Pardon the dangerous question, but I thought it would be fun and good for us if we got out of our comfort zones for a while. Can we all play a little devil's advocate here with some really cool videos of lectures on YouTube and TED:Ideas Worth Spreading
Here's the dangerous argument, point by point.
YouTube Point:
Without the planet, all else is a moot point
vs
TED Counterpoint:
The bottom line is that some affordable investments produce major benefits and other investments produce only frustrated excitement
Do you feel this is a false dichotomy as I've set it up?
JohnS
Chris,
It would take a book rather than a conversation to actually answer your question, but here are a few thoughts:
1. In the first video the guy is casually downplaying the effects of economic collapse in comparison with weather disruption. He is assuming that poor people with devastated social structures can survive and maintain higher quality of life than rich people with broken infrastructure and bad weather. This is an experiment which has been done. Look at the varying outcomes of natural disasters in rich and poor countries around the world or at different times and wealth levels in the same country and you know the answer.
2. In his efforts to illustrate Pascal's wager and the precautionary principal he's left several variations off his grid. These include:
a. Man-made global warming is real but it's too late to fix it.
b. Global warming is real but not man made and therefore immune to our intervention.
c. Man-made global warming is real we our attempts to cure it make it worse.
I'm sure there are others.
His remark about car insurance is also somewhat misleading. Nobody buys car insurance without asking the price. If it's more than the value of the car, you don't do it. If it's more than you can afford you don't do it, and maybe you don't drive. It's not an example of the fear of an uncertain but overwhelming outcome rendering the price of prevention moot.
I do think it would be a good idea to shift our culture and habits so that we use less fossil fuel, and while I'm still undecided on global warming, I'm convinced that prices and pollution will rise and that rather than being an economic problem, transition to sustainable systems can be an economic boon.
The guy in that first video does get down to it at the end about culture change, and that's really why this is such a hot issue. I think 80% of the argument on both sides is a collectivist vs. individualist one and the global warming thing is just a smoke screen for most people.
It would sure help if the folks who honestly believe this is a problem would try to move themselves away from rhetoric and their favored 'solutions' which have been worn thin by their use to promote collectivist/socialist/communist economic ideas which have been repeatedly shown to lead to poverty, misery, and the destruction of individual civil rights.
It matches exactly the pattern of a solution looking for an excuse to be implemented. That makes it really difficult for folks who don't agree with those ideologies to accept that there might be a problem. This is aggravated by the kind of quasi-moralism or dogmatism that some folks show.
General thought experiment question:
Someone discovers a yeast/algae symbiote which fixes CO2 from the air and converts it into propane, the process releases water vapor but no other pollutants. They start up a company building giant vats to grow this stuff, and then start building them in the Sahara desert. It looks like the start up company is going to be richer than all the oil companies put together at least until their patent runs out, and the price of propane is going to fall to "too cheap to meter" levels.
Good news or bad news?
JohnR
My first reaction is that there was not as much dichotomy between these 2 guys and their presentations as you seem to suggest. 1)Both frame the problems and solution(s) in a "think globally, act globally context" when I think history clearly shows that we flipflopandfail too often when trying to do any kind of global action. Action at human scale is more individual and group size, not global. Maybe this will change in the future, but so far I think human history says what I'm saying: action is mostly a local thing.
2) Neither pointed out how most of the world appears to be participating in and contributing to global warming, despite all the separate and different cultural backgrounds. So it's not just a 1-culture problem, nor should it be a 1-culture solution. Sure, the participation and contribution, nation-to-nation and individual-to-individual, varies considerably, in that some of us are hugely more responsible for some of these problems (i.e. global warming, governance and corruption) than others of us, yet there appears little relationship between interest or action and the level of reponsibilities. Indeed, some of us may have implemented and changed far beyond what any global program or policy might recommend if we were to assume a global approach to these problems.
