I grew up in a town, and in a family that was acutely aware of how energy is generated, and the details of what makes a modern society work. I remember in 1963 we had an electric car show. But that was Silicon Valley before it was known as that. And I was raised by an extremely bright engineer. So frugal was just the default mode. Talk of world population was just common discussion even when I was only a child.
What I'm now wondering about is that since we are facing big troubles, and even though all of us cannot afford to live the modern life without literally killing the planet, does that mean that we have to stop doing the things that modern people enjoy? You mention the how a group of people on a plane divides the carbon output by the number of people on the plane. Given the amount of fuel that's burned for a trip of a few hundred people on a plane, it's really prohibitive. It's something that shouldn't even be happening. Now that we are at 400 PPM of CO2, and 7 billion humans, we should be already in emergency mode. No more childbirths until the population drops in half, at least. And no more using of fossil fuel for frivolous things. Holy shit, what am I, some kind of monstrous dictator? What kind of world would that be? Do you know what the carbon footprint of making a movie is? HUGE! So no more movies.
You can see what a dilemma we have. Economies depend upon resources. We pretty much have the choice between environment OR economy. And the choice between a world like North Koreans now live, or something along the lines that we enjoy. One is a dismal life not worth living, the other is interesting and colorful.
So I know what I wanted. I wanted to see responsible people making daily choices that would allow the world to be sustained in it's nice and comfortable form. Now that we're where we are, I don't really know what to do. I actually came to DU just for to discuss these things. I was surprised at how resistive people were to talk about it. I can see why. We're all threatened by it. After all, it's all downhill from here. Or if we continue our present lives, we're guilty of essentially killing planet earth.
What do we do? We can't engineer our way out of this. Even if we improve efficiency of transportation and heating by 50%, we're going to see 50% more humans shortly. That improvement will be lost.
I'd love to hear ideas. I don't see any half way solutions to a full blown situation. I do appreciate your reply, though. I can tell you are thoughtful.
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