The purpose of boycotts, embargoes, and sanctions is to not provide a market. Green purchasing has increased the organic food and alternative energy markets while recycling reduces markets for raw material. Each growth in these alternatives deprives the traditional sources of that much of their market. In time those other markets can disappear completely, like the turn of the century market for women's feathered hats.
>Individual "voluntary simplicity" is not going to take us where we
>need to go.
If enough people can understand the benefits for themselves and the world in the pursuit of simplicity, a critical mass type shift in attitude is possible. I think we're already seeing how reduced consumption is depressing the economy's rebound as fewer people either have the means or the will to consume at previous rates. Productivity may be at all time highs, but as demand decreases, supply side economics can't function.
So many of the people I know have decreased or ended altogether the exhorbitant expense of Christmas. In some cases, its due to reduced means, but in the majority of cases, the cause is reduced will to receive any more "stuff" to clutter up our lives. Christmas morning greed has lost all its luster. Maybe its just the circles I travel in but I doubt it. Most of my family is politically conservative and they are nearly as disillusioned with materialism as I am.
>Let's take the case of passenger ground transportaton.
> We could indeed run the U.S. transportation on renewables - but not
> at our current efficiency.
Perhaps the greatest possible efficiencies could be achieved by the intense promotion of telecommuting, video-conferencing, and distance education.
>So take the case of transportation. What can you do as an
> individual? Buy a diesel car, and run it on biodiesel, knowing you
> are using five to twenty times as much as could be used sustainably
> if this was done widely?
I don't understand what your "five to twenty times" is referring to. A bit more fossil fuel is required to make a gallon of diesel over a gallon of gasoline, but when common rail diesel engines can make a peppy car that gets 60-80 mpg, and when B100 (100% biodiesel) reduces particulates by 70%, carbon monoxide by 50%, total hydrocarbons by 40%, sulfates by 100%, over standard diesel fuel http://www.epa.gov/orcdizux/consumer/fuels/altfuels/420f00032.pdf using a engine that needs little or no modification, all from a renewable sustainable source, it is clear how important the biodiesel direction is for us.
>But in most of the U.S. you don't have sustainable
>transportation available.
Because we're spending all our money being imperialists trying to control the last of the oil reserves. This short sighted policy to line the pockets of political/corporate cronies may well be this nation's undoing because we won't have time to establish the needed alternative infrastructures, like most of Europe and Japan has been establishing now for decades. I was awed when I saw how many gallons of biodiesel is being produced in Europe, when they have less agricultural land than the US.
> And if you start talking about the end
> of work I'm going to reach through the monitor and strangle you.
LOL Okay, I won't go there. But the current attitudes of the middle class to admire and try to emulate the rich is devastating. Like those who buy 2000 sq. ft. houses with vaulted ceilings for only 2 people, each commuting in separate SUVs. Do you know people like this? I sure do. Massive unnecessary consumption and waste of resources, multiplied thousands of times in our society. I view it as criminal. Most view it as an indicator of success.
> Yes we would be better off as a society with fewer hours of work
> and less stuff more equally distributed. But most people are not
> in a position to balance stuff that way; you can't live on nothing,
> and to get the bare minimum to live on takes work for most of us.
Unless we are one of those at the bottom making minimum wage, we can all live well under our means. We can mortgage much less than the banks will lend us. We can buy less of everything. In many cases, one of the parents could stay home with the kids and end up saving more money than if both worked (I've done it), which frees up jobs for others. These are directions that could help all of us and make our own lives easier, more pleasant, and much more secure.
>But he
>solutions are social solutions, not individual solutions.
Doesn't it have to be a combination of both? Isn't the individual aspect why we still experience traffic jams in cities that do offer convenient and even cheaper mass transit? Must we try to force individuals to comply? While it might work for liberals, I don't believe many conservatives would accept involuntary measures.
>I could go on; the bottom line is we could improve end use
> efficiency enough to run our society on renewable energy even with
> out reducing the amount of stuff we consume.
I'd like to think that's possible, but I very much doubt it. Nor do I believe it is in our best security interest to be consuming so much more than the rest of the world on a per capita basis. In any case, we need to "make the switch" to alternatives and we need to do it fast, while there is still enough fossil fuel to support the transition phase. Otherwise things could get real ugly, real fast.
