"We Have to Consume Less": Scientists Call For Radical Economic Overhaul to Avert Climate Crisis

[stuntcat]

Democracy Now - http://www.democracynow.org/2013/11/21/we_have_to_consume_less_scientists
(interview starts at 27 minutes)

A pair of climate scientists are calling for what some may view as a shocking solution to the global warming crisis: a rethinking of the economic order in the United States and other industrialized nations. Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin of the influential Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in England say many of the solutions proposed by world leaders to prevent "runaway global warming" will not be enough to address the scale of the crisis. They have called for "radical and immediate de-growth strategies in the United States, EU and other wealthy nations." Anderson says that to avoid an increase in temperature of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the world would require a "revolutionary change to the political and economic hegemony."
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Frédéric Chopin, here on Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we flew into Warsaw, we flew into Frédéric Chopin Airport. Yes, we’re broadcasting from the U.N. climate change summit here in Warsaw, Poland, the country of Copernicus and Marie Curie—the first metal she named, polonium, for Poland, and then, of course, radium.

We turn now to a pair of climate scientists who are calling for what some may view as a shocking solution to the climate crisis: a rethinking of the economic order in the United States and other industrialized nations. Their names are Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin. They work at the influential Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in England, as well as the University of Manchester.

They were featured in a recent widely read article by Naomi Klein headlined "How Science Is Telling Us All to Revolt."

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/11/21/we_have_to_consume_less_scientists

[Joe Shlabotnik]

1. K&R

Collectively, we need a serious moment of clarity, a drastic retooling of how our economies work, and drastic change in our expectations from life.

[GliderGuider]

6. We'll get our moment of clarity

In about 25 years. Shortly after the tip.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. The Neo Cons have been addressing this issue.

by creating so many impoverished and homeless people, and driving food prices up so high and fast.

No one gives them any credit ...tis so sad.

[Trillo]

3. "And it is—as James Hansen points out, this is now a moral question"

I think they kind of talked around the economic issues, if the transcript was accurate.

[quadrature]

4. applies to consumption of food, or not?

I see lots of people that have
been overfed.

[Lordquinton]

9. Strange

I see far too many who have been underfed.

[paleotn]

10. I see lots of people....

...who can only afford government subsidized, cheap, heavily processed carbs, sugars and fat, thus they appear overweight, but are in actuality grossly undernourished.

But I will agree that our entire agricultural system needs to be completely reworked and localized as much as possible. That will go a long way towards reducing our national carbon footprint.

[TBF]

16. Wow.

[stuntcat]

18. I was shocked, shocked I tell you..

When I realized this- I'm still shocked every day, knowing that 40,000 people are dying of starvation today. FORTY THOUSANDS, every 24 hrs. (edit- what does that feel like? A little kid dying of starvation.. while the lucky well-fed toddlers in my neighborhood will never go hungry. Their selfish f'ing parents couldn't adopt though, nooo they simply HAD to make carbon-gobbling-copies of themselves..)

But 2 or 3 times that number are killed by obesity-related illness. I've heard the news of the studies, can't find the latest one but a quick search finds a lot of stories about it.

It's all mind-blowing to me. They're both (both stats) a total shame.

[Electric Monk]

5. How Science Is Telling Us All to Revolt

http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/science-says-revolt

[BelgianMadCow]

23. just what I was looking for after reading the OP

thank you!

[Mojorabbit]

7. I wish someone would take the lead on this on the world stage. nt

[bvar22]

8. The Hippies were right!

In 2006, my wife & I moved from a Big Blue Northern City
to the rural Red Ouachita Mountain of Arkansas.
Our goal is to live as sustainably and green as possible.
So far, so good.
Next year, we will CONSUME even less.

---bvar22 & Starkraven
Living Well on a LOW taxable income,
and stuff we learned in the 60s

Less is MORE

Build it yourself

Buy 2nd Hand or Salvage & make it work,
or do without

Respect your Mother (Earth)



DURec!

[KrazyinKS]

11. One day you just get there-

I do estate sales-people come up to me and say isn't it sad people have to sell their stuff. No, not to me-one day I just got there. I no longer want a lot of stuff.

[Champion Jack]

12. And remember, he who dies with the most stuff…

Is still dead

[KrazyinKS]

22. that's right

Yep, I always try to be objective when I price. But at the end of the day stuff is stuff, gold is just a rock, can't eat it, won't keep the rain off your head and don't cure cancer. You just don't need it.

