"But Global Warming is a HOAX!!!"

[dann]

Americans’ views on anthropogenic global warming

A majority of Americans support prioritizing the development of renewable energy sources. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say the country should prioritize developing renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas, according to a survey conducted in June 2023.
(...)
The public supports the federal government incentivizing wind and solar energy production.
(...)
Americans see room for multiple actors – including corporations and the federal government – to do more to address the impacts of climate change. Two-thirds of adults say large businesses and corporations are doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change. Far fewer say they are doing about the right amount (21%) or too much (10%).
What the data says about Americans’ views of climate change (Pew Research Center, Aug 9, 2023)

So why is Biden so hell-bent on fracking up the climate? Is he prioritizing? Is he hoping to win MAGA votes? Or is he selling out to donors?

Climate change is a lower priority for Americans than other national issues. While a majority of adults view climate change as a major threat, it is a lower priority than issues such as strengthening the economy and reducing health care costs.

Also according to Pew: In 2019, climate change was Still Seen as the Top Global Threat.

 

[dann]

Prager U's climate indoctrination of children revisited.

I found the Prager U video that was mentioned in Politico's article:

Kids are told to fight climate change but are rarely taught about the human cost of reducing emissions. This animated video teaches middle and high school students about energy and the environment through the eyes of young Ania living in Poland, who must face a devastating winter after the Polish government bans the use of coal.
Poland: Ania's Energy Crisis (Prager U on YouTube, July , 2023 - 9:26 min.)

It's a brilliant trick to use Poland instead of the USA as the setting for Ania's fight against the evil climate Nazis. Children familiar with conditions in coal-burning corners of the USA might wonder if wind-and-solar fanatics are the ones to blame for grandfather Jacob's bad cough.

Off topic:
It has nothing to do with global warming, but on the theme of slavery, Prager U lets cartoon Frederick Douglas lie to children about slavery:

 

[dann]

The conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has drawn a 920-page blueprint called Project 2025 to unravel all of the US’s efforts so far to tackle climate change. It is a methodical, systematic undoing of the federal bureaucracy, Politico first reported, shuttering key programs from the Environmental Protection Agency, slashing climate and clean energy solutions, blocking the expansion of wind and solar on the grid, and turning over pollution oversight to the fossil fuel industry and handpicked Republican officials.

The GOP’s only “climate” policy is actually bad for the environment
Cook has found in his research that Republicans are increasingly concerned with spreading misinformation about solutions, grossly oversimplifying what needs to be done to avoid addressing fossil fuel emissions. One of those misleading ideas is a House Republican push for the Trillion Trees Act[/b], which has not come up for a vote.
When Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) first proposed the [url=https://naturalresources.house.gov/legislative-priorities/trillion-trees-act.htm]Trillion Trees Act in 2020, environmentalists said the bill “would significantly increase logging across America’s federal forests, convert millions of acres into industrial tree plantations, increase carbon emissions, increase wildfire risk, and harm wildlife and watersheds.” The idea was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, effectively giving loggers more allowances as long as they planted seedlings which are decades away from delivering climate benefits.
An insidious form of climate denial is festering in the Republican Party - The GOP’s only “climate policy” is actually bad for the environment (Vox, July 27, 2023)

Not even the authors of the study that inspired the Republican idea agree with it:

Planting a trillion trees to save us from climate change is not a serious proposal on its own. The authors of the 2019 study that has inspired the GOP’s talking point have themselves said that planting trees alone does not eliminate “the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
As Inglis put it, “trees can be part of the solution, but they’re not a solution on the scale of the problem. ... What we’re looking for is a worldwide solution to the challenge of climate change.” Inglis’s group advocates for what he calls a conservative approach that does address the scale of the problem, a revenue-neutral carbon tax along with a border tax adjustment that works across the economy.
The GOP idea to plant more trees may seem innocuous compared to calling climate change a hoax, but the outcome is the same.

I'm surprised Prager U didn't include it in its cartoon Ania's Energy Crisis.

 

[dann]

Yeah, I can see that. "Comrade, taking cold shower is subversive act to embarrass our wise and esteemed leader who provide ample sustainable hot water for all by pumping carbon into ground. To cure your bourgeois Western delusion, you will reuse same water bottle ten years in gulag."

Those damn communists just won't give up:

Direct air capture sucks already emitted CO₂ out of the air to be buried underground or reused in building materials, agricultural products or fuels, rather than contribute to global warming by lingering in the atmosphere.
The International Energy Agency has said the technology will play “an important and growing role” in setting the world on track to achieving net zero goals as economies continue to burn fossil fuels. But it is not proven at scale and some environmentalists worry it will slow the transition to cleaner forms of energy.
Fewer than 30 DAC plants have been commissioned globally, according to the IEA, with only six under construction. The largest is due online in Iceland next year and is designed to remove 36,000 tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere annually.*Global CO₂ emissions rose last year to about 37bn tonnes.
US places $1.2bn climate bet on tech pulling carbon from air - Occidental Petroleum project in Texas is among two initial recipients of federal grant programme (Financial Times, Aug 11, 2023)

So they 'just' have to get one billion times more effective. This is obviously not a short-term solution to anything. I hope they won't use fossil-fuel generated power to run this technology. Assume that placing it in Iceland is a way to avoid that.

