John Michael Greer talks about how the only reasonable option left is to use less...

[GliderGuider]

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/04/alternatives-to-nihilism-part-three.html

Let’s repeat that, just for the sake of emphasis: there is no way to make a middle class American lifestyle sustainable.

This late in the game, our remaining options are starkly limited, and most of the proposals you’ll hear these days are simply variations on the theme of chasing business as usual right over the nearest cliff. Whether it’s Stewart Brand’s nukes, “Drill Baby Drill,” ethanol or algal biodiesel or some other kind of energy vaporware, the subtext to every widely touted response to our predicament is that we don’t need to use less. The same thing’s just as true of most of the ideologies that claim to offer a more global response to that predicament; the one common thread that unites the neoprimitivists who claim to long for a return to the hunter-gatherer life, the conspiracy theorists who spend their days in an increasingly frantic orgy of fingerpointing, and the apocalypticists who craft ever more elaborate justifications for the claim that somebody or other will change the world for us, is that each of these ideologies, and plenty others like them, function covertly as justifications to allow believers to keep on living an ordinary American lifestyle right up to the moment that it drops away from beneath their feet.

Mention the option of simply using less energy in public, and inevitably you’ll hear a dozen different reasons why it can’t help and won’t matter and isn’t practical anyway. Can it help? Of course it can; in a time when world crude oil production has been bouncing against a hard ceiling for most of a decade and most other energy sources are under growing strain, any decrease in the amount of energy being wasted on nonessentials makes it a little easier to keep essential services up and running. Will it matter? Of course it will; as we move into a future of hard energy constraints, the faster at least a few people get through the learning curve of conservation, appropriate tech, and simply making do with less, the easier it will be for the rest of society to follow their lead and learn from their experience, if only when all the other choices have been foreclosed. Is it practical? Of course it is; the average European gets by comfortably on one third the annual energy budget as the average American, and it’s been my experience that most middle class Americans can slash their energy use by a third or more in one year by a relatively simple program of home weatherizing and lifestyle changes.

I’d like to suggest, in fact, that at this point in the trajectory of industrial civilization, any proposal that doesn’t make using less energy a central strategy simply isn’t serious. It’s hard to think of any dimension of our predicament that can’t be bettered, often dramatically, by using less energy, and even harder to think of any project that will yield significant gains as long as Americans cling to a lifestyle that history is about to relegate to the compost bin. I’d also like to suggest that any proposal that does start out with using less energy should not be taken seriously until and unless the people proposing it actually do use less energy themselves, preferably by adopting the measures they urge on others.

[nonperson]

1. Governor Chris Christie has a plan

Here in New Jersey, Chris Christie raised New Jersey transit fares to the point where it is now less expensive to DRIVE into New York City than it is to take mass transportation from my town.

Our daughter visited for Mother's Day yesterday. Her round trip fare on New Jersey Transit after Chris Christie's cuts to mass transit was $70!!! And that's just the New Jersey Transit round trip fare from NY Penn Station, not counting her round trip subway fare to Penn Station.

Driving into Manhattan from here costs less than that for gas, tolls, and parking!

[4dsc]

2. Consumerism is dying a slow death

I just wonder how you recondition a population that has grown up on consumerism. Lets face it, the daily programing everyone see on the TV and hears on the radio to BUY, BUY, BUY cannot easily be undone within a lifetime. Its taken the powers to be over 30 years to program us into being obedient consumers who don't question why we seem to need to buy useless items.

[GliderGuider]

4. Our expectations will be reconditioned as our experiences change.

As happened in Russia when TSHTF in 1989. It's not a painless process, but it's very effective...

To quote Charles Eisenstein, "That which would need to be done to prevent the problem will be done only as its consequence."

[patricia92243]

3. Each person needs to do this, but the big users need to also - if nothing else to set an example.

I nearly swoon when they show pictures of Times Square or Los Vegas (sp). They need to turn off some of those lights!

[txlibdem]

5. We can use less energy by living smarter - losing heat and air conditioning not required

I agree with your larger point: we needlessly waste too much energy. Our buildings should be far more energy efficient but that does not mean regressing to an 1800s lifestyle.

By 2100, for instance, 110 degrees will be the norm here in Texas so doing without some way to cool the air in your home or apartment will be deadly. Even now, dozens of elderly people die during heat waves.

We need to blend the old technologies with new technologies, taking the most energy efficient and safest of both to create a new green way of living.

[GliderGuider]

6. Faced with 110 degree "normal" temperatures

Migration may prove to be a better option for many. Think of living in a "heat bowl" rather than a "dust bowl" and you get the picture.

