anti-consumerist society?

[Roshni]

If so, why? And how do you pass on something better to your kids in this society that pivots on consumerism and the economy?

.Don't agree that the concentration camps were 'inefficient'
I fear we are actually agreeing, just not on exact words. They were "effective" yes, but far too much resource was expended to achieve that goal.

The Holocaust isn't just about the death camps. It is also about slave labour in camps or ghettos,
Agreed again. But slave labour is also stupidly inefficient. In Britain people like my mother were told to go and work in factories, and they obliged, even if like my mother you were not exactly a fan of the British state. They were paid, indeed many experienced an increase in wealth during that period. The Jews worked to death in camps were on average more educated than other Europeans, and would have been a useful component of a workforce.

It was an enormous efficient machine, planned and operated with the collusion of a very large number of ordinary people.
Was mildy efficient at the production level yes, but design and engineering suffered greatly.
I totally agree aobut the collusion of large numbers of ordinary people. The myth of "good Germans" has been a useful lie in making them a civilised people, but never forget that almost everything done by the Nazis was with the enthusiastic support of Germans, especially Austrians.

No one was bombing remote areas of Poland and Germany,
True. But the rail system to get them there was continuously attacked.

the rail system was intact.
I'm not quite sure what you mena by "intact". To be sure we never broke it completely, but was not a happy place to be.

There was a whole system of stripping people of everything they had and reusing it
Bit of gold yes, and a bit of recylcling, but harldy enough to make much difference in total war. Was a pretense to justify what they were doing. They would have been vastly more useful as skilled labour.

You could not murder an ethnic minority locally because there might be ethical concerns by local officials, interference by other people
Getting close to the "good German" myth here.
All of the Jews were rounded up from local communities. The railways were mostly run by civillians, yet there is little evidence that any Germans took any action at all to stop it.

not to mention mass panic by those about to be killed, who might organise and spread dissent.
I've never got my head around why those in camps didn't do anything. Would have been almost certainly hopeless, but I believe I'd have tried to take some Europeans with me.

Sophable, Gemitygem, Filyjonk, thanks for your posts.

I'm also interested in the Nazi subject, but going back to the 'new way of life' debate, DC – what you said about people working together, cooperating, in war – well, people also do this for no benefit to themselves whatsoever, but simply to help others. People put themselves between the guns of Israeli solders and Palestinian children, or join up with voluntary organisations and offer their skills in war torn countries for nothing but the notion of fair distribution of skills and privaleges. it is this aspect of the human spirit – not the one that demands I knock you over the head and take what you have before you do it to me – that we have to use in moving forward. I'm not talking about a utopian society. We are at the cusp of a major change. Our planet is being destroyed. We either change or we die. This knocking one another over the head thing, which we are currently doing to the third world through our world economy, is simply killing all of us. We either evolve to grow out of our economy and into a system of organisation that enables us to nurture our planet, or we die out.

People do want a fair world. Our leaders, who know that powermongering is not a fair business, know that they at least have to appear to fair to maintain their own power, because that's what the masses want. Even many of the poorest of people will share their food with someone who they feel has less than them. Why has the sale of Fair Trade products gone through the roof over the last few years? Gemity mentions consumer power, and in this way we are talking with our wallets, saying we want a fairer world.

You talk about nuclear power. Do we really want a nuclear world? What about waste. But the cold reality of the situation is we either consume less energy, or we have a lot of nuclear energy and therefore the tricky situation of waste.

It may be hard to conceive of a different world, and it may seem unrealistic to expect humans to change so dramatically, but nature doesn't think in our terms, and will we be able to pull our heads out of our backsides quick enough to see that we are running at the end of a cliff when it comes to our survival on this planet?

ps. I'm guessing you're a man, DC????

Ok. I fundementally disagree with you about the inpact of state involement, DC. I think its a good thing.

Its better that things are nationalised because then profit is not put before safety. See Paddington rail disaster, etc. Governement involvement is also necesary to protect people who can't otherwise protect themselves, like children, people with disabilities, etc. How would you organise a National Health Service without socialist ideas? Or would it just be survivial of the fittest?

