Vaclav Smil says something like "Would it be so bad, going back to a 1960's level of energy consumption?" in the context of energy usages (and therefore roughly

Vaclav Smil says something like "Would it be so bad, going back to a 1960's level of energy consumption?" in the context of energy usages (and therefore roughly CO2 emissions) of Western and particularly American lifestyles. (I'm paraphrasing: Václav Smil at Driva Climate Investment Meeting 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkj_91IJVBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkj_91IJVBk ) > hedonic adaptation pretty much guarantees that no matter what our position we will always want more There's an Indian holy man, now deceased, who said we need to learn to practice "ceiling on desires". It may be that only the expression of our higher values can clear this logjam? > so how this could happen without damage to the environment One thought that occurs to me is if we could create a kind of split-level economy. There would be a real-world ecologically-informed economy that met basic needs as efficiently as possible. On top of that substrate we would have a computer-mediated virtual economy where there were no (or very few) effective limits on hedonistic adaptation (or status-symbol seeking, or whatever). It seems like we're seeing something like that emerge "naturally" anyway, eh? NFT & "crypto", in-game purchases, whatever FB's metaverse becomes, etc. Eventually, people might submit voluntarily to enter "the Matrix": your physical body kept perfectly safe, and the only limits are your imagination? Not my cup of tea, but not insane on the face of it, eh?