It would have been helpful to have discussed what individual or community responsibility is or should be, maybe broken down by nation or culture. In other words, if a baseball batter batting .333 is worrying and struggling to improve his/her batting average, it might be helpful to show that batter the list of the top best batters, since that would show him/her that 0.333 isn't bad, in fact quite good. Some people who've already made great strides ought maybe to step back and wait for others to catch up, rather than pushing for greater achievement on their own turf. Neither of these guys focused on this, even in a tiny way.
3) Neither offered any insight into their own position or perspective. In other words, would either have been less credible if they'd admitted they'd done absolutely nothing about any of these matters in their own lives, that they are just big guzzlers and polluters talking a good talk?
Hey, I know many, including many of my clients, who were extremely disappointed and disillusioned when they learned Gore's annual energy and pollution demand! Gore lost a certain amount of credibililty, not with the general public who doesn't know this stuff, but with some of the folks who are de facto leaders in reducing and minimizing energy and pollution loads! Me included. Sure, I accept this he's a good presenter and spokesperson, but in our modern world, we have seen many leaders (i.e. GWB) who assumed their leadership roles almost without any credible experience or background in what they were now asked to do, and now we see where that got us and him! I recently
participated in an eco-blog, run by a group where absolutely nobody else had any experience. My discussion, which would seem normal on this list, was nonetheless way over the heads of the blog group as well as the blog audience. I got no comments from readers and none from the other blog-leaders.
In other words, we need leaders with experience leading us where we want to or should go, but we also need followers with enough awareness and experience to recognize what that is. Our modern world is so abstract and virtual reality sometimes that I'm not sure this is possible. Can we change it? Sure if one of these guys had addressed that...
Probably didn't simply because they didn't have any experience. They didn't know.
4) Both presentations contained no math, no physical examples. Most of the presentations were based on mantras and marketing buzzwords. Like Kyoto, global warming or climate change or instability. What's that mean? Can you imagine if I taught my solar or energy courses like that! I can't. Instead I need to steer students out of their nebulous abstract view of what's what in solar to a more focused understanding of the specifics of the subject.
5) Neither presentor acknowledged that the biggest problem isn't how much money we spend individually or as nations, but how many of us actually pay attention and participate to any extent. And participation is not a function of money, which was probably the biggest problem with Bjorn's talk.
Again, this may have resulted from each of these guys not having any personal experience about what they were talking about. For one thing, as I've been saying on this list, there is a strong argument (and not just from me) that the #1 most essential thing most people can do to reduce their home energy consumption is having less house per person. That costs less money, measured per person or per household. Same with most cars... The most efficient ones are all small and many of them are actually cheaper than the more guzzling alternatives. There are some things which will cost more, but many many changes will cost us less. This is hopeful, since I like to think that we can ask for participation regardless of income. We don't want a situation where only the richer can participate. Since most of us don't have lots of money, it's a turn-off to hear all solutions phrased in huge money amounts, which made Bjorn's presentation almost a turnoff...
6) Both presenters talked about thinking about the future. But most people and governments appear not to think very far in the future. Paybacks beyond a couple years are usually not even considered. Most are reactive, just moving this way or that in reaction to this/that catastrophe. Many many examples. It's why I think most people won't decide to use less energy until there's less energy available to use, right now. Heck, if we were told that ngas and oil were going to run out by 2015, how many people would wait until 2015 to do something about it? I bet more than we would believe. Maybe this is a human thing. For instance, one writer (Schwimme?) proposes that humans aren't genetically disposed to think beyond physical horizons of time or space. Maybe we're wired to think mostly about what we can see, smell and hear right now, not what's over the horizon or in the future. Maybe that's why we're where we are today. A few of us think ahead a little or are concerned about people over the hill, but there may be limits.
JeanetteHR
Thanks Chris for the link to ted.com because they are quite an impressive group of resources.The youtube fellow was doing quite well on his own risk management games UNTIL he subtly slipped in his own personal formula for a solution as being POLICY CHANGE. What a joke, what a proposal for futility. Slick insertion, unquestioned as 'the answer to doing something'.