At what point does focusing on resisting Mother Nature through technology rather than adapting to Her through lifestyle change become an exercise in unsustainability? After all, to be truly sustainable a situation has to be capable of being continued in perpetuity. Is an approach that counts on technology and discounts lifestyle adaptations really sustainable over the next several hundred/thousand years?

Was there something disreputable about the way our great-grandparents lived in the 1800's? That was only 4 generations ago, after all, and from everything I've read, there was quite a bit of happiness and optimism in the world - even without televisions and cars, let alone air conditioning.

[txlibdem]

7. We're not talking about a thousand "climate refugees"

Texas' population is 25 million people. Do you want to open your home to 25 million "outsiders?"

Global climate change will also affect millions of people in Florida due to a rise in sea level. Add another 2 million "migrating" from New Mexico, and maybe half of Arizona's 6.5 million people.

That will be a societal and logistical nightmare to say the least.

Fortunately, technology can provide the answers without forcing tens of millions of people to become migrants. We can insulate houses better. We can properly use passive solar designs, use geothermal heating and cooling, drive electric cars instead of gas guzzlers, expand mass transit just for starters.

Miners in Southern Australia found the answer decades ago: live underground
http://35mm.instantfundas.com/2008/11/underground-houses-of-coober-pedy.html

[GliderGuider]

8. The world is going to see hundreds of millions of climate refugees over the next 50 years

Yes, we'll develop technologies that reduce some of it, but I don't see how we'll equip 25 million people against "normal" 110F temperatures.

Underground living is part of adaptation, of course - sort of like human estivation - but again numbers are an issue. 25 million people aren't simply going to dive underground.

Technology can't provide all the answers. The majority of those affected - by heat, drought, flooding, pollution and food shortages - will fall back on the time-honoured approach of moving to someplace better. The problem today, of course, is that someone else already owns it, and as you point out, they will object.

Nobody said that fouling our nest and continuing to live in it was going to be easy.

[txlibdem]

9. Atlanta and Toronto, Canada would beg to differ with you on human estivation

Nor do the miners in South Australia sleep off the summer. All three of these areas have built extensive living, retail, etc., accommodations fully underground. In Toronto, you can travel darn near the entire length and breadth of the city all underground. There are shops, malls, apartments, etc.

The temperature below ground stays constant all year round.

Your suggestion of hundreds of millions of people just "moving in" to areas that are already going to be stressed by global climate change puts a potentially deadly spin on the phrase "they will object.

I think we'll have to use our heads a little bit more in the coming decades and stop relying on "time honored approaches" if we want to survive this mess we've created for ourselves.

[GliderGuider]

10. I've been in both the Atlanta and Toronto undergrounds.

They are essentially commercial facilities, not living quarters. The technological and financial investment required to create and maintain them takes them well out of the realm of feasibility when it comes to housing huge numbers of climate refugees from above ground - especially poor ones.

Yes, the global movement of climate refugees is going to be massive, and massively deadly. A lot of people are going to die as a result over the next half century, whether from thirst, starvation, disease or gunshots. Adjusting our global population down by 25% in 50 years is unlikely to be a pretty sight.

Technology and policy changes will save some of the fortunate ones, but are unlikely to do much for the desperately poor refugees from Africa or south-east Asia. They are the ones that will be doing much of the dying, not the inhabitants of Atlanta Underground.

[Terry in Austin]

11. Let's hope it's no bigger than a "lifestyle" choice

>> ...should be far more energy efficient but that does not mean regressing to an 1800s lifestyle.

I suspect, however, that by 2100 we won't have much choice about regressing to a 2100's lifestyle.

"Progress" is a very comforting industrial-age concept that we hold dear, but nature is absolutely indifferent to. There never was any guarantee that tomorrow will be better than today, yet we assume it will always be so because of our belief in progress.

But when it comes to energy, there's a built-in contradiction in the progress narrative, at least to the extent that progress means technology -- at its core, technology is mostly about finding fancier ways to burn energy. Ultimately, something always has to turn the crank, and turning it by hand is something that progress forbids.

In fact, Leslie White made a good case that the whole "upward" path of any civilization is basically a measure of its energy per capita. More energy, more progress; less energy, less progress.

What we need (and will get, one way or another) is a major reduction in use -- efficiency is a means of slowing growth in use. Very different.

[txlibdem]

13. You're almost right: what we need is a major reduction in wasted energy

Every moran with a microphone is up in arms about "the GubMint" doing away with incandescent light bulbs. Those bulbs waste 80% of the energy you put into them: you get 1/5th of the benefit. That's just dumb. LED light bulbs waste 5% to 10% of the energy, the rest goes out in the form of light. Problem is that right now they are expensive. But in 2012 all the major light bulb manufacturers are going to begin mass production and costs will rapidly plummet. But even at $40 per bulb they save you money after just a few years, and they last for decades.

