quote:

---

Originally posted by It's Me D:
From reading that article this seems to be a two-part problem, an energy crisis and a getting over-their-problems-with-Russia crisis. Its funny/sad to hear so many statements to the effect of: we can either import coal or natural gas, and natural gas comes from Russia (who we don't like) so we will have no choice but to go with coal.

---

With respect to Russia, I don’t think any country wants to be dependent upon another country for most of its energy (or food) needs. If the natural gas pipeline from Russia was to be completed and Germany was to obtain a very large percentage of its energy from Russia, Germany would be in a very vulnerable position. That would be true if the gas pipeline was going from Italy or Spain to Germany as well. Germany would be vulnerable to significant rate increases and, once dependent on that source, would have no choice but to pay the increases, however large they may be.

With regard to the growing energy gap, I thought it was interesting that the analysis took into account a degreasing rate of energy consumption (through conservation?)—yet the gap between projected energy availability and energy needs will grow significantly with the loss of nuclear energy.

Another thing I found interesting was the assessment that the infrastructure to move energy created by wind in the north was insufficient to transfer that energy to the south. Wind and solar energy do not appear to be viable solutions to bridge the energy gap, even with substantially reduced consumptions rates.

quote:

---

If Germany is going to meet its CO2 reduction targets, coal seems to be out of the question.

---

I agree they won't keep their emissions down with coal, but some quoted in the article suggest this doesn't matter as they will abuse the carbon credit trading system and just force someone else to keep emissions down for them while they use coal.

As to the fear of Russia: that was my point, capitalist nation states are too self-serving to deal with this challenge; Russia and Germany are a good example, they could help each other a lot however they are afraid that the other will benefit relatively more, and they cannot get beyond the idea of their small self-interest so we all lose.

[ 27 May 2008: Message edited by: It's Me D ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fidel:
Capitalism or a habitable planet. We can't have both.

---

The global warming “tipping point” will occur long before the demise of capitalism in Europe.

We need to put a stop to any and all frivelous manufacturing and industrial activities immediately. It's propping up a false economy, which without any guarantees for limitless energy supplies, will lead to global serfdom as far as the eye can see. At least it's true in the here and now barring some far-out advancements along the lines of technological singularity. It's crisis mode for starship earth beginning yesterday.

No more IMF, WTO, third world debt slavery, . Scrap it all.

quote:

---

The global warming “tipping point” will occur long before the demise of capitalism in Europe.

---

If by "tipping point" you mean the point after which it cannot be stopped or reversed then the world is already doomed.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fidel:
We need to put a stop to any and all frivelous manufacturing and industrial activities immediately.

---

Production of which of the following would, in your view, be a “frivolous” economic activity? Mind you, the vast bulk of consumer spending is on items just like those on this list.

1. Dishwashers?
2. Microwave ovens?
3. iPods (and other mp3 players)?
4. Cellphones?
5. Digital cameras?
6. Television sets?
7. Lawnmowers?
8. Motorcycles and scooters?
9. Pickup trucks?
10. Boats (including canoes, kayaks, and fishing boats)?
11. Hundreds and hundreds of varieties of wine?
12. Restaurants?
13. Bookstores (especially when books can be purchased online without having to build, operate, heat, and cool, thousands of individual brick-n-mortar retail buildings)?
14. Soda pop?
15. “Junk food” generally (ice cream, pretzels, potato chips, Cheetos, etc.)?
16. Teeth-whitening strips?
17. Hair dye?
18. Carpeting?
19. Indoor hockey (most especially in the non-winter months)?
20. Recreational travel industry?
21. Christmas decorations?
22. Tobacco?
23. Operating movie theaters?
24. Computer/video games?
25. DVD players?
26. Pets (there are about 80 million dogs, 90 million cats, 12 million birds and 8 million horses owned and cared for as pets just in North America)?
27. Owning more than one pair of good work boots for all of a person’s footwear needs?
28. Air conditioners?
29. Newspapers and magazines (in the paper form)?
30. Housing in excess of 400 square feet (or 37.21 square meters) per person?
31. Toasters?
32. Blenders?

Environmentalists are somewhat concerned about oceans filling up with plastic garbage, and all the petrochemical byproducts produced every day, only to be thrown on the capitalist scrapheaps of time. Mountains of it, and we'll need to burn up oceans of oil and other precious resources to produce more.