In contrast Bjorn's point about doability with WORLD MONEY is accurate and demolished the youtube policy focus. The Dane's line about if you could convince GWB to switch funds from warmongering to free them up for reallocation to other problems was absolutely priceless.
Global warming is about *us* and how we allocate our own efforts PERSONALLY, in our own LIVES and SPENDING. Just as AEA has always said when it comes to EE/AE and sustainability.
Most of the comments flowing here are in that traditional AEA vein and are quite valid. But I draw the line on JohnR's idea that reducing our homes to cubicles as being a goal -- it's absolutely nothing but a disastrous direction.
We would ask John how many sf/person he and Gail consider to be suitable for their own use. It's possible that his idea of *less* is not the same ideal that I keep hearing among the citified liberals as their solution to housing problems.
I will tell you straight out, right now, that the 3 of us have lived in this apt complex for 8 years in about 300sf/person and believe me the effect on your own ability to cope -- particularly for some of us -- is drastically reduced, leading to bad decisions, handicaps on productivity, and subversive activity (by jealous neighbors who think our continued mechanical work on our vehicles when they are not permitted by the general rules without our getting evicted is a sign that we are unfairly favored when it's simply that we negotiated at least that one ability before signing the lease). We had a pre-eminent reason for fleeing to this location on short notice because of the prison-like suburban-McCarthy neighborhood where we had been living and had been attempting to change our own home and landscape to match the model-solutions for homeowners, which solutions come from the scientific research on personal environments, as well as the DonellaMeadows models of where we as a planet are going.
We are done with cubicalization and have early indications that our own bermed, radiant floor design -- so long in development -- will allow us to heat (and probably cool) with less use of energy in 3-times the space than in this miserable apartment rigidity among excessive guzzling and muddled anger at the world.
JohnR added MORE SPACE to his own new-bought home AND REDUCED ENERGY usage. More of the right stuff is better, including spacious homes using passive solar and waste utilization, productive space.
I would suggest that the housing problems should be solved so as to enable people to be strong and clear-headed. The corporate/govt induced cubicalization trends in our own culture have practically imprisoned nuclearized families in isolated weakness.
Homes should accomodate a significant family group so that the economic and activist vagaries in our fortunes are able to be supported by strength of numbers of sources of experience and income in our own family grouping. Homes should also accommodate space for production of wealth/wellbeing such as growing areas, workshop and office areas and common areas.
IMO, the reason for our US-people's disastrous inability to cope with the bogosity of the cultural propaganda and misleaders is that people's own ideas do not have the room to grow and thrive that comes with multigenerational family group-sharing and healthy living/food/healing.
It's this power of the individual that must be enabled and that's why the food-first priorities and public-health-diseases-prevention do have potency, just like the Dane was pointing out (without saying the flammable tag of individual power enabled thereby).. So JohnR is exactly right when he says that the only genuine, trustable route to energy sufficiency is diversity of energy-choice and implementation that suits the precise application individually defined. That's what we are exploring here in AEA as we accumulate our own personal solutions to individual application-needs and what works for each case -- for all to kibbitz, study and adapt if appropriate.
I also agree with JohnS that the rise of problem solving in response to worsening problems will be an economic boon. We just have to be allocating our own spending to reduce support for bankrupt ideas and to divert our spending (however we can) to solutions that work for our own lives. Do not let peer-pressure and group-bogosity push you to invest in unwise spending.
This will shape a better allocation of our own economy's development into productive channels. And this re-direction of our own personal resources can also re-shape govt, specifically because our own govt has become a driver of bankrupt ideas that we can curb by diverting govt's access to our own resources while insisting that they cease to destroy our freedoms and genuine entitlements. Our tax moneys are our own to invest in our own way, not just passively continue to remain in our roles as totally-consumers who's only blueprint is the establishment-job route with all its traps.
That's my contribution to this game of Chris' dangerous question.
