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I imagine some aspects of a "lower-energy" world would be OK for most people, such as simply less selection of stuff to buy, similar really to how things have b
by sparrc 4y ago
I imagine some aspects of a "lower-energy" world would be OK for most people, such as simply less selection of stuff to buy, similar really to how things have been for the past year or two.
Other parts not so much. I'd guess very few people in the US had air conditioning in the 1950s. It might be OK to go without AC in northern countries and states but most of the world is going to want AC as soon as they can afford it.
Other high-energy lifestyle are easy air travel and wide selection of food year-round. I don't think people are going to willingly return to 1950s levels of air travel affordability or food availability.
- mdp2021 4y ago> I don't think people are going to willingly return to 1950s levels of air travel affordability or food availability On the contrary, I would say it's most reasonable. Where I am writing from, I could bet that already the brighter half of the population, not just a minority, would call eating strawberries in winter an aberration - let us say, luxury, not a natural right. Similarly (about travel), there where there are secondary costs such as externalities, one expects them to be embedded in the price. If, in air travel, you see tickets sold at the price of a meal, it means that the offer of the service is very liberal, instead of competitive. But since these drafty ideas should reveal complexities immediately thereafter - vital importance of export, dynamics of inflation, of markets etc. -, what should emerge is that a simplistic consideration of the matter is not productive. Even when "people" would gladly call for more reasonable systems: such solutions are not trivially defined.