Lets say the real reason we are in Iraq is about oil and if we didnt need oil and so much energy we wouldnt be there , if we were not there lots of people might not end up being killed Would you personally be prepared to change your way of life to stop this dependancy, and by how much . Would you give up air travel , cars ,plastic products , how about non home grown food chocolate rice . How about the situation where you have a choice between damaging the enviroment by using something like nuclear power or powerstations that cause greenhouse gases and global warming , or using your computer watching tv, having lighting, or electric cookers, washing machines, heating. Its perfectly possible to do without a tv or a computer, playstations, a washing machine or heating or electric light in the uk but its not as easy a lifestyle Ive done without all those things, you can wash clothes with some large buckets and a posser or clothes dolly or a hand crank washing machine and a mangle . You can go to bed when it gets dark, people have done all this stuff in the past , in most of the uk you can live in a house even without heating as people manage to survive in tents on glaciers if dressed right and in the right bedding Anyway would you be prepared to do any of this stuff every thing you buy has a energy cost could you buy less to damage the enviroment less , would you take time to repair thing like clothes
The oil thing is a paranoid fantasy that many people against the war have continued to chant on about. The real issue was with Saddam Hussein. I think that the war should not have happened but unless we know all the reasons why we went to war in the first place, we should keep mush
I find that view a little naive John, especially given the knowledge of hindsight. Bush as much as admitted that the real interest was the control of natural resources in his speech declaring war....
I couldn't put my family through a regime of deprevation while all around them society continues as normal. Sure raise awareness amongst people but mankind will not make a retrogressive step out of choice, only by compulsion. Mankind has suffered many setbacks along the way but has always overcome and flourished, i'm sure the natural assumption by the majority is we will continue to do so.
I agree, whilst individual measures are to be encouraged, this is not a matter of choice, and ultimately such contributions are drops in the ocean. Only through strongly enforced government legislation can such problems be tackled. We need to impose a uniformity in lowering consumption and raising efficiency....
Do you think that without people showing that they are willing to make the move , that some politition is going to stand up and try to force people to make the move . In the 1970s you had a small oil crisis it didnt last long a couple of weeks, and then people for a short time started to get interested in saving energy , you had solar panels put on the roof of the white house under carter ,then reagan came in and he was what you could call a optimism president he got rid of the solar panels and had this big ole smile ,and kept telling america how they were the best, richest, strongest, country on earth (all the while they were building up more debt till now they are the worlds biggest debtor) . And people went out and forgot the 70s and started buying big ole cars again .....and thats pretty much what we are doing to And to john ok saddams the reason for Iraq (although I think the reasons oil )why are we in saudi propping up the saud family ,or kuwait hmm ...every area where there is oil the yanks have military advisors this includes places like africa, south america, georgia The american government have said the american way of life is non negotiable, they have also said we can expect war for our entire lifetime . There is a old film called three days of the condor its from 1976, and joe turner (robert redford ) has just found plans for america to invade the middle east ,and hes talking to a cia man called higgins . Higgins: It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then? Joe Turner: Ask them? Higgins: Not now - then! Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em! so when you see some kid blown in half in Iraq I feel if you have a high energy lifestyle your partly to blame , much like the person who buys meat in a supermarket . The amish are not to blame , I think their hands are cleaner than someone with a high energy lifestyle, and saying well I wont do anything till Im forced by my government I think is a cop-out. Sooner or later oil is going to become so dear we wont be able to burn it in cars , so the path we are on at the moment isnt going anywhere anyway Im not sure to what a extent a low energy lifestyle need be that much of a deprivation its possible to run laptops via solar panels you have the power used to make the lap tops and what to do with the broken bits , but there may be ways around it . Thats a sort of techno way of trying to use less energy As for your diet in the uk you can grow a very wide variety of foods, you can store apples , preserve fruits in kilnar jars ,ok you may not get salad flown in from africa but you could have salad from a cold greenhouse from most of the year, in fact you could have fresh vegetables from most of the year winter cabbage brussel sprouts leeks .
I certainly have no problem boycotting Tesco, but then i live near to a lot of farm shops, i'm lucky like that. But i can see why many others wouldn't want to/be able to.
What about the other stuff not using cars planes ,washing your clothes by hand watching TV unless its powered by renewables like wind or solar , repairing clothes ect ect
A solitory individual can easily follow the path of less consumption, a bit of will is all that is required. The ultimate would be a little self sustaining croft, and I can see a pleasure at least in that. The difficulty is that the majority are not solitory individuals, we live within a group of people to whom we must relate, by shedding all the trappings of our society we would only isolate ourselves from our piers, fine if your a loner anyway, but to ask those not of that mould to isolate themselves is unreasonable. I concur with much of your requests myself but find it impossible to impose those ideals on my immediate relations. I do struggle with the concept of my own rightness of knowledge in any regard anyway. We all have our beliefs about the way the world will develop, trouble is they are beliefs and are infact articles of faith, no-one can predict the future. Surely everybody has an awareness of the possible doomsday scenarios, but even with that they do not believe it to be true. With respect, I applaud your call and would encourage you to continue.
A wide drop in living standards does not have to by by goverment fiat or individual choice. Your currency inflates, wages stagnate, prices rise and viola, you are poor. Nothing new, or exceptional about that. It happened in AD 450 and AD 1930 Perhaps it wont be choice, the energy will just be unafordable. Employment will be of the shape-up variety. If one is a money manager, a doctor, or in a union or a goverment employee, you might have some insulation from economic storms, what about the rest? :boat:
How many of you guys understand the concept of peak oil , it could be that the world is going to have to go the less energy route anyway ,and the people who do it and encourage their neighbours before hand will be the people who will survive it and prosper . A very depressing website rather like looking at the matrix red or blue pill , but very worth reading fully http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ Lots of links and two films at the bottom of the screen that will explain peak oil, there are also lots of links to audio and video shows you can watch http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/
Stop right there, I did. The problem is not how much energy we consume thats the least of our problems. In the average household there is not a single item that is not reliant on oil for its existence. Every silicon chip requires vast amounts of oil in both its design and production. Plastic is an oil based product. Every inch of paint and all its layers is probably an oil based paint. Your shoes - probably oil based plastics and rubber, certainly 99% of clothes - oil based. Oil is the essential product in all our manufcture - not only in the products themselves but to engineer the product you need machines running oil, transport - etc infact so little is in the form of fuel for cars that its hardly worth talking of. The other problem with that statement being that there is a fuel crisis in the sense that there is actually an abundance of oil - there has not been more oil in the world than now, except thats the problem - there is a lot of oil and not the means to fetch it from the ground. There is a limited capacity to produce and that is acting like there is a shortage. It works like this - suppose production levels are the same in 2006 as in 1980 but in 2006 there is 100% more people immediately you see that it would be a strange if the same amount of oil provided for double the people. Its called the peak oil problem - here it is - it is a very detailed document with an enormous amount of links taking you to its source material and is based on the work of industry experts, oil well owners, government ministers, and academics. http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