JohnR
I'm not promoting cubicalization, Jeanette... I am saying generally that we've seen huge and growing amounts of built space and infrastructure per person in recent decades. I'm not just talking about homes, but homes have nearly doubled in size since I was born, while average household size has dropped by almost 50%. Modern commercial buildings have hugely increased space per worker. EBN (Environmental Building News) recently showed not only that
average commercial buildings use triple the energy of average homes,
and that
the average worker uses another 130% of that commercial building energy-per-person in transportation energy just to commute.
These are all wild and substantial diversions from history, even in our lifetimes. These changes are overwhelming and masking the teeny tiny improvements in building envelopes, energy technologies and transportation machines. We cannot expect to change our usage and pollution with the current model working as fast as possible in negative directions.
I say this knowing that YOU, me, ChrisD and JohnS are likely working from home offices, so are not part of the mechanisms which are driving the built-space-per-person issue. My office and house are not cubicles...
However, I do get calls from people with 2000 sf per person and more, just for their homes. In other words, as much space as my entire house for each person! I've not done any projects like this, but many are done. Here is a link to a graph I just uploaded to my website (not indexed from my website, so use this link).
It clearly shows the relationship of energy use per sf of house, regardless of the prescriptions and other EE/RE measures thrown at the house. I am one of many energy and building professionals talking about this issue. None of us that I know are promoting cubicalization, just limits.
Heck, Gail and I have 5.4 acres of land in addition to our 2100 sf house. Hardly a small footprint! But we don't have 5.4 acres of irrigated, mowed and developed land, as I see in some large-plot suburban locations. I'm developing a wild space, not a manicured lawn.
BTW, I also moved twice as far from the city in 1997 as we'd lived before, yet my car energy usage did not go up. So many of the typical mantras don't work for my increased space and operations...
JeanetteHR
John, there are a lot of folks in the YellowSprings contingent of the PeakOil crowd that sing the same mantra about how much more space per person we now aim for compared to their childhood and point to places like Cuba and tell anyone who will listen – usually motivated conservers – that apartment-size homes as the ideal.
And no they would deny too that they are favoring cubicalization but they are. The idea that your/their childhood homes were so enabling of good livings, that we should return to the workplaces of the past are just illusions. Time frames and urban/rural matter.
I'm older than you and most here and my own childhood home was larger than their imagined compacting benefits. We may not have had a big farm house but it was not far from the country where my relatives lived. My father was a skilled blue-collar worker in the city who made very little but my mother built us a ranch with finished basement and spaced her 4 children a half-generation apart, so when I was a kid, we had roughly 500sf/person and an acre of land eventually.
What I see is so many people losing their homes and now living squashed in these apartments with rule after rule against breathing. No car maintenance, no gardens, no wildcrafting along your patio areas, no stacking construction materials on your porch, no pets (which rule we've liberalized in this place though we had to hide one beauty), no altering the 'window treatments'.
You drag out the big exceptional 2000sf/person example but then apply the resulting mantra-prescription to listeners who are just average mostly. My objection is the use of that space, mostly to store furniture that inhibits creativity and productivity. And no I didn't say your home was cubicalised, exactly the opposite, and precisely I want to talk numbers. Your personal space usage is apparently 1000sf/person, quite ample and well-geared to enabling.
I want still bigger homes so that families can grow together, with grandparents and grandchildren, home offices and workshop, indoor gardening, library/tuberoom, ample private space for each individual. It's totally possible to buy structural quality even in the denigrated manufactured homes that are the definition of affordable living in the country, all without even approaching the construction costs that pass as normal. (Picture $28/sf for a well engineered, heat/cold/wind and ergonomic space design)
Last I read manufactured homes only waste 4% of their materials in a home compared to an incredible %age in the 50% category for the ridiculously usual stick-built home construction.
Trends in space is not the place to focus. Enabled spaces is what we should be specifying as requirements and ideals, not simplistic less is greater.
