 2035? Even today's technologies allow for that, and in 20 years we are bound to see improvements in both electricity production (higher) and consumption (lower).
I for one refuse to feel guilty about my recreation.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
1. Most Americans and Canadians are already reducing their carbon impact, but are held back by artificial tax subsidies for coal, oil, and natural gas that prop up those dying industries.
2. Your major carbon impact in North America, unless you commute more than an hour each way every day (in which case - move), is from flying on old jet airplanes. This can be solved by two things: 1. build high speed rail (200+ mph) in places like the West Coast and South 2. use turboprop and 787 planes instead (half or less the fuel and impact).
3. A lot of zoning and house regulations (associations) don't permit on roof solar in many areas - get rid of that and require all utilities to purchase excess solar at peak rates and you can get 50 percent solar by 2020. As in, now.
4. Most impact is from China, not India. India energy use per capita and per GDP unit is much much lower than China. Stop buying stuff from inefficient China. Buy American or Canadian.
5. Half measures cause massive change. You don't have to "live green" to have a major impact - just recycle your old fridge for a new one, replace light builbs with LED lights as they burn out, replace old trucks and SUVs that get 13 mpg with ones that get 26 mpg, and improve energy efficiency in buildings and existing coal plants (you can cut energy use in half by retrofitting an old coal plant with co-generation, which pays for itself in 2-5 years). Do the stuff that's easy to do and don't worry about doom and gloom pessimists.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Because, these days, if you're not growing 5-10% per annum, you must be in decline.
No, you just have to be growing faster than the population grows. While it's a bit more complicated than this, if your economic growth is slower than the rate of increase in the population then you are spreading resources among more people and therefore everyone is on average a little bit worse off. Since there has been no prolonged decrease in human population in recorded history you have to have a few percent of economic growth merely to stay right where you are.
For an economy like the US a growth rate of 2-4% annually is normal. That 3% is $486 billion in GDP growth - that means to grow at 3% the US has to create the 23rd largest economy in the world EVERY YEAR. Larger than the entire economy of Norway.
People make a big deal out of China's Growth rate (around 8%) but in total dollar amounts China's growth isn't much higher than the US at $668 billion. As China's economy gets larger it will necessarily slow its growth rate. The only reason they've been able to keep such a high growth rate is that their per-capita GDP was quite low until recently.
I don't know about "healthier". You will probably find people who would want to debate that point. But it is certainly cheaper to go without meat. I'm Orthodox, and we regularly fast from meat about 180 days out of the year. I've gotten to the point where I abstain from meat about 330 days a year. I only have meat about two or three times per month. Buying mostly fruits and vegetables and cooking them up yourself at home is considerably cheaper than eating meat at every meal. It costs a fraction compared to eating out.
It probably would help if we stopped promoting vegetarianism vs carnivorism as an all-or-nothing lifestyle. It's like training for a marathon: you don't start out by running the full 26 miles the first day. Start small. Abstain from meat one day or two days per week, then gradually increase the ratio of non-meats to meats.
Will it make you healthier? Maybe yes and maybe no. I know this much: I have a lot more disposable income.
Proverbs 21:19
It didn't take long for him to reach to the bottom of the barrel on this one to scare up conservative excitement.
It is also dishonest scaremongering. An American-level standard of living does NOT require American-level energy consumption. Plenty of other rich countries have much higher Energy/GDP ratios. America's high energy consumption is a result of urban sprawl, SUVs, etc. Those are not necessary to have a nice lifestyle. Even in America, energy consumption has been falling as GDP has been rising, and should continue to fall due to urban gentrification, electric cars, LED lights, etc.
And don't forget Acorn and Van Jones and Jane Fonda. They're all in on the conspiracy to take away our ATVs.
Radical environmentalists, like radical feminists, just make me so darn mad that I'm like to shit in my hat. And don't get me started on that Obama. Did you know that he keeps a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy idling behind the White House in case he gets a late night urge to go for a Fatburger in Mombasa? You know how much carbon one a them Lockheed C-5 Galaxy burns up idling? And when he travels, he takes the entire Muslim Brotherhood with him to walk Bo. And after he eats his Fatburger, they cut the head off the people who work there because they don't want anybody to know that he forces them to cook his food according to Halal. It just shows that Alex Jones knows what he's talking about.
And by the way, Samzenpus, thank you for your service.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You can find the numbers yourself if that is what is important to you. I prefer pictures.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No no, hey, you're right. It's much better to just keep on killing people and taking their shit. You gotta go with what works, right? Survival of the fittest! The devil you know is always the best. Don't want to take any unnecessary risks... You just keep on counting those "numbers". That's what makes the world go 'round.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”