"Things are tough right now. And as the saying goes, ‘when the going gets tough, quit doing the hard stuff and just cling to what kind of worked in the past.'"
Yep. We don’t, as a species, seem equipped to handle it intelligently. It’s too slow-moving and abstract.
There’s issues where politicians deviate from the average person, but it’s not most things, and this isn’t an example. “Takes climate change seriously, after all their other problems” describes like 90%+ of everybody.
Edit: Well, maybe 70%, and another 20% that deny some aspect of it.
Carbon taxes also won’t solve anything. At best it’s a token effort, A carbon tax is just pushed to the consumers, making quality of life worse.
There are studies that if you completely and radically reorganized how we work and live and how wealth is distributed, we could have higher standards of living while only consuming 30% of energy and resources.
But there is no way to get there because the power of the neoliberal plutocrats is too strong. And they employ the smartest people on earth to craft the best propaganda to keep and grow their power. It’s not about humanity as a species or human nature, but about the current absolute power of capitalism globally.
Not burning fossil fuels is always pushed to consumers. Most stuff consumers use involves some of it, and most people prefer the stuff, whether that’s rational or not.
we could have higher standards of living while only consuming 30% of energy and resources.
Riiiight. Have you ever had to organise or build something? It all takes resources, and nobody is working with a ton of slack. Unless that study is assuming all kinds of futuristic physical infrastructure just magically appears to carry the burden, it doesn’t make sense.
If we all lived at a basic third-world kind of standard, we could probably do it on 30% of the resources. If you want to own a car or have a lot of privacy, you’re SOL, though. And even there it’d take time to rebuild things to accommodate the new system.
This is a third world-focused paper, in a development studies (as in “developing nation”) journal. It’s basically talking about what I described in the last paragraph - everyone gets to live in Mainstreet, India, and nobody in Mainstreet, USA.
It would, indeed, involve everyone getting medically adequate nutrition, education, a flush toilet and an internet connection, which is how they’re defining “decent standard of living”. Specifically, see table 1.
You could argue this is worth it, and that argument wouldn’t be crazy. But, it’s not a higher standard of living for the average Lemmy user.
Yeah possibly. Only one phone and one tablet or laptop per person, no PC battlestation :(
But I would argue it still does mean more luxury in the developed world for one simple reason: The biggest luxury in life is time. But if you only use 30% resources and energy, you can probably cut working hours / employment to something like half.
That is not just lazing about, it’s being able to read and learn, to raise your children without having to work, to be relaxed about the future and the economic outlook. Just looking at how children are raised and educated today vs 50 years ago, quality of life has drastically sunk. Gadgets and multiple cars are not all there is to quality of life. There are those comparisons to medical servs who only worked 20 hours a week.
But the larger point is to show the sheer scale and enormity it would take to really address climate change. Banning most meat production would be simple (but hard) because people can just eat potatoes. But most of the rest is hard. It will not be achieved by a carbon tax.
No PC battlestation, and a family of four living in 650 sqft. It might not be the kind of phone you’re thinking of, either, since dumb phones still have a following in poor countries. But sure, you can still live a happy life that way.
It will not be achieved by a carbon tax.
I mean, if aliens invaded and forced us to put on a $1,000,000 per tonne carbon tax, fossil fuel burning would stop pretty entirely. IIRC the economic response to the carbon taxes we’ve had has been pretty much as expected.
That’s pretty much mainstream politicians everywhere, unfortunately.
because voters demanded it. Carney swung 30 points by killing the carbon levy.
Yep. We don’t, as a species, seem equipped to handle it intelligently. It’s too slow-moving and abstract.
There’s issues where politicians deviate from the average person, but it’s not most things, and this isn’t an example. “Takes climate change seriously, after all their other problems” describes like 90%+ of everybody.
Edit: Well, maybe 70%, and another 20% that deny some aspect of it.
Carbon taxes also won’t solve anything. At best it’s a token effort, A carbon tax is just pushed to the consumers, making quality of life worse.
There are studies that if you completely and radically reorganized how we work and live and how wealth is distributed, we could have higher standards of living while only consuming 30% of energy and resources.
But there is no way to get there because the power of the neoliberal plutocrats is too strong. And they employ the smartest people on earth to craft the best propaganda to keep and grow their power. It’s not about humanity as a species or human nature, but about the current absolute power of capitalism globally.
Not burning fossil fuels is always pushed to consumers. Most stuff consumers use involves some of it, and most people prefer the stuff, whether that’s rational or not.
Riiiight. Have you ever had to organise or build something? It all takes resources, and nobody is working with a ton of slack. Unless that study is assuming all kinds of futuristic physical infrastructure just magically appears to carry the burden, it doesn’t make sense.
If we all lived at a basic third-world kind of standard, we could probably do it on 30% of the resources. If you want to own a car or have a lot of privacy, you’re SOL, though. And even there it’d take time to rebuild things to accommodate the new system.
How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all? Insights from needs-based analysis - ScienceDirect
This is a third world-focused paper, in a development studies (as in “developing nation”) journal. It’s basically talking about what I described in the last paragraph - everyone gets to live in Mainstreet, India, and nobody in Mainstreet, USA.
It would, indeed, involve everyone getting medically adequate nutrition, education, a flush toilet and an internet connection, which is how they’re defining “decent standard of living”. Specifically, see table 1.
You could argue this is worth it, and that argument wouldn’t be crazy. But, it’s not a higher standard of living for the average Lemmy user.
Yeah possibly. Only one phone and one tablet or laptop per person, no PC battlestation :(
But I would argue it still does mean more luxury in the developed world for one simple reason: The biggest luxury in life is time. But if you only use 30% resources and energy, you can probably cut working hours / employment to something like half.
That is not just lazing about, it’s being able to read and learn, to raise your children without having to work, to be relaxed about the future and the economic outlook. Just looking at how children are raised and educated today vs 50 years ago, quality of life has drastically sunk. Gadgets and multiple cars are not all there is to quality of life. There are those comparisons to medical servs who only worked 20 hours a week.
But the larger point is to show the sheer scale and enormity it would take to really address climate change. Banning most meat production would be simple (but hard) because people can just eat potatoes. But most of the rest is hard. It will not be achieved by a carbon tax.
Basically people are tired of greenwashing.
No PC battlestation, and a family of four living in 650 sqft. It might not be the kind of phone you’re thinking of, either, since dumb phones still have a following in poor countries. But sure, you can still live a happy life that way.
I mean, if aliens invaded and forced us to put on a $1,000,000 per tonne carbon tax, fossil fuel burning would stop pretty entirely. IIRC the economic response to the carbon taxes we’ve had has been pretty much as expected.