I'd also be careful of the eating analysis. Even science is just learning that they've missed major determinants in people's appetites. The latest discoveries are parts of our brains that focus on calorie demands regardless
of the dieting strategies of no-fat, no-sugars, no this and that. And there must be more, a lot more sophisticated driving forces. Based on my own experience, I find that I crave foods that serve my body's requirements even
when I don't know there's a specific need, such as vit-A for an eye infection or in the case of atrial tachicardia, celery no less. So much of our culture's foods are dosed with non-foods, part-foods, former-foods and
things our bodies never evolved to benefit from that it's a wonder we survive at all. I think people are too #$%^ trusting and get into trouble, early as well as later.
Let's talk numbers and our own designs and experiences, like the graph.
JohnR
Jeanette, "Community Solutions" in Yellow Springs was singing the "1000 sf house" mantra the last time I checked. Indeed, I argued with its leader back then that 'one size fits all' makes no sense. I gave an example of a 6000 sf
house I'd designed for a 3-generation 8-person Bardstown KY family, <800 sf per person. Don't think I persuaded him though...
As for your dream of multi-gen households... Most of my clients are single and 2-person households. 3-person is the 3rd-most-common. This jives with the facts, based on a 2001 post by US-DOE/EIA after the 2000 census...
26.4% = 1-person households
33.2% = 2 persons
15.9% = 3 persons
14.6% = 4 persons
6.6% = 5 persons
3.7% = 6 or more persons
I recall a lecture to AEA by a Miami U of Ohio prof in the 1980s which delved into the mistakes we make by designing our growing housing stock based on a theoretical demographic which existed upto the 60s but has
dramatically changed, thereby leaving us with lots of automatically mis-sized (oversized) houses. Environmental Building News has also written about this. There are usually PLENTY of huge houses out there for folks wanting or needing more space, especially in the city and suburbs. I agree that large homes in rural areas are less common. If you don't count single-wides an double-wides, there is not a huge supply of modern small homes (i.e. < 2000 sf) in cities and suburbs for single and 2-person households which now make up 60% of US households. I'm talking about houses, not apartments. No apartments in my neighborhood either, typical of rural areas. Most of the largest structures in my neighborhoods are barns. Doesn't make much sense to mix-up city/suburb and rural housing styles for this conversation...
When I talk about built space per person, I'm typically talking about non-business fully HVAC-conditioned indoor space in houses and offices, not unconditioned space. My 2100 sf home INCLUDES my utility room (1 of our 9 rooms) since it is fully conditioned. And 240 sf of my house is my office, doored off from the rest of the house and only used for business. So we have 1860sf, or 930 sf per person, for our residential living space, including utility room. I usually target 1000 sf or less per person for maximum conditioned indoor residential space, but this doesn't usually work for just 1 person. My smallest homes for 1-person households are mid-teens (1500-1600 sf). These are usually 2-BR. I understand about apartments, which is why I moved out of my last one in 1975.
My original statements about size of house were in context with the presentations on global warming, where the presenters talked about economic losses from complying with Kyoto or other CO2-cutting measures. They assumed we'd need to spend more to cut CO2. I'd said that many methods to comply with Kyoto had nothing to do with spending more, since a smaller house for a household in an oversized (i.e. >1000 sf per person) would both be typically cheaper AND result less energy use, also less property taxes and overall upkeep expenses and/or labor. Your multi-gen household would also spend less per person on housing than if they lived in separate homes.
But we can argue about dreams and wishes all we want. Change is inevitable, I know. Maybe your multi-gen household will re-emerge. But I'm not seeing that trend yet among my clients or US demographic data.
JeanetteHR
Yes John, that's the YellowSprings-group I was referring to and I'm glad you did put some insects in their ear to make them think about the illogic of their extreme cubicalized household scheme.As for the multi-gen household's scarcity at the moment, I would point out that those same demographics say that the boomers who are retiring in the upcoming couple of years are the group I see as being able to bale us out of
the mess we are in.
