@yfk12 Not to mention that a subtantial number of that pollution happens because goods that we consume in Europe and the US are manufactured at the lowest possible standards for humans and the environment in nations like China and India. Where do people think most of their cheap clothes, toys, and even some food comes from? The eather?
I know you take this far more seriously then I do, I mean I live in Canada so global warming mean we might get some decent weather hahaha, but to change the course of the planet so drastically right now would involve generally creating a massive economic problem. What do you think will happen when that 20% as you put it suddenly get a massive change to there lifestyle. The same thing that always happens when that massive of changes happens revolution, rioting, unrest. What we would see when the 20% which includes all of the worlds most powerful countries militarily suddenly go bonkers? I mean I like Fallout but I don't really want to live in that nightmare scenario either of near if not total human extinction. The simple answer right now is we are headed to doomsday one way or another, and until new factors come into place to actually change this we are fucked.
I like the idea of ending globalization, due to the mass amount of goods shipped around the world nowadays we have a huge contributing factor right there. How is it cheaper to grow potatoes in Canada, ship them to China to be cut into French Fries, and then ship them back to Canada to sell? I don't know how it is but that is what companies do nowadays. I like free trade and encourage it but it is not fully capitalism's fault (especially when you look at the pollution rate of communist or ex-communist nations, that's right I am calling them out), it is that free trade has enabled this to happen by encouraging this. I mostly nowadays only support free trade amount countries that have similar labour laws and standards due to shit like the French Fries example above. Why pat a Canadian $15-$20 an hour to watch a machine cut up potatoes when you can pay a kid in China to do it for $0.10 a day.
All I said was its not fully capitalisms fault, but it does hold some of the blame, just like everyone does, get that everyone!
I will try to adress several issues in one post here:
It doesn't matter who's to blame anyway, but rather how to fix the issue. I mean to be fair, you do have a very valid point. People won't agree to changes, where they have to accept severe cuts. But I don't think we actually have to. I mean what I am basically talking about, is consumerism. Needless consumerism, for the most part. You know, there are tons of surveys that show us how this kind of behaviour is actually not enrichting our lives. As far as we know, what really makes people happy, is beeing a member of a social group like your friends, families and the like and of communities, we are social beeings after all. Products, particularly many of the electronical gadgeds we own, like smart phones, do not seem to have a very long lasting effect when it comes to making people happy. So there are many products, that we could actually 'give up', without huge problems, as long as we have alternatives. In other words, we have to strengthen particuilarly the small local communities, we have to support ways and lifestyles where people are more independed and are part of a comunity. Of course this has not to happen everywhere in the same way. In a rural town in texas this looks different than New York, or Berlin, Germany for example. We have to somehow achieve a society, where people are much better conected with each other and supporting each other. This would probably solve also a lot of other issues which happen when people grow lonley, particularly in their old age! We could also save a lot of money if people had more chances to support each other.
To give you one example, there are now initiatives where people look for a loocal farmer they decide to support, and he's growing food for them solely. You can calculate how much people the famer needs to have a decent income for example. And such initiatives are poping up in a lot of other areas too! Neighbours that start to share tools, even cars with each other. That way not everyone has to buy the same equipment over and over again. But again, people need very good ways to conect each other to achieve this. But I think, it's possible.
The point is that we also have to think about certain developments we're currently experiencing and what ever if we actually can afford them and if they are even needed. Take a look at Bitcon. What value does it have? Zero. It's just a purely digital currency. And yet, the whole Bitcon network already needs as much Energy like Denmark or something, I am not completely sure about the correct numbers here, but it's a damn lot. So we have to be really carefull that this global digitalisation that we're seeing right now, isn't going to really blow everything up and pretty much destroying every positve change.
The main issue we're having to actually deal with, is the consumption of Energy. Not even so much the source. Actually if we only burned as much fossil fuel like 150 years ago, we wouldn't be having the issues we see today. So we don't even have to get away from everything, we simply have to find a way to be more carefull! Energy is a very great way to measure things here, because our planet has a certain energy level, usually this level is in balance, but we're adding energy to the environment by burning energy that we dig up from the ground. We're basically adding energy, that was millions of years ago present in the environment as plants, animals and the like and is now stored inside the earth, as fossil fuel. We're changing the ecosystem at an alarming rate. And we're currently on the way into a phase, where possible cascade effects might occour. For example, if the methane in the permafrost regions is released, which is actually a 100 times worse then Co2! So all of it could happen at a much faster rate than it is now.
When some scientist say, that this is an event that's a real threat to us as a species, then they are not joking. Even the mere possibility of it, should at the very least make us think if we should consider to make changes here. Yes, those changes sholdn't complettely distrubt everything, but I do not believe we can't change our current lifestyle without actually improving it as well.