 

[Myriad]

I dont see how we can maintain global GDP and also seriously reduce GHG emissions.

Until we have viable cheap nuclear fusion energy and massive expansion of renewable energy, I think we have to seriously reduce global production of stuff n things, or not fight climate change. I don't see how to do both.

It takes about two years for a solar energy installation to produce the amount of energy needed to build it.

So in theory, the world's supply of solar power could replicate itself energy-wise in two years, and thus go from the present 2% of the world's energy (note: not the world's electricity) to 100% in about eleven years. That's if all solar power were used only to manufacture more solar power capacity, and disregarding all issues of material resource supplies, production capacity, supply intermittency/storage, and all technological issues related to energy fungibility (e.g. powering large transport vehicles with electricity).

In the real world, solar power systems are manufactured and installed using a mix of energy sources roughly resembling the overall mix used for all purposes worldwide; that is to say, about 77% fossil fuel energy, roughly equally divided between coal, oil, and natural gas. This is still a good net investment, but it means in the short term a build-out of renewable energy increases rather than decreases carbon emissions. (In the same way that manufacturing and operating a new electric car instead of maintaining and operating an existing internal combustion car does.)

The good news is, greenhouse emissions eventually do decrease when the renewable energy sources replace fossil fuel sources. The bad news is, if the building of renewable energy sources is merely keeping pace with ever-increasing total energy demand, this never happens. In that case, even though the percentage of energy that's from fossil fuels might steadily decrease, the actual amount of carbon emissions never actually does. That's what's been happening so far, which is why for instance China has been rapidly building renewable power, nuclear power, and numerous new coal plants in recent years.

A massive renewable energy build-out ahead of the oh-crap-the-weather-sucks-now threshold for atmospheric greenhouse gases, and while the necessary non-renewable fuels were still plentiful, would have been prudent, but it didn't happen, and now it's too late for that. Like a family deciding to insulate their home and buy new energy-efficient appliances, after they've already gone broke paying their high heat and electricity bills.

ETA: Forum clipped off my last paragraph. Which said something like this: So now, reductions in consumption are necessary, and will happen one way or another. Even more so, if we reach the point where relocating populations, replacing or strengthening infrastructure, and recovering from disasters due to climate change are themselves demanding a significant expenditure of energy. And that point is looking very near right now. Anyone who insists in the face of all this that their own consumption is irrelevant because some of their electricity comes from renewable sources (while still eating food grown with fossil fuel based fertilizer, using consumer products manufactured and distributed by fossil fuel based globalized industry, and relying on infrastructure maintained by fossil fueled equipment) is as much a part of the problem as any other useful idiot consumer.

 

[dann]

Great post, Myriad, until you get to the last paragraph where you fail to realize the implications of what you are writing. But even there: Thank you for making those implications clear!

ETA: Forum clipped off my last paragraph. Which said something like this: So now, reductions in consumption are necessary, and will happen one way or another. Even more so, if we reach the point where relocating populations, replacing or strengthening infrastructure, and recovering from disasters due to climate change are themselves demanding a significant expenditure of energy. And that point is looking very near right now. Anyone who insists in the face of all this that their own consumption is irrelevant because some of their electricity comes from renewable sources (while still eating food grown with fossil fuel based fertilizer, using consumer products manufactured and distributed by fossil fuel based globalized industry, and relying on infrastructure maintained by fossil fueled equipment) is as much a part of the problem as any other useful idiot consumer[/I].

Even when you are blaming the 'useful idiot consumers' for causing (or contributing to) global warming, you mention but remain in denial of the fact that the problem lies in the manufacturing and distribution of the products consumed. The consumption of those products doesn't produce any more global warming. The production does, and yet you blame it on the consumers. The process of eating, i.e. consuming, an apple emits the same amount of CO₂ to the atmosphere, whether it is produced locally without fertilizer (or only using organic fertilizers from local sources) or transported from a farm abroad that uses imported fertilizers. So once again, the production and distribution (transport) are the elements of the process that contribute to the greenhouse effect, not the consumption. The 'idiot consumers' don't have any say in how those products are produced and transported. Analyzing the production and distribution processes of whatever product you consume is often impossible and at best extremely time consuming. Time that could be spent on attempts to change those things rather than on making sure that you personally consume as little as possible of products that were manufactured and distributed by using fossil fuels in a society entirely based on burning fossil fuels. The latter is what needs to be changed.

 

[dann]