This group of retiring boomers grew up in those bigger households of the 60s and are the same ones who turned this country's Vietnam misery into an escape by the 70s by thinking freely outside the box.
The other key is that people are learning the devastating future that the medicare system is planning for grandparent/retirees with medicare/bigpharma's misbegotten treatments that rob us of every penny while torturing their 'beneficiaries' in the most heinous hospital nightmares and nursing homes. The only way out is nutritional medicine and family support for the retirees. And to make the picture totally fair and balanced, the economics of the mounting fuel-money-jobs-whatever problems of their children would be hugely ameliorated by their adopting the multigenerational home that the retiring grandparents would be able to remember and add to their resources.
And yes it's not about spending more money, just the opposite, as you pointed out and as we are living and broadcasting in our own ways. And the missing data that people need for their own planning is that '1000sf/person' target/limit. Which is what I was objecting to not seeing in your earlier posts. Numbers do it. I wanted your number.
Ours (with the multigenerational scheme) is two-fold, one figure for common areas and one for private areas.
Our estimates which we are about to test are 1000sf for common areas and roughly 300sf/person of private areas.
We've been moving toward this arrangement, starting with our allocations of space in the little-Yosemite we had started in Fairfield. The apt living is a seriously shrunken version but our manufactured home (Stonecreek) has been allocated to the goals that we feel are justified by our earlier figuring and experience. The total sqft definitely does not please the YS-bunch. And we felt your own home supported our opposition to the YS-cubicalization that they are publishing widely among the peak oil communities.
Thanks for confirming that expectation with your own 1000sf/person experience and designing.
JohnR
Jeanette, since we're talking about numbers, consider we might think in broader terms
about "upper limits" when referring to per-person usage of energy and water, or production of waste and pollution. We already understand this culturally.
Speed limit signs show what speed not to exceed, not what minimum speed. One hits the "red line" when exceeding upper limit of engine rpm. In my computer management, I have a '2/3 of harddrive' limit for how much permanent stuff I store there, since over that seems to slow the machine down too much, probably taking away too much temporary memory space.
Body mass calcs tell people what weight not to exceed. Sure they also say what minimum weights too, but few people pay much attention to that since far more people are overweight than underweight.
But we don't have any guidance like this with energy or water, pollution or waste per person, whether at work or home. Generally, we can have or produce as much as we want, upto some limit of affordability. California may be trying to change this with mandated progressive electric rates, but still, the wealthiest people (which the MidAmerica Report in the 80s showed as one of the 2 major categories of highest energy use) can usually afford to pay more when the unit prices go up. (The other identified category was "better educated", which may be the same as "more affluent" in the mainstream). Our energy codes are mostly prescriptive, and awards for using
better or more prescriptions (i.e. LEED, EnergyStar) are based on unverified
predictions, not performance outcomes.
My 1000 sf/person is a guideline I've used just to place an upper limit of what appears reasonable for achieving best volume outcomes. However, how much volume (water, energy, pollution, waste) we each are responsible for will likely decline over time as population growth and the spread of affluence creates more demand on the resource streams. At least with regard to centrally-provided resources as from governments and utilities.
There are physical limits to physical systems. We're maybe reaching it with oil and natural gas. Other resource cycles will eventually become maxed out, most after I'm gone but nonetheless... Maybe my 1000 sf will dwindle to 500... But it's not really the area which counts, but the flows associated with that area. The ecologist/politician Nirgall spoke and led in a situation where resources were so just like this. He didn't talk about square footage per person, but resource use per person – in the science fiction tomes by Robinson. Even carbon dioxide from breathing per person, since it was a societal cost to process that CO2 on Mars. It's hard to imagine that we'd ever get that bad. Especially in my neighborhood, where I can buy or trade for a lot of physical sustenance from farmer neighbors. Where there are no smokestacks or multi-lane highways, where I can actually count the cars per day which pass my house...