Then there is the electric vehicle versus internal combustion engine debate. Internal combustion vehicles waste more than 80% of the energy in gasoline just from the tank to the wheels. All of the wasted energy from searching for the oil, drilling, transporting to the refinery, the actual refining process, transporting all across the nation to the gas station, and then the electricity used to pump the gas into your tank (that's the ultimate irony: a gas pump will not work without electricity) is just additional wasted energy.

What I'm getting at is that we waste more energy than whatever benefit we get out of it. That means we have to do things smarter. When you look at all the ways we waste the majority of energy you come to the conclusion that we definitely could reduce our energy use.

[GliderGuider]

15. What will keep us from using all available energy anyway?

Any energy that is saved in one sector of the economy (like lighting) will simply be available to expand other sectors (like manufacturing). In the end we use everything that's available. The only thing that doing things smarter ensures is that we will do more things.

At some point we have to stop growing like yeast in a vat of grape juice.

[txlibdem]

16. We both agree that you and I have vastly differing opinions on the future of Mankind

And that's ok.

You say we need to stop growing, I say we need to find new and better places to continue to grow. Neither of us, if I may be so bold as to speak for you, thinks for one second that our current wasteful Capitalist ways are going to allow the societal changes needed for us to survive as a species.

[GliderGuider]

17. I agree about our differing opinions

And also about the fact that the current system will not willingly permit change. I don't call the current system capitalism, rather I think of it as oligarchic or corporatist, but that's just a semantic quibble.

What I am curious about is how you define "new and better places to grow"? Are you just thinking of new physical places like "inside the earth or buildings, or virtual places like "within the creative sphere"?

[txlibdem]

19. new and better places to grow

Short term: underground where possible/needed, taller skyscrapers where possible/needed, under the sea, and in cities that float on the oceans.

Long term: "the final frontier."

[bananas]

22. We don't use eveything that's available, and the declining cost of renewables will result in ...

We don't use everything that's available, otherwise we'd already have burned all the fossil and nuclear fuels.
The declining costs of renewables means that energy will become cheaper, leading to incresing lifestyles in the long term.
Short term, energy will be more expensive.
The real risk is that the failure rate of nuclear deterrence is about one percent per year.
Nuclear war will put a real dent in people's lifestyle.

[wtmusic]

12. "there is no way to make a middle class American lifestyle sustainable"

Greer can repeat it all he wants, that doesn't make it true.

He apparently assumes technology will go nowhere in the next 200 years, but a dependable thorium reactor design could turn that pronouncement on its head in a decade or two. Not to mention fusion, the regular old hot kind which unleashes an obscene amount of power from an obscenely-plentiful ingredient.

Unlike wind or solar, which are somewhat akin to burning the dining room table to cook dinner, these are technologies which only require a technological solution - not one of waving a magic wand and making a negative net energy solution positive.

[GliderGuider]

14. Let's do a quadrant assessment

If the magic tech appears, it doesn't matter if we've powered down or not, everything turns out fine.
If the magic tech doesn't appear and we have powered down, the descent will be less painful.
If the magic tech doesn't appear and we have not powered down, the descent could be extremely painful.

I know what I'd prefer to do while waiting for Mr. Fusion to arrive. Just in case your faith is unfounded.

[wtmusic]

20. I'll bet Mr. Greer uses 10x as much energy as the world average

so I'm not sure what he hopes to accomplish by trying to convince the Chinese to use less energy. He could stop railing on Al Gore and take a lesson from them.

Americans could adopt austerity measures to save energy and it would be a drop in the bucket. The rest of an awakening world wants, and deserves, the benefits of cheap and clean energy. As a society which until now has enjoyed ours at their expense, we have an obligation to provide it for them.

My faith in fusion may very well be unfounded, I hope not. I have even less faith in predictions of, "there is no way..." to do something that really needs to be done. Seems those people have ended up eating crow more often than not.

[diane in sf]

18. It's very easy to engineer our homes and transit to use less power. Some people in

Europe feel we could have a better standard of living than we do now using 1/10 the power we currently use. I was able to drop power consumption around 40% in my rented apartment by buying a new fridge and switching some light bulbs to cfl. Later I dropped water consumption by buying a new dishwasher and washing machine and was supplied with a better toilet by my landlord. I would like to be driving a hybrid electric or electric car and charging it at night when the power company has a surplus and the rates are lower. If I owned I would be preheating water with a solar heater and using photovoltaic panels as well.

Energy and resource efficiency are low hanging fruit.

[kestrel91316]

21. Last time I had anything resembling a "normal middle class lifestyle"

was about 20 years ago. I guess I am already adapting to the new reality.

I am leaning toward minimalism, but I have all my family antiques and keepsakes, lol, and am not giving them up. So I can't shoehorn myself into a studio apartment.