* World oil demand is scaling record highs, boosted by strong summer air travel, increased oil use in power generation and surging Chinese petrochemical activity. Global oil demand is set to expand by 2.2 mb/d to 102.2 mb/d in 2023, with China accounting for more than 70% of growth. With the post-pandemic rebound running out of steam, and as lacklustre economic conditions, tighter efficiency standards and new electric vehicles weigh on use, growth is forecast to slow to 1 mb/d in 2024.
* Global oil supply plunged by 910 kb/d to 100.9 mb/d in July. A sharp reduction in Saudi production in July saw output from the OPEC+ bloc fall 1.2 mb/d to 50.7 mb/d, while non-OPEC+ volumes rose 310 kb/d to 50.2 mb/d. Global oil output is projected to expand by 1.5 mb/d to a record 101.5 mb/d in 2023, with the US driving non-OPEC+ gains of 1.9 mb/d. Next year, non-OPEC+ supply is also set to dominate world supply growth, up 1.3 mb/d while OPEC+ could add just 160 kb/d.
* Refinery throughputs are set to reach a summer peak of 83.9 mb/d in August, up 2.4 mb/d since May and 2.6 mb/d higher than a year ago. The increase in refined product output has failed to ease product market tightness, pushing gasoline and middle distillate cracks to near record-highs. High sulphur fuel oil cracks provided further support to margins, which pushed above 2022 levels in July.
(...)
The US, Brazil and Guyana lead the expansion, with exports from the trio rising by roughly 15% y-o-y to more than 9 mb/d in July, boosting the availability of light sweet grades in the Atlantic Basin. The US accounts for nearly 80% of global 2023 supply growth, or 1.2 mb/d of the 1.5 mb/d total. Next year, that share is set to slip as activity slows in the shale patch.
Oil Market Report - August 2023 (IAE, )

For some reason, European countries aren't mentioned specifically, but they will no doubt have have contributed to the rising fuel use for air travel.

 

[varwoche]

Drops don't add up when you are trying to extinguish a fire with a pipette. All it gets you is something to keep you occupied while you are watching your house burn down.

Binary thinking. If personal actions don't solve GW, screw them.

I kind of expected varwoche to be triggered by my post about my discussion of representative democracy (Danish version) with a group of Cubans, but it nevertheless amazes me that yet another post that doesn't mention communism ...

Transparent sophistry.

(Maybe a Whatever Random Thoughts dann Might Have thread would be useful, in order to corral your opaque musings.)

 

[dann]

There is nothing binary about replacing fossil fuels with wind turbines and solar panels. (I have started reading Mark Jacobson's No Miracles Needed - How Today's Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air* (GoodReads), and he talks about WWS, i.e. Wind, Water, Solar. Water didn't occur to me because Denmark is damn flat, but dams and water turbines are big in Norway and Sweden. Surplus electricity from those sources is often exported to Denmark.)

Varwoche's "personal actions" is a strawman. Throughout the thread, and most recently yesterday in post 566, I have stressed that you can't have any real impact as an individual consumer, which was the point of my fighting-fires-with-drops-from-a-pipette analogy. But since varwoche is preoccupied with his own agenda of exposing me as a communist, he has left the theme of global warming behind in his attempt to protect the skeptic community from my own clandestine operation: turning the ISF into the Borg Collective. As a hard-core collectivist, I must obviously be opposed to personal actions because that wouldn't be condoned by the Party.

On rare occasions, organized consumer boycotts may have had some effect, for instance in the struggle against South African Apartheid. At least, consumer groups like to think so. However, most experts think that Cuba's war against imperialist armies in Africa and in support of ANC's resistance movement was what actually defeated Apartheid, which is why one of the first things Nelson Mandala did after his release was to visit and establish diplomatic relations with the allegedly "cruel and sadistic Cuban dictatorship."
The Secret History of How Cuba Helped End Apartheid in South Africa (Democracy Now! on YouTube, Dec 11, 2013)

I don't think guys like Ralph Nader or other leaders of consumer groups were at the top of Mandela's guest list for his inauguration and invited to sit next to him. (By the way, nothing's secret about that piece of history. It's just one of those things that the USA is in denial about - as it is about how the USA helped the Apartheid regime capture Mandela and supported it till the very end.)

But thank you for the new opportunity to write about the impotence of consumer boycotts.
And I haven't even started talking about how some consumers just can't afford the usually more expensive and time consuming alternatives that such boycotts usually require. Or about how infrastructure often makes such alternatives practically impossible for consumers, but TurkeysGhost mentioned an example of the latter recently in post 533.

* Yes, Virginia! We don't need bold technological breakthroughs to avoid catastrophe.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

So once again, the production and distribution (transport) are the elements of the process that contribute to the greenhouse effect, not the consumption. The 'idiot consumers' don't have any say in how those products are produced and transported.

Not true. They certainly can have a say in it, both specifically and generally. For example, I know that all the apples I eat were not produced or transported at all, because I don't eat apples.

If I did eat apples I could buy them from local organic orchards that don't use synthetic fertilizers. I probably wouldn't though because they cost more. That's the 'idiot' part. I generally prefer locally grown foods not because it will help save the planet, but simply because they are generally better than imported foods here - a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

I'm not a complete idiot though. I know that to halt global warming we need to address these issues. But we can't expect all the idiots to unilaterally act against their selfish desires, so I support a government that is addressing the issues. Unfortunately however, there are probably more idiots who are too selfish to even do that.

 

[dann]

Well, you know, there's this thing about your government, which everybody in thee thread seems to be in denial about: It doesn't really address the issue, does it?!

I know why this is a painful issue for all non-MAGA Americans. I don't want to explain again why supporting a government (I assume you mean voting) does nothing to stop anthropogenic global warming, so let me introduce you to Leon Thomas and his Renegade Cut:

(Leon Thomas is not a communist. I think he's some kind of anarchist.)

 

[Myriad]

Even when you are blaming the 'useful idiot consumers' for causing (or contributing to) global warming, you mention but remain in denial of the fact that the problem lies in the manufacturing and distribution of the products consumed. The consumption of those products doesn't produce any more global warming. The production does, and yet you blame it on the consumers.

