Opinion: A Word On Today's Society

[GreatEmerald]

If you want to save energy you must first analyze where it is mostly consumed. I doubt that supermarkets consume so much power. Datacenters probably consume more, therefore you should stop using Internet to stop supporting them. And if you will not go to casino than you will sit at home and consume some power there (light, computer).

I don't think that's right. Computers are remarkably power-efficient; a single incandescent light bulb often consumes more than an idle PC, and the major power draw is the screen, which needs the energy to generate light.

On the topic, as an ecology student, I have to say that I disagree with the article on that the power draw is increasing due to people using more and thus we can go back. There are several ideas about how to solve the ecological crisis, and the "going back" view is one of them, but it's not a credible view. We could throw away all the technology and go live like in medieval times, and it would only make everyone less happy. It wouldn't actually help the environment as much, because technology also brings efficiency. With today's population growth, we absolutely cannot afford such a loss of efficiency.

Cutting down on unnecessary, waste usage is something we could realistically do, yes, but it's a gradual shift. It's also something that is actually happening as we speak (and if World War III doesn't start, it should continue). A hundred years ago nobody thought about such things, while nowadays people are markedly starting to realise that energy saving, along with other environmentally-friendlier things like recycling, is important. It can be seen in the changing laws (like the European Union banning incandescent light manufacturing and now about to ban halogen bulbs as well), changing attitudes of everyday people (cashiers actually asking people if they want a plastic bag instead of just automatically giving one etc.). And everyone can indeed participate in this shift (albeit the biggest effect is gained through laws and education, the latter to make sure people understand why the former are needed).

Changing the economy could help, but we don't know a model which would work better than what we have. Communism is perfect ? in theory; in nobody tried to game the system, everyone would be happy, but due to humans being selfish goats it doesn't work in practice. Capitalism is more about making it hard to game the system, but it's an imperfect system from the get-go, mostly built around increasing consumption (which today is bad, because we don't have the resources to do that any more). It's also fairly dated, not that well suited to the current virtual goods and whatnot. The system in Star Trek could be a preview of what is to come (3D printers producing all the goods and therefore no real goods needed; money eliminated, everyone working to become known, famous, satisfy curiosity or to help humanity as a whole), but it probably also wouldn't work due to being too perfect. Same with political systems ? democracy is perfect, but it also assumes everyone has perfect information and can vote; dictatorships are the opposite, you have to hope the dictator knows what he's doing, but if he does, then it works better under imperfect conditions. And parliaments are the middle ground between the two, people vote for who they think know what they're doing (often times it happens that they do not, or try gaming the system).

So with regards to the economy, perhaps it just needs revising. Changing some priorities, defining new patterns, that sort of thing. And it should be gradual. Which might mean it's happening already (Kickstarter is a good step in that direction). So I'm pretty hopeful about this, too.

So if we have a problem, and things are changing for the better, everything just comes down to time and black swans. Is the change happening quickly enough? Maybe, maybe not, we can't tell from where we are at the moment. "Enough" is also subjective. We can often calculate some of that (with climate change and such), but black swan events can happen and throw everything out of balance. If the war did start, suddenly we would have a much harder time meeting those deadlines; unless we'd get a counter-swan and someone would invent cold fusion for military purposes, which would then solve the energy demand problem...

[kalrish]

The individual is not problem, the individual is the solution to the problem.

The individual is the problem [B]and[B] the solution. No system will solve anything if each one hasn't solved it by itself. You argue that I meet the dictator profile; I say you already live in a dictatorship. Yes, it's hidden behind ideals and democracy, but the majority is anyway driven as if it were under the will of a dictator, because it's an unthinking majority[1]. Is that the freedom you were talking about?

All dictatorships are bad, true. However, isn't it equally bad, if not worse, to pretend freedom while people's will is buried under technology and entertainment? The only difference between our game and the Romans' circus is that our victims are not dying in front of us.

Lastly, do you believe there are controls here? Do you have any warranty? Don't you think economic liberalism offers way more room for cost mitigation via security supression? What you see is a fiction, a terrible lie that will end in tragedy.

[1] Taken from the song "The Unthinking Majority" of Serj Tankian

[storm_st]

Chernobyl was built not by a free people, it was built by a tyrannical communist thug regime that built zero controls and safeguards into it because *GASP* they like all dictatorships do not care about the individual.

Hi, Paul Joseph Goebbel, great to meet you. Did you survive in Antarctica using UFO salvation device or cloned? BTW, please bomb few more contries into middle age, as current TV serials become too boring, no drive. Georgia or Ukrain maybe? Use force, choose yourself. Carefully choose, with all data you collect looking mails, phone, and try to use ecologic pure bomb components, remember, you are civil regime ! And, just as we all there, when you decide to return United States public debt. Debt is so nice, lets all world work for you.

[GreatEmerald]

Of course, blame the individual. Dictators have been blaming individuals for thousands of years, starving them, throwing them into ovens, gassing them, mass graves, serfdom and servitude as far as the eye can see.

The irony is that Chernobyl was built not by a free people, it was built by a tyrannical communist thug regime that built zero controls and safeguards into it because *GASP* they like all dictatorships do not care about the individual.

This article isn't thoughtful, its pathetic. Dictatorship caused the problem - collectivism is the source of all evil - and the individual is who takes the blame.

The individual is not problem, the individual is the solution to the problem.

