Ludi wrote:MonteQuest wrote:Wildwell wrote:Well I said that the world wouldn't power down to agricultural levels, nor do I think there's a need to. Under no conceivable scenarios would millions of people throw years of education away, remain within walking distance of where they were born and go and shovel horse shit. Its pointless putting forward such a proposition and even more pointless enforcing it.
Governments have enough problems trying to get people to leave their cars at home let alone turn to hard labour and subsistence living.
Well, I can see that few even have an inkling of what a powerdown entails. Yes, I see a move away from machines and toward more manual labor, but
hard labor and subsistence living?
Hardly.
Why is it that so many people haven't a clue as to what powerdown means?
Where does this mindset come from?
Powerdown in many cases will mean giving up speed of acquisition in return for quality.
It would be nice if people were interested, instead of leaping to the conclusion that powerdown means people becoming serfs on the land or something.
Nope.
Adjusting our culture to work with Earth's life systems rather than against them will probably mean more people will need to be at least somewhat involved with growing their own food and other needs, but it certainly doesn't require everyone become a farmer. In fact, I don't even promote farming, myself. I promote
gardening, which is a much more productive use of resources than farming (in general) and far less physical labor. See websites below for more details.
If you want my honest opinion some of this self-sufficiency stuff is a little naive, that's not to say there's not a place for some of it. Most people don't want to live 'the good life' and are more than happy enough with their microwave meals, widescreen TVs, electricity and clean water supply, all of which implies some sort of interdependence and industrial scale civilisation. We’re also not going to un-invent this stuff and do things ‘the hard way’. If families have moved about they are going to want to travel, people still want to know the news, have clean running water and food on the table.
You cannot sustain a modern city by growing a bit of veg in the garden. Materials have to come it and out, people actually have to do something to sustain themselves, and will naturally move to trade, making things to better their lot and invent things to make life easier – this is human nature and sets us apart from the animals, not to say some of the inventions are always sensible!
More interestingly the whole notion of 'localisation' (in the sense peak oilers mean it) is also void. Again, that's not to say growing food and making (some) products a little closer to have isn't beneficial, but I get the impression people think this can happen all around animal power and everything you want can be found within walking distance. And if it’s not based around animal power, even using humble bikes, it’s still industrial.
Materials, goods and labour to sustain the population are not found where you want them. Bad harvests have been known to kill millions. This is why transportation grew up – hence your oil use. We didn’t do it for fun, we did it to make life easier. Getting rid of all of that, or even a substantial part of that will make life much, much harder. Personally I don’t think motorised personal transport using throwaway vehicles is sustainable. Growing your own biodeisel sounds great on that site, only trouble is who is going to mine the iron ore, make the steel, design and make your car? It’s all far too hippyish to take seriously. I have included cars because erasing them is not acceptable to most people BUT with the caveat life is not planned around them in all but rural areas.
In essence you are talking about either an agricultural economy or an industrial one, there's no 'half way' house. My argument is using the right checks and a balance the industrial one doesn’t have to get out of hand, but that requires vision and policy, and responsibility, at every level. It may be the human civilisation is naturally boom/bust and we must let nature take its course somewhat and can never come up with an ‘acceptable’ solution that satisfies ‘working with the planets life systems’, but we can go a long way in getting most of the way there.
If you think people have got the wrong end of the stick, set out your stall, but make it attractive otherwise you have failed.