How we might avert the oncoming economic & environmental catastrophe:

The only solution is to greatly decrease our levels of consumption. Otherwise we’re going to have to keep burning mountains of coal as we continue by that means to destroy our environment, our ecosystem, our economy and our health – as we go ever further into debt (national and personal) in order to purchase this extraordinary surplus of manufactured crap, much of it built to wear out sooner rather than later.

How to cut overall consumption?

1. A five dollar a gallon tax on gasoline, with compensatory subsidies for low-income commuters, truckers etc. Plus a tax on employers who hire people that live more than 10 miles away from work. The more the commute miles, the greater the tax.

2. A law requiring all utility companies to buy (for 7x the going rate) any excess electricity generated by homeowners and businesses that have their roofs covered with photovoltaic cells – just as is now done in Germany, where such measures have so far eliminated the need to build and operate eight (8) additional nuclear reactors. Where to get the money some of the money for such compensation to those who cover their roofs with PV cells? From the steep gasoline taxes referenced in item #1.

3. Fat federal subsidies for the purchase of wind turbines and electric-battery-operated cars, the oversized batteries in which can store, and put back onto the grid, any excess electricity generated from either privately owned wind turbines operating at night and/or roof-top PV-cell arrays operating over the weekend. How to get all this temporarily stored electricity back on the grid? Every employer of any size would be mandated by law to have hookups for the automobile of every employee who drove such a battery-operated car. Such hookups could transfer, and measure, as much electricity as each auto owner wanted his car to part with, each day, so that the owner could be properly compensated (at 7x the going rate, as before) for all electricity thereby supplied to the grid. Again, this is already successfully being done in parts of Germany.

4. Nonprofit organizations, subsidized by the government, that would train and supervise people who wanted to build and or refurbish ecologically designed homes and other permaculture http://permacultureprinciples.com/ arrangements.

5. Progressively steeper sales taxes on all products and services except for the most basic. The greater the price of the product or service, the steeper the sales tax rate.

6. All roadways and rooftops should eventually be made of photovoltaic cells. "http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=roadways+ made+of+PV+cells&rlz=1R2GZAZ_enUS345&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on. 2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=bc9c04b99643e414"

7. Pull the U.S. military out of Europe, Japan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Close down all unnecessary military bases.

8. Stop building the space plane "http://www.suasnews.com/2011/01/3610/russians-and-china-said-to-be- working-on-their-own-x37-type-craft/" that is designed to deliver hydrogen bombs for a first strike on China and fly an erratic flight path over enemy territory, at Mach3, so as to avoid any interceptor missiles.

9. Rebuild and re-enforce regulations like Glass-Steagall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act that will help prevent another multi-trillion dollar housing pyramid scheme like the one that impoverished millions while enriching a few.

10. Stop borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn in ways that destroy the planet.

11. Increase CO2 taxes and decrease payroll taxes.

12. Implement real campaign finance reform so that the above-listed proposals will have some chance of being realized.

Off and running, RC.  Thanks for thinking up specific means and ends.

13. Reduce the population to a sustainable level.

That can only be accomplished by providing good educations and jobs
to the vast majority of the world's females.

Will these 13 measures be difficult, in fact nearly impossible, to realize? Yes, of course. But consider the alternative.

Innovation?

Do you think we have two or three generations in which to effect that
change, Ricardo?  I don't.  Also, a higher standard of living
necessitates higher consumption, so your new family of three or four
are going to use even more resources than a family of seven or eight
used to.

I don't think there's a humane, or even sane, way do do it, but it's
going to happen one way or the other.

{1}I definitely agree wee must cut our consumption. No way around
that.
But all those legal prescriptions are not going work.

Hard reality is the only thing that will compel us cut our
consumption, not complex laws.

If stupidity prevails, you're quite right, Wren. And it probably will prevail.

<<< Also, a higher standard of living necessitates higher consumption, so your new family of three or four are going to use even more resources than a family of seven or eight used to. >>>

I don't agree that a higher standard of living necessitates greater consumption. In fact, that assumption is the poisonous fallacy of our age. Instead, we need to learn, as a society and civilization, that a higher standard of living can be provied by more time for education, conversation, art, athletics, love, sex, nurturing, meditation, recreation, music, beautifully maintained parks and wilderness areas, and all manner of other such things, which truly enrich our hearts, souls, bodies and minds.

{9}I don't agree that a higher standard of living necessitates greater consumption. In fact, that assumption is the poisonous fallacy of our age. Instead, we need to learn, as a society and civilization, that a higher standard of living can be provied by more time for education, conversation, art, athletics, love, sex, nurturing, meditation, recreation, music, beautifully maintained parks and wilderness areas, and all manner of other such things, which truly enrich our hearts, souls, bodies and minds.

