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We don't need to reduce our standard of living. We need to change our energy sources to renewables and nuclear. Incentivizing density over sprawl would be good
by breakyerself 5y ago
We don't need to reduce our standard of living. We need to change our energy sources to renewables and nuclear. Incentivizing density over sprawl would be good too. As well as efficiency. The only people arguing we need to drastically reduce energy usage are people arguing against doing anything. It's a strawman.
- tsimionescu 5y agoWe will have to. I know it can seem like an argument against doing anything, but that is not where I'm coming from. I'm also not arguing in favor of self flagellation or individual action in the face of huge social forces. But, given how grave and urgent the situation is getting, there is no way to convert all curent energy generation to green energy AND increase energy generation capacity to keep up with normal economic growth AND increase it many times over to electrify all transportation AND electrify all heating. And even if we were to succeed in all that, that only covers about half of US emissions at best - the other half is coming from agriculture, industry and residential emissions. Not to mention the massive emissions that are happening in China but ultimately serving the US market. It's simply not possible to achieve the necessary time frames (net 0 in 20 years) without significantly reducing economic activity and standards of living in the short term - then growing back to current activity and standards of living in the longer term.