>And you know what? Most people in the U.S. would support this; at
>least every survey has shown this. But it is strongly against the
>interest of the owners of capital. Not just the car and auto
>companies. Capital in general hates the idea of more taxes for more
>public works and more regulations to tell them how to spend the
>money they extract from ordinary people.
Isn't this a major reason why we can't depend on political solutions and must rely instead on the collective force of individual solutions? We won't get solutions from politicians. Only the richest people end up in primaries, on ballots, or selling voting machines. The legislatures are overrun with lobbyists and corruption. We're fast losing honorable judges and the police state is now very real. We have to take matters into our own hands. Our choice of what to support with our own money is critical now.
Suppose we just all cut way back on work and spent money only for necessities? It's possible that we could starve the owners of capital into submission.
I'm trying to do my part. Back in 87, we got our mortgage paid off in 7 years (mortgaged much less than we could afford), and am now living on $5000 income a year doing part time teaching on contract at a community college, getting my son thru college as a single parent, still supporting my most important vices, such as internet and DSL, trying to muddle thru 12 more years til I can retire. I don't see where I've sacrificed or suffered at all, though I do want to get health insurance. I can smile as I fill out my 1040, watching my zero Federal withholdings turn into an Earned Income Credit refund that might just pay most of a medical insurance policy. I used to be proud to pay income tax. Not any more.
>As you wer told by another
>poster, it is fundamentally a class issue.
Well, if net worth or income is any measure, I'm near the bottom and I intend to stay there as long as I can.
>And the approach you
>outlines actually helps to speed the degradation of this planets
>suitability for human habitation, because it reduces the odds of
>winning.
Winning what? The "right" to consume more than I need? No thanks. Reining in the corporate/political/financial machine? I'm in. I see no way that reducing consumption can do anything but cause less hurt for the beings on this planet. If we don't need fossil fuel, or sweatshop labor, or beef or trees from rainforest land, or uranium, or any other plundering, we may prevent our demise. We may even eventually learn to become spiritually in tune with our place among other beings here and on this living planet. This seems to me to be the most win-win possibility we have.
>Look at it this way; if 20% if the U.S. population did everything
> they could as individuals to live sustanably, you see an
> improvement, maybe even better than a 20% improvement, but you
> would not reach the minimal sustainability needed to maintain a
> technological
>civilization. If you could get 20% of the population to strongly
>support a politcal movement, that would probably be enough to win
> the changes to turn the nation around. I'm not saying either is
> easy. But political action offers a lot more possibility of success
> than lifestyle changes.
I hate to say it, but I think our chances for political action are about dead. Our politicians are creating a fascist nation bent on controlling the world. There are too many greedy rich people at the top controlling everything (including the voting apparatus) to allow it to have any meaning any more. The media spin is too good and it is controlled by the same powerful elite. So many people are too busy to take the time to learn any important current events and history, and only watch the news for weather, sports, or sensational stories.
We liberals have steadily lost ground since Carter left office. Clinton was no liberal. Clinton followed the same exact Zionist foreign policy as all the rest. All the politicians with very few exceptions are on the take. War enriches them while we foot the bill with our taxes and blood. How can we possibly hope for political solutions when we've reached this point, with no signs of the pendulum swinging back to the left? I see that we have no choice but to work towards making our own alternatives. Let the aristocracy eat gold. I'll expand my victory garden.
>Are lifestyle changes usesless? Hell no. If you are in the position
>to make such lifestyle changes and demonstrate that you can have a
>better life than people not doing it, it constittues a kind of
>propaganda ;
Yes, it does. When one person can show success in simpifying, it inspires 10 more. The light can expand ever wider.
>but it makes sense only as part of a larger
> political movement, and to the extent it does not drain energy
> from it.
It need not be political. It can't hurt the one who succeeds in simplication. They are much more likely to survive when the bottom falls out because they may be able to meet their needs on their own and they have much less invested to lose. Intentional communities are also another direction I see as a powerful force away from the status quo.
--tully