[truedelphi]

13. The problem with this line of thinking is that the people who need to

Consume less won't, and the rest of us already do.

When will we see to it that wars re stopped? (Our military consunmers over 50% opf all the gs and oil taht is available to us in this economy.) Or who will stop some of the US Big Bad Black Op programs that contribute (according to Scandinavian scientists) some 15% of the damage to the out of control climate changes?

I mean, us sixty somethings can leave the car in the driveway and walk to the store, but knowing that Naval carriers are still being built makes my walk a lot less satisfying.

[GliderGuider]

14. Yes, this is what's known as an "All we need to do is..." prescription.

All we need to do is (insert selected wish for changing basic human nature).

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Your figures for the military are wrong

We shouldn't imagine that getting rid of the US military would do anything close to halving the US consumption of oil or gas.

US energy consumption: 98 quadrillion Btu, of which oil 37%, gas 25% (ie 36260 trillion Btu and 24500 trillion Btu respectively)
US military energy consumption: 827 trillion Btu, of which oil 77.4%, gas 7.6% (ie 640 trillion Btu and 63 trillion Btu respectively)

So the military uses about 1.8% of the country's oil, and 0.5% of its gas. It would help a little if it were less, but the main solution does not come from there (you may have heard the statistic " 80 percent of the federal government energy consumption" for the military - but that shows that, unsurprisingly, the rest of the federal government doesn't consume much energy). I presume the claim of '15%' is because they say the US keeps the governments of OPEC in power, or something - I don't expect for a minute it's something that's actually quantifiable or worth considering.

It's not the naval carriers - it's the culture they're part of.

[truedelphi]

20. I can't answer your information correctly on this board

As I have info about it you are not adding it into the equation. (However Scandinavian scientists attribute this program's operation to fifteen per cent annually of the global warming/global climate change situation.) However this subject is verbotten and could end up getting me a tombstone.

However I will say this - some four years ago, this program took bids from the appropriate industry's contractors, and the bids were for a single county in the USA, and the cost was ten billion dollars. Now in this new era, the particular black ops program is operating 24/7, and it is operating in every county, in the USA (some 58 counties right here in California) and most of the expense is for the jet fuel.

Also:
The U.S. military is the world's largest single consumer of oil.
Posted by defendandprotect in General Discussion (1/22-2007 thru 12/14/2010)
Wed Oct 27th 2010, 07:08 PM
■ A full energy-use profile would allow the U.S. military to know how it uses its fuels, which would allow for a truly comprehensive energy policy.

Obviously, the military itself doesn't "know" --

■It's efforts to fund renewable energy projects are haphazard and do little to address its dependence on oil for vehicles.

Actually, the military has shown interest in solar airplanes --

The air force, the U.S. military's leading consumer of oil PDF, is spearheading the evaluation, support, and testing of synthetic fuels and engine technologies. It has good reason, the rate that fighters, bombers, and other vehicles consume oil is so high it is often given in gallons per mile or gallons per hour or minute instead of miles per gallon. For example, the B1-B Lancer, a bomber, burns about 59 gallons per minute; the B-52 Stratofortress burns about 54 gallons per minute; the KC-135 (an aerial refuelling tanker, known as a flying gas station) burns on average 35 gallons per minute; and the F-16 Falcon fighter burns about 13 gallons per minute.

And -- here's more info on why your estimates of military use of oil are likely flawed ....

Part of creating such a profile would involve data collection reform that has skewed the military's picture of its own fuel consumption. Official oil consumption figures from the U.S. military are underreported, due to accounting flaws: Certain vehicles rented or leased are not included in fuel consumption statistics; fuel consumption by private contractors, which has grown more and more important to the U.S. war effort, is not included; and fuel costs accrued by private transportation companies that ferry U.S. military personnel are also absent. A bigger issue is that in the two Gulf Wars, fuel was obtained at no cost and was not included in Pentagon statistics. During the First Gulf War, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supplied 1.5 billion gallons of fuel for no charge, and in 2003 Kuwait supplied U.S. military forces with free fuel as well. None of this was included in the Pentagon's fuel consumption statistics.


http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/fea...


AND this analysis ....


