[dohboi]

Logic. Nice work.

Any plans or resolutions for the new year?

[Outcast_Searcher]

"trillions of years"

The earth certainly does not have trillions of years in any form.

Somewhere between a half billion and a billion years from now, the sun becomes so large and hot that life on earth of pretty much any sort becomes impossible.

It's certainly true that the projections are that the heating of the sun as it continues to evolve over the next billion years will make the oceans boil away, if something isn't done about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation ... vironments

But consider: look at the scientific progress humans have made in the past ten thousand years. Banging rocks together and gathering berries and living in caves to smart phones and discussing solar evolution on the internet.

If people would actually work toward sustainable living and expanding knowledge to make living better as true top goals (unlike the recent Paris Climate Treaty), then within 100,000 years (much less half a billion), perhaps we could be living on asteroids or deep within the earth or have moved to other earth-like planets with younger stars (or much more elegent solutions we're currently to ignorant to even imagine).

And I know, with our track record, we will almost certainly have killed ourselves and everything larger than a small insect (if not a bacteria) within a thousand years. It's just that to me, if we can do what we did by just basically looking out for our own economic self interest in ten thousand years or so, if we could stop BAU growth and piling up stacks of consumer crap as our fixations, I believe the vision of Star-Trek like future with a much smaller (and smarter) population is possible.

I wonder if one in a thousand intelligent species is able to change their perspective and survive long term, or if they all inevitably destroy themselves like we are now hell-bent on doing to ourselves.

....

And in the long run, entropy appears to doom us all, but billions or even trillions of years of productive existence as a race would leave a lot more possibilities to accomplish things than the mere hundreds we have given our current course.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I suppose my lifestyle is some kind of a hybrid between Pops and Peak Yeast, as far as trying to mindfully live in a way that is more about being happy and trying to consume/pollute a fraction of what I could to do a bit less harm to the planet. Not having kids is, as others have said, the biggest contribution to that.

I know many have scorned such things as minimizing heating/cooling energy, driving few miles in an efficient car, etc. as useless. However, if the billions of people with first world lifestyles would mostly (let's say 90% of them) make a concerted effort to do this, then IMO:

1). It would make a big difference in total, buying us considerably more time.
2). It would set a meaningful example for the hordes of third worlders who aspire to behave like first worlders do now, ASAP (i.e. they want their "share", and that's understandable).

Naturally it wouldn't be enough if we couldn't scale the global population WAY back over time, but it would be a meaningful start.

And I know, lots of hard right wingers will say that any such efforts are stupid and won't make any difference -- great way to alleviate any responsibility or guilt for those unwilling to do much of anything.

[dohboi]

OS, nicely put.

It is truly a conundrum (or enigma or something) that such a clever species couldn't figure out not to utterly ruin its only home before it found a means to live on some other planet or other space successfully.

I think you describe well exactly what has given many humans such confidence over the last decades (at least) that we would be able to bring our great powers of intellect to bear on all of our greatest problems and to go on to expand and spread our great intellect throughout the solar system and beyond.

But it may be that our very intelligence is our (and the planet's) great curse--we have enough cleverness to devise extremely powerful tools, but not the wisdom to know how to properly, nor the foresight to know when not to use them.

We've been fooled by our own cleverness into thinking we could overcome anything that may come our way.

We (or some at least) are waking up a bit too late to discover that we have built ourselves a perfect, well-locked hell in which we will roast ourselves and our descendants.

[dohboi]

However, if the billions of people with first world lifestyles would mostly (let's say 90% of them) make a concerted effort to do this, then IMO:

1). It would make a big difference in total, buying us considerably more time.
2). It would set a meaningful example for the hordes of third worlders who aspire to behave like first worlders do now, ASAP (i.e. they want their "share", and that's understandable).

Again, well put.

The only way forward is to redefine success, so that those with the most unsustainable lifestyles look like the biggest capital L losers, while those who live content but frugal lives are defined as the true successes to be emulated.

Unfortunately, that shift has to happen...well, basically forty years ago. What is now called the hippy movement was partly a move in that direction. It (like pretty much everything else) got commodified and commercialized and caricatured into some grotesque opposite of itself, but part of it did have seeds of what would have been needed to steer civilization toward a somewhat less death-and-annihilation-driven trajectory.

[Lore]

Maybe I'm a wet blanket on a New Year, but does it really matter what you did this year to save the planet? Other then to make yourself feel good? The human species as a whole is already beyond late in doing anything that will make much of a difference in what's to come.

[dohboi]

wet blankets always make me feel good, so thanks, lore!

[SeaGypsy]

If it were really about reduced impact we should all live under bridges & eat from dumpsters, die proudly from common bacterial infection.

Or kill as many people as possible? What is the carbon impact of mass shooters compared to transition towner?

The folks who have achieved a nice low impact lifestyle have done well, it is a nice thing to do & shows a lot of commitment & drive. The impact overall though is virtually nothing. For every one of us opting out, there are at least 100 opting in. There is a vast pool of humanity dreaming of a home in the burbs, with all the standard trimmings, desperate to increase their consumption. Unless the places that can afford to lock them out & turn their attention away from the growth paradigm, wholesale, the trajectory remains the same. There isn't a country in the world doing this. Reasons for tightening borders in some places have nothing to do with environmental sustainability.