First of all, why the scare quotes around "useful idiot consumers?" It was you who proudly posted, in support of your position, a section of an essay titled "The consumer – a useful idiot on behalf of imperialist energy policy." Do you not want to own it now?

The process of eating, i.e. consuming, an apple emits the same amount of CO₂ to the atmosphere, whether it is produced locally without fertilizer (or only using organic fertilizers from local sources) or transported from a farm abroad that uses imported fertilizers.

So once again, the production and distribution (transport) are the elements of the process that contribute to the greenhouse effect, not the consumption. The 'idiot consumers' don't have any say in how those products are produced and transported. Analyzing the production and distribution processes of whatever product you consume is often impossible and at best extremely time consuming. Time that could be spent on attempts to change those things rather than on making sure that you personally consume as little as possible of products that were manufactured and distributed by using fossil fuels in a society entirely based on burning fossil fuels.

The latter is what needs to be changed.

I'm pretty sure that if consumers consumed less, producers would produce less rather than just let excess production pile up endlessly. Also that if producers produced less of things consumers still intended to consume, consumers would experience consequences like "shortages" and "price spikes" which they would regard as adverse turns of events (ranging from annoyances to mass-casualty disasters, depending on the severity and the goods involved) that they would blame on the perceived causes of the shortages. If the cause were correctly perceived as government policies intentionally restricting production, they would correctly blame that government, and seek to alter or replace it to reverse those policies.

It's almost as though supply, demand, and governance weren't independent of one another, instead having some sort of relationship between them. I wonder whether anyone might have noticed such a relationship, or even studied and written about it, before we came along.

Just maybe, the impact of shortages caused by dramatic restrictions in industrial production could be mitigated by careful planning. There could be some kind of central committee, perhaps, that would allocate resources and set production quotas for each product of each segment of industry. Again this seems like such an obvious idea, that I have to wonder whether anyone has tried it out before, and if so, how well it worked out.

But, I hear someone in the back row cry out, no one said anything about producing less! How about if industry produced the same amount, just locally and using less energy! Dream on, sweet summer child. I'm sure the Middle East would just positively thrive on locally grown organic crops, and the Internet in the U.S. would run fine on hardware made in waterwheel-powered New England cybersmithies.

As best I or anyone can tell, production and consumption are going to decrease. The question is what forces will determine the changes. Corporate policies enacted by self-interested elites in boardrooms? Laws passed by self-interested elites in government? The decisions of a planning committee? The fortunes and cruelties of markets increasingly disrupted by resource shortages and climate disasters? Or voluntary changes by the consumers themselves? One and only one of those options give you, the individual, the power to adapt to the changes in accordance with your own preferences and priorities.

 

[bruto]

While I think it's true that individual action won't do the job, and likely true that we're just royally screwed anyway no matter what we do, I don't think that invalidates the idea of individual action entirely. A lot of what we do or do not do has an effect on how policies get made, and how public opinion on those policies is arrived at. A change in individual behavior is slow to lead to a change in perception and culture, and a change in culture is slow to result in a change in policy (especially, as we see these days when political power is usurped by the worst), but it's not nothing.

We may not be able to control entirely whether something happens, but we might be able, in some small way, to control when, where and how it does. Even if it's true that the Cubans did more to end apartheid than anyone else, did individual protests and boycotts do nothing? Would the same consequences have occurred at the same time?

In the time we do have left, we remain human beings, and what we do and how we do it has a lot to do with what it means to be a human being. To dismiss our bumbling attempts to do the right thing as "just virtue signalling" or not good enough, obscures some existential realities, even if it ends up true for mankind in the life of the world. If you suspect that the universe itself is pointless, the battle is lost before it's won. But here we are anyway, and we live until we die.

Perhaps it's a consequence of getting older, that I see less virtue in an all-or-nothing viewpoint. I''m 75, and let's face it, I'm gonna die, and not in the long-distant dim future. That's inevitable, but the closer I get the more important those little differences seem to make. There's a real difference between ten years from now and tomorrow. The end is the same, but the effort to forestall it still has some meaning.

 

[ZiprHead]

Pedaling really hard will get you to 200 watts. And I mean bordering on elite athlete hard. Not 200 watt hours, unless you did so for an hour. You'd need something like 10 elite cyclists to power your home. And just the cost to feed them would far exceed any power source.

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/12/08/504790589/could-you-power-your-home-with-a-bike

Remember what started this tangent was TG complaining about sitting in a car wasting energy then going home and riding a stationary bike.

It's a bit silly because I sit in my car about 1hr a day commuting, and then go home and ride a stationary bike for about an hour. Would be nice to combine these activities, but bicycling infrastructure around here is so bad it's basically a death sentence outside of slow traffic cities (and still dangerous there).

Darn. Ninja'd.

 

[dann]

First of all, why the scare quotes around "useful idiot consumers?" It was you who proudly posted, in support of your position, a section of an essay titled "The consumer – a useful idiot on behalf of imperialist energy policy." Do you not want to own it now?