I don't agree with the bit you quoted, but I also disagree with you. The thug regime wasn't communist. They pretended to be, yes, but that doesn't make it true. Lenin was the actual communist; it just so happened that probably nobody else around him was, they just went with that to gain more in personal gains. Lenin did try to go the whole way, he even removed currency, but then everyone saw that the plan wasn't working ? drivers simply refused to drive, because they were offered to be given food and other necessities in any case; but the producers of food also refused to produce food, because they were offered transportation in any case. If everyone did believe in the idea, then it all would have worked out, both drivers and food producers would continue working. However, the mentality was totally not there. So he had to back off and start socialism, whose goal was to make the society ready for communism. It never reached the goal. Note that I'm from a post-soviet country, so here we know the details fairly well.

That all had nothing to do with the political situation, aside from the fact that it was a convenient excuse for dictators to sweep some things under the rug. After all, Nazi Germany was capitalist, very much so, and yet the political situation there was identical. So yes, dictatorships caused problems, but collectivism has nothing to do with it. Note that Eastern societies are traditionally collectivist, they often value the community over the individual, and they live more sustainably than the individualists in the West (it just so happens that some other traditions there demand a lot of children, so they have their own problems with that).

[revcorey]

OMG.
1. The cause of the accident at Chernobyl was human error. Simply they turn off security system and RMBK is for military use.
2. UN report about chernobyl says only 100 deaths are associated with failure.Most people have no idea what happened there. Today you can take trip there and there is less radiation as in Paris. History knows bigger failures example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
3.Only ignorant likes greenpeace members may argue that the action like hour for earth are good. And yes i'm electrical engineer.

[vadix]

Essentially, this article would be asking everyone to be a minimalist. How could I not agree? More material possessions doesn't make one happier, so living as efficiently as possible and questioning the norms is a relatively smart thing to do. If everyone could live like that (working to better the world), this wouldn't have been an article about energy, but rather about an unfortunate accident. Nobody is completely altruistic, and the majority of people are more greedy. This is why capitalism is successful: it rewards people that are greedy if they do something helpful for everybody else. People that are altruistic should take advantage of their position and try to live a minimalistic and productive life, while trying to stop corruption. That is the best humanity can do.

[chrisb]

Even if individual humans consume less energy, the human population will continue to grow, and thus total energy consumption will continue to grow. This is often ignored in any discussions about energy, or predictions eg we have x years of resource y left "based on current usage" - but usage will never be current, it will always grow because the number of people will grow, until we start hitting the hard limits of physics and our technology.

If you're really interested in the options for future energy generation I recommend reading the free book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air. It was written by a professor of physics and his measured numbers based approach to energy is quite accessible.

In the long run, the sun will burn out and the human species will become extinct, so it doesn't really matter any way.

[GreatEmerald]

All dictatorships are bad, true. However, isn't it equally bad, if not worse, to pretend freedom while people's will is buried under technology and entertainment? The only difference between our game and the Romans' circus is that our victims are not dying in front of us.

As I mentioned already, all dictatorships aren't bad. In fact, another of those crisis solution ideas is to establish a dictatorship, where everyone would be forced to save resources and live sustainably. It's not a very good solution as it's very prone to mistakes, yes, but it sure beats your "going back" solution. It actually has a chance of working, whatever small it may be.

For instance, we here in Lithuania had a dictator between the wars. We were lucky, because he was an actual benevolent dictator. Sure, some things he did were not very favourable (like banning other political parties), but in general his rule was effective and people were generally satisfied. It probably would have been much worse had there been democracy, as the times were tense and immediate actions were required back then, and the democratic process would have been too slow and inefficient to properly respond (the parties before his rule were extremely divided, bickering about everything and little was actually decided). So dictatorships are good, but you have to be lucky enough for the dictator to be a good one, and it often just so happens that the same ambition that drives people to become dictators overshadows their better judgement.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Even if individual humans consume less energy, the human population will continue to grow, and thus total energy consumption will continue to grow.

I knew someone would bring that up, that's the logical next step. And. Its what makes collectivism so evil. Because they have zero care for individuals anyways, that's why the collectives always end up killing people. Whatever is good for the collective; the question is not "if" - its "when". It starts getting into malthusian and/or eugenic whackiness(they do not always arrive hand in hand), and then you end up with sentiments like this:

I bet that at least half of the people on this forum couldn't justify their existence in the eyes of dictators like this. It truely is a shame what collectivism hath wrought.

[Kite]

Hi, Paul Joseph Goebbel, great to meet you. Did you survive in Antarctica using UFO salvation device or cloned? BTW, please bomb few more contries into middle age, as current TV serials become too boring, no drive. Georgia or Ukrain maybe? Use force, choose yourself. Carefully choose, with all data you collect looking mails, phone, and try to use ecologic pure bomb components, remember, you are civil regime ! And, just as we all there, when you decide to return United States public debt. Debt is so nice, lets all world work for you.

It's bizarre that you brought up Nazism, considering they were fascist and also favored the collective (specifically the national collective; hence ``national socialism'') over the individual. This was much of why they (officially -- the Nazis were very capable at exploiting and expanding people's own hatred to their own ends) had problems with homosexuality, even German homosexuals -- they were considered to have betrayed the national collective by not expanding the German population. (For similar reasons they handed out the Mutterkreuz to women who bore many children.) Nazism was about the individual serving the national collective with every ounce of their being.

If you really wanted to find a situation where evil was caused by individualists, the only major example I can think of would be the very early American south, during early slavery but before slavery had obtained strong racist connotations. Even some African Americans owned slaves at the time; Anthony Johnson (c. 1600s-1670), for example, was an Angolan who was captured by Arab slavers and sold as an indentured servant in Virginia; he eventually earned freedom and became a rather successful tobacco farmer and one of the first legally recognized black slaveholders. Once people were collectivizing themselves by race, slavery became even more toxic, but it also was no longer an example of individualism.