Arrggg! Richard you drive me insane. You are so RIGHT (and beautifully put by the way, I'm jealous)!

But then you seem to totally miss the boat when it comes to (seemingly) believing you can legislate people into accepting a better, more beautiful world.

Most of us would rather have that 60" TV, monster RV, mobile home,
mansion in the suburbs, and a 100' cabin cruiser thank you very much.

How high does the cancer rate have to go, for children as well as adults, before you start to see things my way?

What happens when ALL the bees die off and the rates of famine and war triple and quadruple? Still gonna be happy watching it all on the bigscreen?

A 'better' standard of living is not the same as a 'higher' standard
of living, but the latter is what seems to reduce birth rates.

Doom and gloom almost never happen, and it isn't going to now.

Most of your ideas, cardo, have a huge carbon and energy footprint to even test on a small scale. Solar panel highways and rooftops...the energy just to make the panels is geenormous.

And everyone tip-toeing through the tulips??? Yeah, we'll have that when we replace the floride in the water with a real drug. You're not dreaming, you're delusioning.

<<< A 'better' standard of living is not the same as a 'higher' standard of living, but the latter is what seems to reduce birth rates. >>>

I beg to differ. It's education and jobs for females that reduce the birth rates. It has nothing to do with high standard of living. Proof: Kerala, India, where women have good educations and jobs that pay no more than what men receive, which is very little. The vast majority of people in Kerala do NOT enjoy what might be called a "high standard of living," yet the birth rate in Kerala is very low.

<<< Solar panel highways and rooftops...the energy just to make the panels is geenormous. >>>

Prototype photovoltaic cells have been produced comparatively cheaply and once they go into mass production, the price will continue to fall. Prototype PV roadways have been produced and eventually their price will continually fall.

I have too many friends in the solar industry, some at MIT working to make that price fall a reality, which it may never be with current technology. We're a couple of decades out before we can even play your game, let alone win at it.

Senator, *everybody* has friends at MIT.  Everybody.

Why not name yours, and get them to come here to talk?

Otherwise, your words are not going to have much effect, since they
*look* too much like speculation.

And if you think gloom and doom never turn out to have reasonable
bases, what upsides do you see about the Second War?  Do those
benefits outweigh the burdens?

Do you *really think* that manmade contributions to global warming and
resulting climate change are mere soothsaying gloom and doom that
aren't going to come out true?  If you do think that, why?  What is
the science that backs up that thought?

Photovoltaic Breakthroughs Brighten Outlook for Cheap Solar Power

Novel materials might make harvesting sunlight for electricity affordable

"http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=photovoltaic-breakthroughs-brighten-outlook-for-cheap-solar-power"

Hmmm --- potential doesn't mean actual. Plants have been around for
some multi millions of years and through evolution they convert at
less than 2% --- seems hubris that we will do appreciably better on
any scale worth anything.

>Why not name yours, and get them to come here to talk?<

Here's why. They are not old farts who give a shit about coming here to talk.

>Do you *really think* that manmade contributions to global warming and resulting climate change are mere soothsaying gloom and doom that aren't going to come out true?<

Yes, that's what I think. I'll think otherwise when I see some real science on the matter that confirms such a position.

{21-22} So then pretty obviously you *have* no data backing up what
you think is your thinking.  Are you denying that there's any threat
of global climate change?

Nobody cares, really, about the ages of any farts you've claimed to
know at MIT.  They either know what you're trying to talk about, or
they don't.

You can choose whether to notice the vernacular challenge.  You can
shut up.  Or put up.

You want to convince anyone that your "skepticism" has ANY basis?
Time for you to do some genuine work.

Bring on your MIT people.  If they have any energy behind them, they
won't object to your citing them.  Otherwise, it's going to look as if
the smoke you're blowing is aimed up your own skirt.

>Are you denying that there's any threat of global climate change?<

I'm denying there is anything unusual about global climate change.

>Nobody cares, really, about the ages of any farts you've claimed to know at MIT. They either know what you're trying to talk about, or they don't.<

Yeah, so? You have a point? Better yet, you have anything thing to back up a claim that solar cells won't take a greenormous amount of energy to even make a gnats ass of progress toward Richard's dream of a brave new world?

You've been bloviating this work crap for years. When do you put up?

But here you go anyway.

My unnamed friend says we're years out to the high scale production to make much of an energy impact. But I know you know you know what you don't think I know.