You referred to "any other useful idiot consumer," but since I had changed it from singular to plural, I could no longer use actual quotation marks, so I wrote 'useful idiot consumers'. It's what I do if something is almost but not quite a quotation, i.e. not half as sinister as you imagine.
Notice that the essay that you refer to (and here is an actual link to my post) is not called The consumer – a useful idiot on behalf of imperialist energy policy. It's called Climate Change (full title Climate Change: Product of globalized capitalism and subject of debate between the states that organize it. What you thought was the title of the article is just the title of the paragraph from that article that I cited in my post.

The point of that paragraph is to show how the media helps industry turn consumers into useful idiots of capitalism by means of manipulative advertising and 'information'. The examples were from car manufacturers and airlines - aided and abetted by the nation state and the media. The second half of the quotation:

Anyone who wants to fly to Mallorca plants a tree, and because the short-term memory of the consumer is well known to be short, the national site custodians and corporate executives rush to aid this memory: One increases the price of plane tickets with a CO2 charge so that one doesn’t have to plant the tree any more ... The following balance comes out of the bottom line: 1. the major airlines continue to fly to Mallorca and produce 10 tons of CO2 per head; 2. the same result has now become more expensive for consumers; 3. humans are offered a sale of indulgences for the guilty conscience that they are given by the journalists, and indeed for consequences the little guy doesn’t cause, but the state and capital. And thereby a dirty trick is added to the stupidity. But nothing else should be expected of national capitalistic sites that want to reconcile ecology with the economy.

It may also require a certain level of willing suspension of disbelief for the consumers to buy into those ideas, but I myself fell for their trick when I first noticed that a CO₂ surcharge had been added to the price of my plane ticket, and I thought: 'Well, OK. Good that there's a way to make air travel carbon neutral, I guess.'

So I include myself in the group of consumers who have been turned into useful idiots. It's official! I, too, am "a useful idiot on behalf of imperialist energy policy".
How could I not be?! I never pretended that I have insight into every little detail of how the products I consume are produced and transported. On the contrary, I have no insight or even a way of obtaining that insight. The manufacturing and transportation companies are in charge of that, and - as the quotation shows - they are very good at presenting their products as carbon-neutral, eco-friendly, non-toxic, animal-friendly etc. (For some reason, we never see advertising that says: 'No workers were harmed in the process of manufacturing and delivering this product to you!')

I'm pretty sure that if consumers consumed less, producers would produce less rather than just let excess production pile up endlessly. Also that if producers produced less of things consumers still intended to consume, consumers would experience consequences like "shortages" and "price spikes" which they would regard as adverse turns of events (ranging from annoyances to mass-casualty disasters, depending on the severity and the goods involved) that they would blame on the perceived causes of the shortages. If the cause were correctly perceived as government policies intentionally restricting production, they would correctly blame that government, and seek to alter or replace it to reverse those policies.

Apparently, you haven't noticed that producers have an ingenious way of making consumers consume less. In fact, it is their business model: by lowering wages, which they always try to do, and by increasing prices whenever there's a shortage (an actual one, for whatever reason, not a quotation-mark "shortage") of something. It's the reason why some people need to have three jobs to pay the rent and others just can't pay it.
Since you are so hell-bent on restricting production (instead of making production carbon neutral), you don't even see that. Instead, you imagine "government policies intentionally restricting production," which are nowhere to be found ... unless you are thinking of government support to industry financed by raising taxes on ordinary people.

It's almost as though supply, demand, and governance weren't independent of one another, instead having some sort of relationship between them. I wonder whether anyone might have noticed such a relationship, or even studied and written about it, before we came along.

Just maybe, the impact of shortages caused by dramatic restrictions in industrial production could be mitigated by careful planning. There could be some kind of central committee, perhaps, that would allocate resources and set production quotas for each product of each segment of industry. Again this seems like such an obvious idea, that I have to wonder whether anyone has tried it out before, and if so, how well it worked out.

I don't really wonder how you came up with this idea, which doesn't really exist in the real world. If you are thinking of the Soviet Union, there were no attempts to restrict production. On the contrary, production output rose dramatically after the Russian revolution. China also doesn't seem to restrict production. On the contrary, the production of many goods sold to American consumes has moved to China. (And yet the per-capita 'carbon footprint' of Americans remains several times higher than that of the Chinese.) And if Cuba serves as one of your imaginary countries with "some kind of central committee," there are also no attempts to restrict production in that country, but production is often restricted by the U.S. blockade. One example of that would be the production of oxygen for medical use during the worst (i.e. the pre-vaccination) stage of the pandemic. The U.S. blockade is a dramatic way of restricting Cuban production. One that costs lives.

At this point I know how your imagination works, and I can see that you continue in the world of fiction:

But, I hear someone in the back row cry out, no one said anything about producing less! How about if industry produced the same amount,ust locally and using less energy! Dream on, sweet summer child. I'm sure the Middle East would just positively thrive on locally grown organic crops, and the Internet in the U.S. would run fine on hardware made in waterwheel-powered New England cybersmithies.

