I’m going to believe solutions will come via the following until I get marched quietly into a death/prison camp, or get gunned down scrumping apples:
1. The power of community
2. The power of Government
3. The power of the free-market
I don’t see that you have to pick one. But I’d say the biggest changes will come from 2, who no doubt have some measures to pull off-the-shelf.
To get people on board make it a Patriotic cause, have Vera Lynn singing ‘there’ll be wind turbines over, the white cliffs of Dover’, people love that sort of stuff and will be clamouring over themselves to do their bit.
Think about the Manhattan project in WW2. Or the NHS (now around the fifth largest employer in the world) over here, which began in the messy aftermath of WW2. Huge undertakings that only one body has the power to initiate. We need that with renewables, recycling and conservation programmes.
Meat farming is too energy intensive and would need to be scaled down, so the atkins diet and 80-stone man go tubby bye-bye. This frees up land for bio-fuels. We’ve got food mountains at the moment, I’ve seen the ‘snack’ portions that are served up in the US and the waistlines that go with it. I’ve read that in Hong Kong, 45% of local vegetable needs were being met through the use of just 6% per cent of the land back in 1996. We grow a lot here (a third of all UK veg at one time?) on dwindling numbers of small allotments often run by people who are retired. So I believe there is quite a lot of slack in the system, and we could ramp up production if required.
Some beer mat calculations & airy-fairy thoughts: The US defense budget is something like $400 bn. Let’s say a third of that is lopped off to go towards other causes over a period of 5 years. $667 bn to party with. I don’t know how many homes there are in the US, but let’s say 180 million. I make that $3700 per home to fit wind turbines/solar panels/insulation/broadband rather than Rummy’s star wars fantasy. The NSA could even fit a listening device in if they wanted javascript:emoticon('8O') Would give the Mrs someone to talk to when there’s a decent match on, and as they’re a lot smarter than us blokes (
http://www.alsagerschool.co.uk/subjects ... ation1.htm ) they’ll be able to pass on useful tips on how to run the world javascript:emoticon(':-D'). Energy companies aren’t going to like it, fine, make them state-owned if necessary.
In the UK I’d like to see the lords scrapped and replaced with some sort of long-term planning assembly, elected by the population from a list drawn-up by the Privvy council. They’d have the power to veto legislation from the commons (up to a point) and draft up their own legislation to submit to the commons. Proportional representation would ensure a more balanced house and a wider set of issues debated.
Make every company develop an energy saving policy as they do with H&S etc… The list goes on.
Some countries will fair better than others (I’m thinking Sweden, France, Germany Ireland). But even in China they’re building a new city on ecological principles, a drop in the ocean I know.