Agree that the Nazis were highly efficient. They killed around 6 million Jews. The number of gay people, comunists, Gypsys (huge numbers, the Sinti gypsys were virtually all killed whis is why most now are Roma), trade unionists etc makes the total number huge. The 6 million Jews even is a (probably conservative) estimate.

There was a limit on the extent to which mass murder was possible, seeing as how people might have objected a bit if it was completely out in the open. Also the country was in a bit of a state following ww1.

And the problem with making fun of the Nazis by comparing them to gay people is that you are implying that to be gay is to be humourous and not worthy of being taken seriously. Only one Village Person was actually gay, they were playing on a social sterotype.

And thank GOD it takes that much resources to kill people! I honestly can't believe we're debating how effieicnet the concentration camps were! OR that I've just posted about it! FFS! Viva la republique!

People also do this for no benefit to themselves whatsoever, but simply to help others.
I agree.
But they don't always work out for the best. It's hard to work out the long term consequences of our actions.

We are at the cusp of a major change. Our planet is being destroyed. We either change or we die.
Agree, that's why I get so annoyed with greens and their dopey plans to eke out a living for a few more years. They're full of "sustainable" ideas that won't last more than a couple of centuries if that. When queried, every single one of them has replied, "but I'll be dead by then".

To me sustainable is a long term thing. That means finding a big energy source fast. Nothing, not one thing we can plausibly do with conservation can help much.
Imagine America tomorrow stopped driving cars. What impact would that have ? Actually almost none. That's about 2% of world energy consumption, ie 6-9 months growth and we'd be back there.
If America stopped using any form of carbon, that would buy 6-7 years. Again not enough.

We need to abandon superstition as a way of making decisions on a large scale. Farming needs to be put on a market footing, and we need to build 2-3000 nuclear reactors. Once we do that then most of the big problems in the world simply go away. (But I'm sure we'll find more)

Once 3rd worlders are allowed sell us things they will get rich enough to look after themselves. Reducing oil dependence makes the squalid butchery of Israel, Iran, Saudi et al merely a humanitarian concern, not a threat. Climate change is here. We can't stop it now, but we can engineer it to be less bad.

We either evolve to grow out of our economy.
Economics is how we are going to get out of this, combined with some decent engineering.
If you look at all the major bad things in the world, you see that the free market has not been allowed to allocate resources, and that's the main driver.

and into a system of organisation that enables us to nurture our planet, or we die out.
Big systems don't work with humans.
Severe oppression, or a big external threat can work for a while, but not for more than about a generation, and even to last that long you usually have to kill a lot of people. Look at the failure rate of countries, I guess over the last 2 centuries, life expectancy of a state has averaged less than 50 years.
Basic engineering tells us that cooperating systems are more resilient than one big one. Ironically much of this was worked out by people under socialism, but the answer is so abhorrent to them they ignored it.
The LSE used to be a hotbed of socialism until they started forcing undergrds to learn maths. Isn't left wing any more.

People do want a fair world.
Do they ?
I'd like to think so too. You may. I do.
But the majority of people simply don't care.
The Common Agricultural Policy is pretty popular, yet is the largest source of unfairness on the planet. Trade barriers that stop poor countries selling to us are hugely popular. Barriers that stop poor people moving to less wretched places are also popular.
A more accurate statement might be that people want a world that's a little less unfair provided it doesn't affect their own lives or anyone of the same skin colour or regional accent.

The British people all by themselves could end hunger, reduce AIDS to a minor tragedy, and eliminate the governments of the dozen worst African and Moslem countries. It would hurt a bit, we'd have fewer 4 wheel drive cars, and support fewer fat Italians singing mediocre German operas to uncomprehending Japanese tourists, but even a midrange country like our could do this.

Does it happen ?
No.

Why has the sale of Fair Trade products gone through the roof over the last few years?
Ah, you've been watching the BBC again haven't you ?
They lurrve fair trade. A lot.
They talk about huge growth and run advertising that would cost tens of millions for these products.
Sadly "huge growth" is typically a synonym for "pathetically small market share". Not saying it's a bad thing, just a very small, mostly good thing.

