Rockabye
Your comments regarding V8 SUV driving consumers are very specific to AU & USA. Europeans & Japanese are much more energy conscious than us already, and Germany already use nearly 10% bio-diesel in their vehicles. I think the real perspective on the change required is that capitalist magnified metropolitan areas need to cease in their current form, we need to stop the breeding of anti-environmentalist behavior, consumption and lack of productivity in these areas. China is a classic example of this accumulation problem for economical benefit, and they have serious metro population growth problems. We have 75% services in AU and that is at least 50% to much, as they all run around serving themselves, virtually only in metropolitan areas. We need actual productivity, not economic growth. I have said this before and I'll say it again: Sustainability is size dependent, its the natural balance, to many people in one place is overpopulation and resource destructing, to little population and you become endangered and unable to make use of resources effectively. We need to find the balance in between, and unless metro areas can devise a way of suppling about 70-80% of their goods (including food and water) themselves, they will have to go the way of the dinosaur in a RE economy. They are simply to large and resource clumsy to survive.
Population density wise there is no difference in building a apartment building in the middle of a rural community (if at all nessecary!) or in a metro area, energy saving wise, however, the effect is profound. We need to decentralize and demonopolize, to make the RE economy work, and this is the opposite of what capitalism is doing. I think that only those with nothing to loose (the poor), are the ones that can overcome this fear best, as the RE economy is still much better than poverty, and they will be much cheaper and effective at fulfilling the objectives of this change.
BTW PV and wind still have the fossil embodied energy problem, we need renewables produced from renewables for zero fossil emissions. Biogas/biofuels are much better in this area and are directly associated with the life promoting carbon cycle itself. Biotechnology will be our savior from fossils, and it has always been our life provider, it's just that we have somehow forgotten to put it on our capitalist balance sheets, and now we will have to pay the price for putting them back on.
Also wouldn't you be more interested in not having to pay any bills rather than being able to pay them via the internet? I think thats were we should be heading instead.
D69
I agree with your prognosis on farming/electronics. Without fossils a lot of technology would have never been developed, fossils have really created an "r-evolutionary" boost, but I think that era is slowing coming to an end, and we need to find alternatives for everything that originates or is promoted through the consumption of fossils.
Posted Wednesday 8 Sep 2010 @ 3:35:34 am from IP
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