DoD Energy Dependencies

In addition to the direct consumption of petroleum to power combat systems, there are four under-recognized DoD petroleum dependencies: 1) military industrial supply, 2) contractor support, 3) commercial logistics, and 4) installation requirements.

While most policy makers and analysts will focus on the 1.5 percent of national petroleum consumption directly used by the DoD when studying DoD petroleum dependency (94 percent of which is for mobility/transportation),47 this approach ignores the indirect dependencies of a highly intertwined military/industrial complex necessary for modern high-technology warfare.

While it may be virtually impossible to quantify and categorize the amount of petroleum specifically required to create/support every activity or procured end item within DoD, the fact that DoD relies upon an industrial base for medical syringes, M-16s, and C-17 parts serves to illustrate that the DoD is just as reliant upon petroleum-fueled civilian and governmental institutions as the rest of American society.

Let's not forget the importance of Recognizing the fact that fueling national defense goes beyond just the direct use of petroleum by armed forces and into a much deeper supply chain dependency and through this fundamental understanding we realize the vulnerability of America’s security to strategic petroleum supply disruptions or declines. This military/industrial dependency necessarily links civilian and military future energy solutions.

The second under-recognized DoD petroleum dependency exists in the realm of increasingly ubiquitous contractor support. DoD relies upon service contractors to fulfill a broad spectrum of requirements ranging from base maintenance to military interrogations. With the exception of DoD-provided combat zone fuel, the vast majority of DoD service vehicles are not among the actual inventory of US government owned vehicles, but sub contractors, contractors, rental agencies and those vehicles belonging to the military of other nations.
47 Lovins, Winning the Oil Endgame, 36. -

See
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cst/csat56.pdf
And then at the above link, read the section on DoD dependencies on page 15 (Fifteen as indicated at the bottom of the actual page, and not the pdf page reading at top of screen.)

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. That's OK, you don't have to 'answer correctly' now - I've put the correct figures up

All you have to do is use the correct figures in the future (ie about one thirtieth of the level you claimed). We won't believe your nonsense about "I could prove this, but then I'll get tombstoned", unsurprisingly.

[hunter]

15. I think about half my recent journal entries are anti-productivity.

We need a new measure of "economic productivity" because what we currently call "productivity" is destroying both the human spirit and the natural environment supporting us.

Christmas may be a good time to think about this... I don't want to be a "consumer." I'd like to live very lightly upon our Earth. A smile and simple friendly words are gifts to me. Otherwise I have a safe place to sleep, good food to eat, my clothes are not rags, and my doctor continues to see me even though I frequently owe him money. I like to think I'm entertaining... what surprise will Hunter bring to our office today?! We've known one another more than two decades. Before that my childhood pediatrician went out of his way and last saw me in my early twenties, before I moved away from him. Relationships matter.

Don't "give" me anything from a big box store. I'll see it as a burden and give it to someone who needs or wants it.

It's too easy here in North America to burn a lot of fossil fuels and fuck up the Earth even further. I'll never atone for all the gasoline I burned as a young adult making ten bucks an hour when gasoline was less than a dollar a gallon. I drove, and occasionally flew, all over the place, pretending I was some kind of environmentalist because I could sleep outside or on someone's floor, as if the gallons of oil I burned getting there and back, from anti-nuclear rallies or explorations of the deserts, didn't matter.

Too much climate change is mine.

[TBF]

17. The Venus Project --

The Venus Project is an organization that proposes a feasible plan of action for social change, one that works towards a peaceful and sustainable global civilization. It outlines an alternative to strive toward where human rights are no longer paper proclamations but a way of life.

We operate out of a 21.5-acre Research Center located in Venus, Florida.

When one considers the enormity of the challenges facing society today, we can safely conclude that the time is long overdue for us to re-examine our values and to reflect upon and evaluate some of the underlying issues and assumptions we have as a society. This self-analysis calls into question the very nature of what it means to be human, what it means to be a member of a "civilization," and what choices we can make today to ensure a prosperous future for all the world's people.

At present we are left with very few alternatives. The answers of yesterday are no longer relevant. Either we continue as we have been with our outmoded social customs and habits of thought, in which case our future will be threatened, or we can apply a more appropriate set of values that are relevant to an emergent society.

Much more here -- http://www.thevenusproject.com/about/the-venus-project