[Shaved Monkey]

Eating local seasonal organic food is not a hardship
Not paying an extra $1000 a year for electricity because you have solar panels, solar hot water and LED lights and efficient white goods is not a hardship.
Not shopping for the sake of buying stuff you dont need is not a hardship
Not driving for the sake of getting somewhere you dont really need/want to be is not a hardship.
Planting trees and gardening is not a hardship.
Living in paradise is not a hardship.
Fishing and swimming is free,golf costs money ,Im not interested in golf but love fishing and swimming.
My lifestyle though it may not save the planet is fun and causing slightly less damage is a bonus.
Having more money to spend on money saving infrastructure and improving lifestyle and prolonging my time here, while thumbing my nose at the carrot chasers is pretty good too.

[Newfie]

Sea Gypsy wrote...

The impact overall though is virtually nothing. For every one of us opting out, there are at least 100 opting in.

Bingo, bulls eye. All the savings mean naught if all you accomplish is to enable greater consumption by others or increased population growth.

This was really the hard core of Bartletts talk, when he holds up the two lists of things that decrease population (all the bad stuff) and the things that increase it (all American as apple pie.)

So many here talk about how they really Understand the situation, so few do.

I find I have to censor myself even here because my views are too radical for the audience.

[dohboi]

Yes, I've heard it all before.

But the more people there are showing that there is another way, the more likely it is also that there will potentially be a shift in the culture.

I'm not holding my breath, but drips can eventually become a flood.

The problem is that the we 'drips' are too few and we need the flood to come day before yesterday.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Sea Gypsy wrote...

The impact overall though is virtually nothing. For every one of us opting out, there are at least 100 opting in.

Bingo, bulls eye. All the savings mean naught if all you accomplish is to enable greater consumption by others or increased population growth.

...

I find I have to censor myself even here because my views are too radical for the audience.

All that is fair enough. So to realistically change it, one obvious way would be to shift from an income tax (penalizing making a good living) to a consumption tax (penalizing buying the stuff (and having kids) that actually does the damage.

And yet, whenever this idea is brought up on this site, I see the left wing of the political spectrum tend to go BONKERS -- as though income taxes are some kind of moral requirement.

What should we be trying to do -- save the planet via making unnecessary consumption economically unpalatable, or continue with a model (income taxes) which doesn't even begin to fix the problem?

[Plantagenet]

For every one of us opting out, there are at least 100 opting in.

Yup. India and China are building dozens coal fired power plants, and now Japan is going to switch to coal to replace their nukes,

And even the people "opting out" are still releasing carbon. We all still drive cars, eat kiwi fruit flown in from New Zealand and farmed salmon flown up from Chile. We buy clothes made in China with electricity from coal and shipped across the Pacific in giant freighters powered by diesel and then trucked across the USA and Europe. We use computers made of metals that have to be mined and plastics that have to be refined.

We don't need to release less carbon. We need to release ZERO carbon And that just ain't happening.

Give up on the idea that you are saving the planet by riding a bike or driving less. You're probably still emitting 10X as much CO2 as the average person in India or Africa.

Cheers!

[dohboi]

???

There is already a 'consumption tax'--it's usually called a 'sales tax.' It's a form of double taxation.

I for one don't think there should be any tax on income below the national average income, but steeply rising above that.

Beyond that, the best focus of a consumption tax would be one on carbon. That could be essentially revenue neutral by returning it to people by one means or another.

But perhaps you could start a thread about tax schemes, if you want to discuss it. It seems a bit...tangential at best to the topic at hand.

[dohboi]

"We all still drive cars, eat kiwi fruit flown in from New Zealand and farmed salmon flown up from Chile. We buy clothes made in China with electricity from coal and shipped across the Pacific in giant freighters powered by diesel and then trucked across the USA and Europe"

Speak for yourself. I do a bit of the first, but none of the rest.

The most infantile thing is to point to what (we think) others are doing, and whine, "Mommy, mommy, they're doing it too, so I should be made to feel bad for anything I'm doing!"

Go ahead and do whatever you want to do, but don't whine and point fingers as a way to justify it. It just makes you look childish and petulant.

(Oh, and do have a lovely New Years! )

[Keith_McClary]

???

There is already a 'consumption tax'--it's usually called a 'sales tax.' It's a form of double taxation.

I for one don't think there should be any tax on income below the national average income, but steeply rising above that.

Beyond that, the best focus of a consumption tax would be one on carbon. That could be essentially revenue neutral by returning it to people by one means or another.

But perhaps you could start a thread about tax schemes, if you want to discuss it. It seems a bit...tangential at best to the topic at hand.

Fee-and-dividend (Hansen, 2009) has a flat fee (a single number specified in US$ per tonne of CO ) collected from
fossil fuel companies covering domestic sales of all fossil (p. 642) fuels. Collection cost is trivial, as there are only
a small number of collection points: the first sale at domestic mines and at the port-of-entry for imported fossil fuels.
All funds collected from the fee are distributed electronically (to bank account or debit card) monthly to legal
residents of the country in equal per capita amounts. Citizens using less than average fossil fuels (more than 60%
of the public with current distribution of energy use) will therefore receive more in their monthly dividend than they
pay in increased prices. But all individuals will have a strong incentive to reduce their carbon footprint in order to
stay on the positive side of the ledger or improve their position.

[Cog]

Corporations don't pay tax, they simply collect it. The consumer pays every bit of it. So for those who want to punish those oil companies, good luck with that particular idea.

[Karle]

Income tax = consumption tax.

I have never heard of anybody who has income that he does not spend on consumption (sooner or later). What else would you do? Burn the money?