What are the cancer rates and public health care costs of workers exposed to carcinogens over their working lives? Can kids learn to be happy without those plastic toys from McDonald's?

There are people with the education and a lot more smarts for this kind of thing than the both of us together have and fully capable of deciding what's frivolous and what isn't. I'm not an environmental scientist, but even I can figure out that this is a time for recycling and making things to last not throwaway capitalism and built-in obsolescence and blood for oil wars for the sake of propping up a dying ideology

We may well both be in over our heads with fixing the world at this point in the great game, but I think we need a reworking of the monetary system worldwide. Exponential growth based on a perpetual debt system will be the death of this planet. And the sign ahead reads, "Road to Global Serfdom Next Right"

[ 27 May 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

(either frivolous (gone), not frivolous (kept), or shared property only)

1. Dishwashers? frivolous

2. Microwave ovens? frivolous

3. iPods (and other mp3 players)? frivolous

4. Cellphones? not frivolous (including all phones as non-cellular were not listed)

5. Digital cameras? not frivolous (including all cameras as non-digital were not listed)

6. Television sets? frivolous

7. Lawnmowers? shared property only

8. Motorcycles and scooters? shared property only

9. Pickup trucks? shared property only

10. Boats (including canoes, kayaks, and fishing boats)? not frivolous

11. Hundreds and hundreds of varieties of wine? not frivolous (as long each variety is drunk locally; frivolous if transported)

12. Restaurants? shared property only/not frivolous (home kitchens are more frivolous)

13. Bookstores (especially when books can be purchased online without having to build, operate, heat, and cool, thousands of individual brick-n-mortar retail buildings)? frivolous (libraries & archives: not frivolous)

14. Soda pop? frivolous

15. “Junk food” generally (ice cream, pretzels, potato chips, Cheetos, etc.)? frivolous

16. Teeth-whitening strips? frivolous

17. Hair dye? frivolous unless natural and locally available

18. Carpeting? frivolous

19. Indoor hockey (most especially in the non-winter months)? frivolous

20. Recreational travel industry? frivolous (although with appropriate infrastructure not)

21. Christmas decorations? frivolous

22. Tobacco? frivolous unless locally produced

23. Operating movie theaters? shared property only/not frivolous (see restaurants, the TV is more frivolous)

24. Computer/video games? not frivolous (including all computer software since no other software is listed; though the vast majority of software is frivolous thats not a flaw in the concept just a feature of our system

25. DVD players? not frivolous as a computer component; frivolous as a stand alone product

26. Pets (there are about 80 million dogs, 90 million cats, 12 million birds and 8 million horses owned and cared for as pets just in North America)? frivolous (with exceptions of course, such as assisting pets)

27. Owning more than one pair of good work boots for all of a person’s footwear needs? frivolous as long as they are capable of providing for all of a person's functional (not fashionable) footwear needs (consider running in them?)

28. Air conditioners? frivolous

29. Newspapers and magazines (in the paper form)? shared property only (frivolous to distribute, not frivolous as a record for libraries & archives, see above)

30. Housing in excess of 400 square feet (or 37.21 square meters) per person? frivolous

31. Toasters? shared property only/not frivolous (see restaurants above)

32. Blenders? shared property only/not frivolous (see restaurants above)

quote:

---

And then, most importantly, who decides what is and what is not “frivolous”—so that it can then be immediately eliminated?

---

And we could go back to playing outdoor hockey during winters that are actually cold enough to make ice rinks. In places like Anaheim and Phoenix, maybe they could play baseball and other summer sports year round. I know it sounds oppressive, but I think we've gotten used to a frivolous way of life in a relatively short period of time in the larger scheme of things.

[ 27 May 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

I might designate air conditioners for special licences, like hospitals, the sick and the elderly.

---

Thats a good point, although where possible we could also move; such as not retiring to somewhere like Florida and then running an air conditional all year round.

ETA: And Fidel is right, it didn't take us long to learn to need most of the things listed so it shouldn't take long to forget to need them.

[ 27 May 2008: Message edited by: It's Me D ]

The question then becomes: How do you implement the elimination of the frivolous things?

