Yes. The compelling argument is that we're late on the clock when it comes to even fulfilling the modest measures we've set ourselves and that if we don't act faster we're going to destroy our ecology for both future generations and countless of other species on this planet. That's not compelling or clear enough? You want to sit in 50°C degree summer heat and ration your food because crops aren't sustainable rather than ration some energy now? Because you don't get to 'sign up' for anything, you'll have to pick one.
Because I cannot.
The fact remains that what people say they care about, and what they are prepared to sacrifice for, are two totally separate things. What you are suggesting is essentially an enforced recession ( drop in consumption and quality of life).
Politicians are never rewarded for having a recession on their watch. It's just never going to fly. It's as realistic as we can end war if everyone would just be nicer to one another.
I think OP argues that if that power isn't going into the grid, it does make a difference, specifically to how much dirty energy is used by everybody else:
> Every solar panel put to use for something that isn't turning an old power plant off is slowing the energy transition.
Energy sourced by burning fossil fuels does.
Deprecating harmful sources of energy is what we care about, not total consumption.
There is no compelling argument against increasing energy consumption if it’s from clean sources.
If anything increasing energy production is the solution to climate change. Abundant clean energy literally enables terraforming. How we terraform will be important, but at a minimum we can terraform the climate into stagnation.
But that's living in the future. We're 100 years premature if we think that way. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
The world as it is, is bleak. We fucked up. We took a wrong turning down 50 years of late capitalism fuelled on unsustainable and toxic resources. There's really no alternative in the immediate plan than reducing consumption.
My way of coping is to embrace that challenge as a new vision of a positive future. Taking pride in using less is it's own journey and I will leave colonising Mars to the great-grandchildren.
1 (one example) :https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/07/22/were-going-to-...
I agree that if you ask people to live a "worse" life for the sake of future generations most people are too selfish and insecure to cooperate. My disagreement is that it is necessarily worse.
If you factor out agriculture, essential goods transport and building maintenance, which admittedly are big factors, then a period of zero growth, a life with less gratuitous material goods, helicopters, jet-skis, and a tenth gold iPhone is a hardly undesirable except to a few,
A life where I can walk to work, shop and meet people in my local community, take vacations within 200 miles by public transport, eat locally grown food, and where we all spend much less screen time plugged into the Matrix is a much better life as far as I can see.
Mostly, I think it will be worse for all the people who want to sell things that nobody really needs.
If this is to succeed, through choice and markets, without some sort of communist World Economic Forum telling us we'll have to "own nothing" then the most important thing we can sell is a mature vision of a better life. Therefore we ought to stop equating reduction of consumption with a "worse" life.
Don’t forget about the energy required to modify all our current systems. To fight against the current system and overcome the inertia to change it.
Also - that’s your vision of Utopia. Maybe others want to colonise the solar system ? Which is not possible by reducing our energy consumption.
Why are you so motivated to make sacrifices that don’t need to be made ?
The article talks about someone generating more electricity from solar panels, than they can use. What does it matter if they increase consumption of energy with respect to harming the climate by burning fossil fuels ??
- Not having travelled more than 200km from home for the last 10 years,
- A friend who is CEO of renewable startup in Paris and is worth 60m€ today (the company is ~300m€), spent his wedding trip in France instead of Maldives,
- Not eating meat,
- Using blankets instead of heating at home,
- Suffer through 40°C rather than use A/C,
- Buy organic at the local market.
It’s enough voters that the entirety of Europe cheers Macron & Merkel’s decision to cut off our gas supplies from Russia in 6 months. Sure it’s about the war, but people’s mindset is that we’d have to do it anyway for ecology, so why not now. And when you do speak with partisans, they acknowledge that we’ll half-replace with other sources, but they also tell you that the goal is to consume less in absolute numbers.
At least this (majority) of people in Europe is mentally prepared to use much less energy than their parent’s generation, and the little remainder should be renewable. They accept the deflation that it represents. They’d be happy to be poor for those political ideals of leaving a healed earth to the next generation.
Whether or not you believe in their vision, their vision is certainly not to replace-and-increase energy consumption.
Do you have a source for this because I've lived here all my life and in 3 different European countries and this is not really something I've seen, other than some young people caring about green energy, it's definitely not the majority and definitely varies a lot country to country. Your average Pole has a very different stance to your average Dutch.
Merkel?
Merkel is not even in office anymore and you can be sure Macron wouldn’t be either if it wasn’t for French nuclear power and that he just won an election before these decisions.
Germany doesn't even know if they will make it through the winter properly.
The claim that deflation is largely accepted is wrong and in conflict with EU leadership statement and goals.
A segment of the EU is cheering on the decision due to the war first and foremost. The environmental benefits are laughable because they have already turned to restarting coal plants that were previously shut down.
No, the youth are great but this is a deluded view.
Or more than likely they are better at hiding their consumption habits: I agree that all of those things help, many of which I do myself, but chances are they are buying new devices every new product release cycle (because why not?) and likely spend lots of times on social media showing off that quinoa salad they had for lunch, all if which require immense amounts of energy in servers alone that make all of things they do on the individual level moot.
I think the sooner we realize we are all culpable because the system is designed that way the sooner we can analyze this situation is untenable if all we focus on such low hanging fruit that not able to address the crux of the issue: self-serving politics holds back the major amount of progress.
Germany is perhaps the biggest example of how Green-window dressing is ultimately setting you up for catastrophic failure when you align your energy dependence to an authoritarian despot in an attempt to outsourcing the dirty parts that keep your economy working.
> At least this (majority) of people in Europe is mentally prepared to use much less energy than their parent’s generation, and the little remainder should be renewable. They accept the deflation that it represents. They’d be happy to be poor for those political ideals of leaving a healed earth to the next generation.
I've lived and farmed in Eco-communes and Agro tourism in EU, and I can guarantee you this is not a widely held value system; most of the business models rely on people's conspicuous consumption habits, and while it's true most are Boomers age wise, the younger cohorts (like myself) also enjoy traveling and experiencing other things that are quite energy intensive. I accept this fact, and have reduced my consumption in order to justify these things in addition to have spent a lot of time focused farming and building my startup to support and advancing carbon sequestration as well as worked in making my activism profitable by working for farm to table kitchens etc...
It's easy for me to justify any overt consumption habits for most of my Life as I'm likely carbon negative on an individual level, but the truth is that I derive no pleasure from consumption but I ultimately I accept that denying these externalaties is how we remain stagnant and rationalize things into indifference.
I'm mentally prepared in the sense that the reality is being forced upon me, it is not something I want and it is not virtuous. You wonder why Europe is stagnating? This is it.
We would not be in this situation if you green maniacs hadn't turned off the nuclear plants and prevented more from being built. You've created an artificial energy famine. And buying organic will not work for a global population of 8 billion, as we are finding out in Sri Lanka.
Suffering through 40 degree temperatures does not make you virtuous. AC is good, it saves lives, it is not a luxury. It's the nearest thing we have to terraforming technology, a top 10 invention of the 20th century.
I don't want to be in your self-flagellation climate cult. I don't want to be poor. Fuck you.
This is why we are doomed and why a sizeable and increasing portion of our society has no hope.
Buying an AC isn't climate-neutral even if electricity is free (and that is also without taking into account that "free electricity" doesn't come for free, and additionally, in time needs maintenance and replacing as well).
Producing a billion electric vehicles and enough solar to sustain them isn't either.
But you think that solar panels and electric vehicles would be enough?