The big problems are in the cities and suburbs, where the problems are so intense and people have grown too abstract about their flows and demand, where there is hugely increased dependence 'on the system' of safety nets, subsidies and other m.o. There are limits to growth and they are beyond the limits. It's just a matter of time.
The hopeful side of this is that change is inevitable, personal change as well as global. Even climate change. It's crazy to expect things to stay the same, or to expect one-size-fits-all solutions. There are people right now, besides me and you, who manage their energy and other resources by abiding by upper limits. Talked with a client from 20 years ago the other day. He said he kept his electric usage below a ceiling each month.
Another 2 households I know are working hard to keep their kWhs per month below a ceiling. I've had several clients who heated with wood but made sure I designed their homes so they could be comfortable with no more than 1 cord +/- per winter.
When I bought this house, I wanted more living space than before but a lower bill. After my addition project in 98, when I'd upgraded thermal efficiencies, I'd gone further to say I'd cut electricity usage another 33%. Yep, we got there by 2006. These all exemplify management by staying below upper limits.
Sure, Duke's, DP&L's and AEP' prices go down by 1/3 if people use more per month, just as water prices go down for more use per month, but these are false economies based on growth incentives which no longer make sense or cents. These economics will
change, guaranteed.
RandyS once told me that sustainability will likely be more like rationing than most people think. I agree. In that sense, drivers will be allotted so much fuel per year, based on available supply. Use it in a week or a year, I don't care. Or use less than that and sell your surplus to some desperate guzzler. Determine how to get around and what kinds of vehicles to own or use based on your allocation and presumed needs. Or change what needs are presumed. Right now this is all voluntary for most people, but in a resource-limited environment it will become real. Fortunately, we humans are pretty creative and clever. I think when resources become more limited or rationed, we'll simply figure it out, even if we don't have an influx of new technologies and energies at the last minute to change reality. Even
me, who's cut resource flows like a wild man at times, I'll figure out how to cut even more, probably more cheaply than finding more supplies. Most folks are so spoiled with so much access to inexpensive or subsidied resource flows that we have so many opportunities to cut. I think the average person could cut energy and pollution in half, even with pretty small notice. I think this because most people haven't even begun to conserve or become more efficient.
ChrisD's question about whether the planet is the most important problem (i.e. global warming) is still not answered. But maybe we're saying that it's more a human problem than a planet problem. Earth will likely be here after we're extinct. Earth doesn't care what it's climate is. The question to ask may be how humans will react if or when the Earth's so-far mostly-free and readily available resource flows become limited in major ways. Will we humans cooperatively engage to participate in solutions for the good of all or at least groups? Or will we be fighting and scrapping to get a little bit more of this or that before the next guy. I certainly
think we cannot expect everyone to cooperate and participate, just as they are not doing so now. Some of us are "early adopters", but most are just doing the same ol' same ol', albeit grumbling more along the way. Most mainstream leaders are just making promises they can't keep, at least not in the longterm. Would be nice in my lifetime to see a change to this, but I got started in this arena almost 30 years ago and it ain't looking much different in the big picture. Only individuals and small groups are changing so far...
As for Vietnam-era boomers thinking out-of-the-box, I actually do not agree in the big picture. JimT said we/they are rich enough now, at the peak of this group's wealth curve, such that we/they have gotten lazier, less inclined to drive the most efficient vehicles, less inclined to push for the most efficient homes. JimT said we did those things back in the 70s because we/they were poorer. Maybe your point about thinking out-of-the-box is why we/they sold our energy guzzling large American vehicles and demanded subcompact imports. But money eventually built our bank accounts and now we/they went back to energy guzzling SUVs and MiniVans. I think most
boomers became their parents. I'm hoping the new generations will come forward to change the world. Or at least kick it into a different gear. Human evolution occurs in jolts and lurches, nothing steady. And we're where we are because of many teeny tiny occurrences. It will take many more teeny tiny occurrences to create the changes many of us seek.
Arguing about sf/person is the least of it. We need caps on resources per person.
JohnR