My guess is that if we asked the average person—say, put it to a vote (what a novel idea)—to determine if society should eliminate televisions and dishwashers, for example, to hold many other items of property as shared property, and to eliminate companion pets, I think we’d hear a resounding “No”.

The only way to get a “Yes” from a democratic vote would be to convince the majority of people that the dangers of global warming are dire enough to warrant such action. But, people want “modern conveniences” (dishmachines and microwave ovens and restaurants) to save time to create leisure time. I don’t think people are going to be keen to go back to the six-day work week of 100 years ago, when people started working before the sun rose and worked until after the sun set, growing their own food, hand washing their clothes, making all of their food from scratch, etc., etc., etc.—all to avoid what, to most people, appears to be the vague, indefinite, and very distant dangers of global warming.

Absent convincing people of the wisdom of your suggestions, it would have to be forced on people. To do that by force presupposes that those doing the forcing have the power to do so (i.e., a minority having the power to force the majority to behave as the minority wants everyone to behave). I just don’t see that happening without—literally—civil war. And, I don’t think the advocates of eliminating all of those frivolous items from society have the stomach to start killing people to get that power.

Here’s what I think will happen:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sven:
I don’t think people are going to be keen to go back to the six-day work week of 100 years ago, when people started working before the sun rose and worked until after the sun set, growing their own food, hand washing their clothes, making all of their food from scratch, etc., etc., etc.—all to avoid what, to most people, appears to be the vague, indefinite, and very distant dangers of global warming.

---

I think the U.S. is a special case in this regard. The U.S. is a special case. Rightist government there has more at stake wrt political capital among voters than every other nation. And it's because previous administrations made long-term cold war era promises for a certain kind of standard of living. And U.S. State Dept. central planners in the 1950's decided on behalf of all Americans in the late 1940's-early 50's that their's would be a consumption economy like no other in the world, a showcase for capitalism. But the ideologues have run head-long into technological hurdles that prevent cold war era economic expansion rates from happening in the U.S. There is only so much electrical power available from falling water and solar to electrify industrial expansion. And no country in the world comes close to U.S. oil consumption today. And still it is not enough.

Developing Asian economies are growing at twice or three times our same rates in the west. And yet I think Russians, Chinese and Indians would be more apt to endure a global slowdown than would the bottom 60 percent or so of North American workers. The false promise of cold war era prosperity was their political capital for a long time.

A U.S. intelligence report concluded that the largest threat to global security and world economies are energy crises, global problems with food production and climate change. Terrorism doesn't even register by comparison.

quote:

---

I just don’t see that happening without—literally—civil war. And, I don’t think the advocates of eliminating all of those frivolous items from society have the stomach to start killing people to get that power.

---

quote:

---

My guess is that if we asked the average person—say, put it to a vote (what a novel idea)—to determine if society should eliminate televisions and dishwashers, for example, to hold many other items of property as shared property, and to eliminate companion pets, I think we’d hear a resounding “No”.

---

I agree

quote:

---

I don’t think people are going to be keen to go back to the six-day work week of 100 years ago, when people started working before the sun rose and worked until after the sun set, growing their own food, hand washing their clothes, making all of their food from scratch, etc., etc., etc.—all to avoid what, to most people, appears to be the vague, indefinite, and very distant dangers of global warming.

---

I agree that most people won't be keen to change their lifestyles but as Fidel mentioned it wasn't the average person who pushed for the changes TO the consumptive lifestyles they now "enjoy", those changes were forced on them.

For example I live in an isolated corner of rural Nova Scotia, the people here did not chose to have no public transit, to have lost train service and then private bus service over the past few decades; no meetings or votes were held locally to produce any mandate for these changes. People here did not chose to each own their own vehicles and drive themselves everywhere they need to go for work or to obtain goods from stores which moved to more central locations out of the area (again, which people had no choice over). People also did not chose how these vehicles that they were required to purchase and maintain (and feed) would be designed (that they should maximize corporate profits and destroy the environment) those decisions were made by unelected corporations and supported by corrupt governments. The same is true of the financial system and its decision to support certain ultimately unsustainable practices such as individual home and vehicle ownership and use. I guess what I am saying is that force is the only way things change significantly; in the case of saving ourselves and the planet we can think of any revolutionary force applied as counter to the forced installation of our current lifestyles by capitalist dictators in the corporate and political spheres.

quote:

---

People will be unwilling to voluntarily forego, to any meaningful degree, the “modern conveniences” of life and that minority of society who wants everyone to do so will not have the stomach to take by force the power necessary to compel the rest of society to give those things up.