What the 3rd world needs is more firms like Nike.

I'm 100% behind fair trade, but that is the elimination of trade barriers, all of them. I'm for enforcing the competiton laws, even on those companies who contribute to the major political parties.
Think through the effects of the growth in "Organic" farming. Sounds good doesn't it ?
Except how is some farmer in the 3rd world going to pay for all the compliance work ? It's a trade barrier, though one The Guardian and Daily Mail both love.

You talk about nuclear power. Do we really want a nuclear world?
Given the set of current options it's a nuclear world or extinction.

What about waste.
It will kill thousands of people. It will last for geological spans of time. Some will be used as weapons to destroy whole cities. If manking were to destory itself, nuclear waste dumps might be the only long term way of telling we were ever here.
And ?
I'm old. So I remember Aberfan where a coal tip decided to crush a school. Google on it. Not nice.
The "smogs" in major cities like London killed thousands per year, every year.
Almost all conventional bombs are made from fossil fuels.
Energy production is bad. All of it. Dams are horrible to the water environment, windmills exterminate birds, and on a large scale will kill about the same number of people per year as coal mining used to. Solar cellls produce really nasty chemical pollution, and consume huge energy in their production. Google on "zone refining". Basicially it means heating sand to melting point many times. A good % of electrovoltaic chips never pay back as much energy as they took to build.

But the cold reality of the situation is we either consume less energy, or we have a lot of nuclear energy and therefore the tricky situation of waste.
Don't see it as either or.
Say we halved our energy consumption, we'd still need a lot. What about people in crap countries, should they be allowed to be warm in winter ?

It may be hard to conceive of a different world,
Been reading SciFi since before most people on this forum were born. I see lots of good futures. The low tech ones are the Stephen Baxter style of end of humanity.

nature doesn't think in our terms,
Nature doesn'tr think. The only viable future is where we do the thinking for it. Left to itself nature would wipe us out.

and will we be able to pull our heads out of our backsides quick enough to see that we are running at the end of a cliff when it comes to our survival on this planet?
No.
What we can do is build a hang glider so we soar off when we hit the edge.

DC How on earth do you get the time to sit and type such long, eloquent,comprehensive posts?

Lets be honest-very few people give a monkees? And its all money they give,very rarely time

eloquent and comprehensive his posts may be, but they are damn wrong.

I bet no green has ever said "but I'll be dead by then" - you're just saying that for effect. And actually conservation on a very radical scale COULD do the trick. But yes, it would have to involve more than one country and it doesn't have to involve nuclear.

they look a tad copy n paste to me...

I bet no green has ever said "but I'll be dead by then"
Sad to say, I guess it's at least a couple of dozen. Ever spoken to a green ? Try the experiment.

• you're just saying that for effect. No, it's experience.

And actually conservation on a very radical scale COULD do the trick.
How would you do that ?
I've given examples of implausbily large conservation efforts, yet they would not be enough.
I am assuming we don't let people freeze to death ?
The supplies advocated by greens (which don't seem to include wind any more), could not support us even at medieval levels in the long term. They also do not allow us to ride out historically known levels of climate variation. Given that we're going outside even that, by "radical" do you propose cyanide pills ?

But yes, it would have to involve more than one country and it doesn't have to involve nuclear.

I agree. But the satellite based solar arrays have cost estimates in the tens of trillions, hot fusion is at least 30 years away, may not ever work, and cold fusion is wildly unpredictable. In theory direct matter conversion would do the trick but no one has any idea how.
Biomass has promise, but greens aren't fond of the necessary genetic engineering to make it viable.
There's a good place for diversity, a few windmills, solar plants and dams are necessary for bootstrapping in case of major catastrophe, and to exploit local conditions, but not to support humans at any adequate level.

I am a green and have lots of friends in that camp. none of us would ever weedle out of an argument by saying we'd be dead by then - it is the opposite of what being green is about.