So in spite of all the real-world practical alternatives to fossil fuel mentioned again and again in this thread, you prefer to reinvent the (water)wheel to the actual alternatives to fossil-fuel appear to be unrealistic.
And then you move on to your dream scenario: a decrease in "production and consumption", which is not only entirely unnecessary, cf. No Miracles Needed, but also unavoidable, in your imaginary scenario where the only solution to anthropogenic global warming is sacrifice and austerity:

As best I or anyone can tell, production and consumption are going to decrease. The question is what forces will determine the changes. Corporate policies enacted by self-interested elites in boardrooms? Laws passed by self-interested elites in government? The decisions of a planning committee? The fortunes and cruelties of markets increasingly disrupted by resource shortages and climate disasters? Or voluntary changes by the consumers themselves? One and only one of those options give you, the individual [consumer], the power to adapt to the changes in accordance with your own preferences and priorities[/hilite].

[FTFY]

The irony of your 'alternatives' is that you see no alternatives to sacrifice and austerity, here described as the "power (!) to adapt," i.e. voluntary self-inflicted sacrifice versus enforced sacrifice. Not even in your fantasy world, can you imagine a scenario that combines consumption with carbon neutral production - even though the technology to accomplish just that already exists, is being implemented and has been being implemented for at least the past 20 years. (It actually started as early as 1978, but it took more than 20 years, before the Danish industry and the state realized that it was something worth emulating.)

You present the imaginary two options: on the one hand, restrictions imposed on consumers by capital and state, i.e. "corporate policies enacted by self-interested elites in boardrooms," "Laws passed by self-interested elites in government" and "decisions of a planning committee," and on the other hand, consumers volunteering to impose those restrictions on themselves instead of taking power away from those self-interested elites in boardrooms and in government and implementing CO₂-neutral ways of producing and distributing goods. That is somehow unimaginable to you.


A funny story about one of those "voluntary changes by the consumers themselves" just occurred to me:

Before Christmas, the company 100% Eco* promised to deliver, pick up and replant thousands of climate-friendly Christmas trees.
They were going to continue their lives in a disused gravel pit south of Sengeløse.
However, in the Zealand village they haven't heard about this project. Now, 56 days after Christmas, several customers report that their Christmas tree haven't been picked up yet. And many of the trees are now in a warehouse in Brøndby, with withered branches and covered in mold.
This is the first part of the story about the Christmas trees that were supposed to be sucking tons of CO₂ out of the atmosphere for the next several years.
Detektor: Juletræer skulle leve videre i naturen - nu visner de på et lager (DR.dk, Feb 18, 2020)

Dream on, sweet summer child, indeed!


*ETA: If anybody feels tempted to pre-order a Christmas tree from 100% Eco, I am sorry that I have to disappoint you. I googled it, and got this:
"No results found for "100% Eco".
Results for 100% Eco (without quotes)"

 

[dann]

We may not be able to control entirely whether something happens, but we might be able, in some small way, to control when, where and how it does. Even if it's true that the Cubans did more to end apartheid than anyone else, did individual protests and boycotts do nothing? Would the same consequences have occurred at the same time?

I assume that you are aware that this is a way to console yourself: 'I can at least imagine that I have the power as a consumer to accomplish something by abstainng from buying Israeli or South African oranges.'

The Cubans didn't limit themselves to acting as consumers. And that's what made the difference. In the meantime, consumer groups have been preaching that we should be living in accordance with the gospel of sustainability for about 50 years now. In the meantime, the CO₂ emissions have increased dramatically.

Tell us about how much "individual protests and boycotts" helped lower the greenhouse effect instead of asking the question. What did they accomplish? How many months ago would we have had the current level of CO₂ in the atmosphere if it weren't for the protests and boycotts? What do the numbers say?

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Remember what started this tangent was TG complaining about sitting in a car wasting energy then going home and riding a stationary bike.



Darn. Ninja'd.

Yeah, the whole point was about how wasteful and stifling car-only infrastructure is, which is almost universal in the US. If it were safe to commute by bike I could not only reduce my personal fossil fuel use, I could probably claw back like 30 minutes of personal free time each workday. My wife and I could even be a one car household if either one of us had any feasible non-car way to commute to work, but that's apparently a huge ask in the US.

Private car ownership is treated like some great luxury that symbolizes ultimate personal mobility and freedom, but in practice it's a huge pain in the ass. Car commuting is slow and tedious, owning a car is expensive to maintain and requires expensive concessions for parking, and wildly inefficient in areas with such dense settlement.

 

[dann]

So why is Biden so hell-bent on fracking up the climate? Is he prioritizing? Is he hoping to win MAGA votes? Or is he selling out to donors?

I just stumbled on this video. It talks about the US as having a representative government where I call it representative democracy:

What dictates economic decisions are not the needs of the people whom the economy is both by and for, but the profit motive. If something horrible is profitable, even if everyone but a handful of the elite opposes it, that horrible thing will continue. That's the case with fossil-fuel extraction. At the same time, something that is necessary for millions of people may not happen at all if it isn't profitable, like feeding everyone. Feeding the poor is never going to be as profitable as overproducing for the wealthy.
(...)
But at the end of the day, a society, in which the freedom to exploit is guaranteed to those with property, can never be a democracy.
The the US Is Not a Democracy (Second Thought on YouTube, Nov 4, 2022 - 16:53 min.)

The video takes in starting point in this statement from a survey:

The United States stands out as the "free" democracy with the highest share of people who say that global corporations threaten their democracy (71%).

A growing number of Americans believe that their government mainly acts in the interest of a minority.
Since 2020, the share of people in the US who say that their government mainly acts in the interest of a minority has grown from 52% to 63%. (Latana/Alliance og Democracies)

I can't access the reports from 2021 and 2022. This one is from Democracy Perception Index 2023 (Latana/Alliance of Democracies).