---

I agree again, except for the portion I have italicized. I understand your point regarding a weakness of stomach but I think that the necessary revolution to save the world has more in common with the proletarian revolutions and anti-colonial uprisings of the past (then with modern "green" movements) which have demonstrated the oppressed have a substantial stomach for applying force against their oppressors. As Fidel mentioned poor Americans are very well armed.

quote:

---

As a result, we’ll have to live with the consequences, to the degree that technological advances in energy production and consumption don’t mitigate, in part, those consequences.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by It's Me D:
As Fidel mentioned poor Americans are very well armed.

---

Yeah, but most of them are Republicans!!

quote:

---

Originally posted by It's Me D:
I disagree here, the only consequence is extinction.

---

I think that there are going to be adverse consequences due to global warming. But, the extinction of humans will unlikely be one of them. The Earth is very resilient (and humans are infinitely adaptable). Arid South Dakota was once a jungle. Prior to that time, Iowa was once covered with an ocean (my nieces and nephews can readily find fossilized sharks’ teeth in outcroppings on their farmland in northwestern Iowa). Very recently (in relative terms), most of my state, Minnesota, was covered with glaciers.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sven:
The heaviest gun ownership is in rural areas and those areas are very "Red" parts of the country.

---

And those are the one's they're afraid of most?

I think the Republicans are at their wit's end with maintaining power as it stands now. This is the last bastion of far right conservatism in the world with the most powerful and influential support base in the world. And they've had to resort to stealing elections since 2000. Not by a fair or proportional system but having to stoop to stealing FPTP elections. That's low, and they know democracy is not really on their side when the agenda swings right. Dubya was even lower in popularity in recent times than Nixon in his last days as president.

quote:

---

Seriously, if you look at the urban poor in, say, Chicago or Washington DC, they aren't even allowed to own guns by their local governments.

---

Concentrating people in cities so they could be controlled and disarmed by their oppressors is not new, it is the central purpose of cities. It's an expected problem though a difficult one but it can be overcome.

quote:

---

The heaviest gun ownership is in rural areas and those areas are very "Red" parts of the country.

---

I like any "Red" parts

Seriously speaking and contrary to the commonly held opinion of urban leftists I don't think changing one shade of red for the other will be that hard. The necessary dissatisfaction, disassociation, and anger is certainly present. I'd be more worried about getting comfortable urban liberals onside myself; speaking as a rural

quote:

---

So, while I believe global warming will have adverse consequences, the end of Earth and of all humankind is not going to be one of them.

---

When Germany implements its planned phase-out of nuclear power, the country is going to see a massive drop in available energy. Steps towards filling that gap with sustainable energy sources are falling woefully short of what is needed.

quote:

---

One way to partially address Germany's impending energy crisis would be to connect Sigmar Gabriel (more...) to a district heating pipeline. After all, Germany's environmental minister certainly likes letting off steam.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by It's Me D:
26. Pets (there are about 80 million dogs, 90 million cats, 12 million birds and 8 million horses owned and cared for as pets just in North America)? frivolous (with exceptions of course, such as assisting pets)

---

I read an article recently that said, if memory serves me correctly, that there are on the drawing board plans for 2,300 nuclear reactors globally.

Think about that. Think of the mess were in and how we got here. We got in our mess because unscrupulous people will sell any amount of anything without given thought to the consequences, people, including governments and institutions, have a tendency toward the herd mentality and will buy any amount of anything without thought for the consequences and there are always consequences.

You may not know this, Sven, but here in Ontario we went on a nuke buying spree in the 70s. We are looking at doing it again despite that every Ontarian still pays for the last buying spree with his/her electrical bill. They call it debt retirement. We have just scrapped two nuke reactors because they are over budget, well past dead-line, and will never work. But that is Ontario, There has been better success elsewhere.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
How much uranium is required to power 2300 reactors and where will it come from and for how long?

---

Won't there always be increasing demands for energy? And so long as there is, won't there always be a demand for coal or the next "cleaner" compromise?