Anyway I don't know where you're getting your figures from, but why exactly would a combination of cutting energy use, biofuels and green energy sources work? We would have to cut energy use by a lot, I agree, but that doesn't mean people will freeze to death. better insulation will help for a start.

I bet no green has ever said "but I'll be dead by then"
Sad to say, I guess it's at least a couple of dozen. Ever spoken to a green ? Try the experiment.

• you're just saying that for effect. No, it's experience.

And actually conservation on a very radical scale COULD do the trick.
How would you do that ?
I've given examples of implausbily large conservation efforts, yet they would not be enough.
I am assuming we don't let people freeze to death ?
The supplies advocated by greens (which don't seem to include wind any more), could not support us even at medieval levels in the long term. They also do not allow us to ride out historically known levels of climate variation. Given that we're going outside even that, by "radical" do you propose cyanide pills ?

But yes, it would have to involve more than one country and it doesn't have to involve nuclear.

I agree. But the satellite based solar arrays have cost estimates in the tens of trillions, hot fusion is at least 30 years away, may not ever work, and cold fusion is wildly unpredictable. In theory direct matter conversion would do the trick but no one has any idea how.
Biomass has promise, but greens aren't fond of the necessary genetic engineering to make it viable.
There's a good place for diversity, a few windmills, solar plants and dams are necessary for bootstrapping in case of major catastrophe, and to exploit local conditions, but not to support humans at any adequate level.

Anyway I don't know where you're getting your figures from, but why exactly would a combination of cutting energy use, biofuels and green energy sources work?
Is there a not missing there ?

Biofuels do not make much a "profit" in energy, in the USA they have found that several of the pilot programmes actually used more energy than they produced. Once you add up the energy input from nitrate fertilisers, machinery etc, to the effort in converting it to a useful fuel, it's just not very good.
Genetic engineering may produce crops with higher yields, but we'd probably have to go for more radical options in getting the plant to produce chemicals more amenable to being burned.

Are you the sort of green that likes GM ?
There is a place for biofuels however in the leftovers from crops, but this is not a big thing.

I'm not sure what you mean by "insulation" ?
Most homes a relatively well insulated already, maybe you could 25% less heat consumed. To get any more the only way is to replace homes with more efficient ones. Home building is a huge consumer of energy, and simply waiting to repplace old houses at they reach the end of their lives is too slow to be useful.
But hell, lets just say I'm wrong about that, and imagine some awful green world where only the current level of public transport is used, and no private cars at all, and trains move by homeopathy.
I just don't see how we can reduce domestic consumption by more than 50%. What good is that ?

Also as a green I assume you have uncritical acceptence of the collapse of the Gulf Stream from climate change ?
That will push W. European and especially British energy consumption through the roof.
Thus I doubt there's any way we can insulate as fast as Britain cools.
Maybe it's worth insulating, but that's sandcastles in the tide.

Fact is that even without the global conveyer breaking, we know that historically harsh climate conditions happen more often than greens care to admit.

As for solar cells, part of my background is in the technology they are based upon, they are made with very similar processes to processor chips. They are horribly expensive to make, both financially and in energy. Useful for calculators, or in isolated areas where mains is not practical but not as mains.

Greens seem divided on windmills. In as much as I can work it out the view is that Greenpeace likes them, just so long is they can't be seen by their members. Actually what we have here is simply a superstitious fear of technology. Modern windmills are very techie, big white constructions of advanced composites and metal.
How many windmills do you think we need ?
The wind farm in Cumbria was state of the art, and they hoped that each unit would give "up to" 2 megawatts.
You wanted numbers...
British energy consupmtion is roughly 10^19 joules per year. (1 with 19 0's after it)
Thus you'd need
10^19/(2000000 24 365 60 60) ' seconds in a year = about 160,000 windmills.
That's assuming they work at peak efficiency all the time, I guess in reality you'd need rather closer to 200,000
With that density, there'd be few birds in Britain, and migratory birds for thousands of miles beyond would become extinct.