 

[Myriad]

You referred to "any other useful idiot consumer," but since I had changed it from singular to plural, I could no longer use actual quotation marks, so I wrote 'useful idiot consumers'. It's what I do if something is almost but not quite a quotation, i.e. not half as sinister as you imagine.

I've never seen in any grammar or style guide that single quotes mean almost but not quote a quotation. Do you have a cite for that?

Notice that the essay that you refer to (and here is an actual link to my post) is not called The consumer – a useful idiot on behalf of imperialist energy policy. It's called Climate Change (full title Climate Change: Product of globalized capitalism and subject of debate between the states that organize it. What you thought was the title of the article is just the title of the paragraph from that article that I cited in my post.

Yes, I did notice that, which is why I wrote that you had posted a portion of an essay, and the portion that you posted had the title "The consumer – a useful idiot on behalf of imperialist energy policy." In your eagerness for a gotcha you have read carelessly. I admit, though, I did fail to phrase it in a manner that's proof against deliberate misrepresentation.

The point of that paragraph is to show how the media helps industry turn consumers into useful idiots of capitalism by means of manipulative advertising and 'information'. The examples were from car manufacturers and airlines - aided and abetted by the nation state and the media.

Well, I could try to silence the media and industry from doing that, but that would be unconstitutional where I live, and so far no one has put forth a better constitution or even a suitable amendment for consideration.

Manipulative advertising is a thing. I prefer to deal with it by being aware of it, but many of the people advocating LESS or "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" also advocate not watching television or other media supported by aggressive advertising, for exactly that reason. Apparently some people have difficulty learning from experience that acquiring that new shiny fashionable *whatever* will not make them any happier, and are better off not exposing themselves to the ads in the first place.

So I include myself in the group of consumers who have been turned into useful idiots. It's official! I, too, am "a useful idiot on behalf of imperialist energy policy".
How could I not be?! I never pretended that I have insight into every little detail of how the products I consume are produced and transported. On the contrary, I have no insight or even a way of obtaining that insight. The manufacturing and transportation companies are in charge of that, and - as the quotation shows - they are very good at presenting their products as carbon-neutral, eco-friendly, non-toxic, animal-friendly etc. (For some reason, we never see advertising that says: 'No workers were harmed in the process of manufacturing and delivering this product to you!')

It's pretty simple: if the product is being advertised, it's probably not carbon-neutral, eco-friendly, or animal-friendly. It probably IS non-toxic, to the consumer, but probably not so when being manufactured, transported, or disposed of. If the product is being advertised as carbon-neutral, eco-friendly, non-toxic, or animal-friendly, it isn't.

Apparently, you haven't noticed that producers have an ingenious way of making consumers consume less. In fact, it is their business model: by lowering wages, which they always try to do, and by increasing prices whenever there's a shortage (an actual one, for whatever reason, not a quotation-mark "shortage") of something. It's the reason why some people need to have three jobs to pay the rent and others just can't pay it.
Since you are so hell-bent on restricting production (instead of making production carbon neutral), you don't even see that. Instead, you imagine "government policies intentionally restricting production," which are nowhere to be found ... unless you are thinking of government support to industry financed by raising taxes on ordinary people.

You're seeing the effects of resource limitations. If a business isn't making a profit due to higher resource costs it can either raise prices, lower other costs (i.e. wages), or produce less. All of those reduce consumption in the end, either by their employees or by their potential customers or both.

Corporate greed and managerial class greed is also a factor here, in that lowering those costs (e.g. executive and managerial salaries) is also a hypothetical option but is never considered. There's no doubt that the rest of the populace would be a lot better off if wealth were distributed more equitably.

But, do not mistake that for the cause of or the solution to environmental problems. Redistributing wealth so that many more people can afford cars and suburban homes and imported foods and the trendiest sneakers would not slow down carbon emissions or reduce sprawl or cause rare earth metals to leap harmlessly from the ground.

I don't really wonder how you came up with this idea, which doesn't really exist in the real world. If you are thinking of the Soviet Union, there were no attempts to restrict production. On the contrary, production output rose dramatically after the Russian revolution. China also doesn't seem to restrict production. On the contrary, the production of many goods sold to American consumes has moved to China. (And yet the per-capita 'carbon footprint' of Americans remains several times higher than that of the Chinese.) And if Cuba serves as one of your imaginary countries with "some kind of central committee," there are also no attempts to restrict production in that country, but production is often restricted by the U.S. blockade. One example of that would be the production of oxygen for medical use during the worst (i.e. the pre-vaccination) stage of the pandemic. The U.S. blockade is a dramatic way of restricting Cuban production. One that costs lives.

Oh, so a central planning committee directing a nation's economic development has never actually been tried? Interesting. Do you think it should be?

So in spite of all the real-world practical alternatives to fossil fuel mentioned again and again in this thread, you prefer to reinvent the (water)wheel to the actual alternatives to fossil-fuel appear to be unrealistic.
And then you move on to your dream scenario: a decrease in "production and consumption", which is not only entirely unnecessary, cf. No Miracles Needed, but also unavoidable, in your imaginary scenario where the only solution to anthropogenic global warming is sacrifice and austerity:

All the "real world practical alternatives" don't change the fact that about 82% of the power humans currently use worldwide comes from fossil fuels.