Assuing a 10 year life which is pretty good for a coimplex structure in windy conditions, you have to build 15-20,000 per year merely to keep them replaced.
Also of course they are pretty fragile things, and it's all too easy to see a fat tailed weather event taking out a large number. For security we might need as many as 25-30% more.

How many people would they kill ?
I can't find the Swedish figures on the web, but as you may know they have about the highest standards of worker safety in the world.
As I recall they were talking about roughly one worker per 100 windmill years. You can of course think up your own numbers. Just bear in mind that you are talking of big high structures under construction, that need a lot of repair work.
By necessity they are in windy places, which doesn't help.
I guess we're thus talking about something vaguely like 2- thousand people killed per year building and maintaining windmills.

In very round numbers wind costs about the same as nuclear in terms of capital costs and waste disposal. But has very much worse survivablity.

We would have to cut energy use by a lot, I agree, but that doesn't mean people will freeze to death. better insulation will help for a start.

Blimey,you still have soooooooooo much time DC

You are messing around with the figures here. windmills are great in my opinion, but we wouldn't need 160,000 of them. For one, we use energy very inefficiently - As you said, we could cut energy use by 50% without too much pain. As far as i know, no-one says we have to stop ALL carbon emissions immediately, we just have to cut them drastically. And your argument about the "cost" of disposal/ renewal compared to nuclear - so what? there's no radioactive waste.

As for your thoughts on solar panels: I thought we were thinking long term here?

I don't know why I'm bothering to argue really as you are obviously very sure of yourself and appear to have an axe to grind.

btw, I didn't ask for figures, I asked where you were getting yours from. Having looked it up i see your figure for UK energy consumption includes transport: it's possible to cut that by a lot more than 50% with sensible public transport/housing and taxation policies (eg tax breaks for companies with home workers, better planning for bus routes, less dicking about with the railways ). even so though, wind power probably won't be very effective in providing the energy for that which remains. I don't quite see why you assume that it should be.

I don't have an axe to grind, as you may have read earlier, I see nuclear energy as horrible. But I see all energy sources as having big problems.

Actually I was pretty generous with windmills, many people believe the rated capacity is peak, not an average, and we'd need twice as many.

Yes we can make big cuts in energy usage. But public transport is surprisingly inefficient. Great for trunk routes, but to provide an adequate service outside these you end up running big vehicles mostly empty, or make people wait a long time. Certainly I agree with your sentiments about the dicking around, where we get big wasteful vehicles and a poor service.

I suspect the big difference in our positions is actually my pessimism. Not only do I agree that we don't need to stop carbon emissions now, I believe we can't/won't and we'll hit the cliff anyway.
From this dark view, climate change is bad, but inevitable. As I said in my remarks about the complete abandonment of whole categories of carbon usage, nothing buys us enough time to do very much.
I assume that not only will climate change happen, but that it will be bad. Probably not a Venus scenario, but effects that make hurricane Katrina look small. Ice storms seem the worst from Britain's position. These are pretty rare currently. But if you have a combination of rain, followed by very low temperatures, you may lose big lumps of the infrastucture. Power lines, and of course windmills.
Also I'm uncomfortable with the notion that you can plan in lower energy consumption. The water companies are pretending that the last few years of near drought are abnormal. Maybe. What if they aren't ? We may need solutions anywhere from large scale pumping to maybe even desalinisation. Big energy consumers.
Or it may get hotter, or colder, or maybe even both very hot summers and very cold winters. A lot of the models predict very strong winds, enough to take out not only windmills but quite a few high rise buildings. Or not. I just don't know, and nor does anyone else.

This is my point about "long term". Wind will be available for a long time of course. But to me, you need a source that has considerable ability to cope with damage, and surges in demand. If not, you have a solution that is too delicate for long term. Enough windmills can be made of course, but the solution has to be a mix. Nuclear plants, being fewer and usually near the coast have clear vulnerabilities as well.

Also a source of energy has to be relatively cheap. We need to remain a rich country, not just in absolute terms, but relative to others.
History is rarely kind to countries that are poor relative to those within reach.