I already discussed the problems and sacrifices needed for a rapid all-out build-up of additional supplies of renewable power. So I'm talking about the present, not some speculative future scenario. And in the present, the simple fact is you can't get 100% of the production using the 18% of the available power that's from renewable sources.

Do you understand why "let them eat cake" is considered an insultingly clueless response to "there's not enough bread," rather than clever outside-the-box thinking? (Never mind if the story itself is apocryphal. The meaning of the narrative is clear regardless.) You're essentially telling the world's economy "let them use wind and solar" but you won't stand for any decrease in total production. This after having admitted you have no idea how the products you use are manufactured or transported.

The irony of your 'alternatives' is that you see no alternatives to sacrifice and austerity,

There are plenty of alternatives. For instance, ecological devastation and/or complete collapse of industrial civilization are perfectly plausible, even likely, alternative outcomes. (Of course, sacrifice and austerity eventually follow from those too, but indirectly, so it's all good. No one has to suffer the indignity of voluntarily consuming less than they possibly can. Everyone can keep their AC running full blast until the lights go out completely.)

here described as the "power (!) to adapt," i.e. voluntary self-inflicted sacrifice versus enforced sacrifice.

That's how I describe it, yes.

Not even in your fantasy world, can you imagine a scenario that combines consumption with carbon neutral production - even though the technology to accomplish just that already exists, is being implemented and has been being implemented for at least the past 20 years. (It actually started as early as 1978, but it took more than 20 years, before the Danish industry and the state realized that it was something worth emulating.)

You've caught me out. I'm truly unable to imagine producing 100% of the world's economic product using 18% of its available power (as in, total energy per unit time, not specifically electricity). I might be missing out on some imagination-boosting drug that would introduce the necessary amount of absurdity to my scenarios.

A funny story about one of those "voluntary changes by the consumers themselves" just occurred to me:


*ETA: If anybody feels tempted to pre-order a Christmas tree from 100% Eco, I am sorry that I have to disappoint you. I googled it, and got this:
"No results found for "100% Eco".
Results for 100% Eco (without quotes)"

I could have used this example myself for showing the absurdity of carbon-neutral alternative production as a cure-all. Even if the whole scheme had been carried out as advertised, there's no way it nets any less CO2 output than farming Christmas trees and then tossing them in landfills after Christmas. Better still? Mulch it and toss it in your yard instead (not everyone will have this option of course). Better still? You don't need a Christmas tree. Or if you must, get an artificial one and store and maintain it carefully so it lasts for decades.

Schemes like 100% Eco's feed on the same illusion you're trying to promote here: we don't have to change anything about what or how we consume, as long as we buy the good products from the good suppliers instead of the bad ones from the bad ones. Generations of recreational shopping have turned us all into expert shoppers; surely we can shop our way out of this environmental dilemma! If only employers would raise salaries so we could all shop faster!

 

[dann]

I've never seen in any grammar or style guide that single quotes mean almost but not quote a quotation. Do you have a cite for that?a

Yes, I do:

It's what I do if something is almost but not quite a quotation, i.e. not half as sinister as you imagine.

Yes, I did notice that, which is why I wrote that you had posted a portion of an essay, and the portion that you posted had the title "The consumer – a useful idiot on behalf of imperialist energy policy." In your eagerness for a gotcha you have read carelessly. I admit, though, I did fail to phrase it in a manner that's proof against deliberate misrepresentation.

FTFY.

Well, I could try to silence the media and industry from doing that, but that would be unconstitutional where I live, and so far no one has put forth a better constitution or even a suitable amendment for consideration.

Manipulative advertising is a thing. I prefer to deal with it by being aware of it, but many of the people advocating LESS or "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" also advocate not watching television or other media supported by aggressive advertising, for exactly that reason. Apparently some people have difficulty learning from experience that acquiring that new shiny fashionable *whatever* will not make them any happier, and are better off not exposing themselves to the ads in the first place.

I am not impressed by constitutions that not only allow elected representatives to do the opposite of what they promised their voters, sometimes as early as on the night of the election (happens here, too!), and let them lie as much as they please both during their campaigns and after they have been elected.

Not being able to prosecute Trump without using the RICO act because he might claim that he just didn't know that the election wasn't stolen is just one of the many absurdities of your constitution and amendments. George Santos is another obvious example.

You can pretend to be aware of manipulative advertising, but often there is just no way of knowing. Learning from experience is what the Danish buyers of Christmas trees may have done. They probably didn't buy any more from 100% Eco after that, but that experience does't protect them from the next scam.

By the examples you use, you demonstrate that you feel superior to those other very ordinary consumers: "aggressive advertising" to people who "have difficulty learning from experience" and are "acquiring that new shiny fashionable *whatever*. At least in Denmark, Christmas trees (to stay with my example) aren't shiny fashionbable whatervers. I doubt that many people buy them to impress their neighbors or friends. I think that many of them may have bought them to simply celebrate Christmas with their families. And they bought from this particular company because they had both into the idea of recycling and of trees sucking CO₂ out of the atmosphere. They thought they did their best, they paid extra to do so (like the surcharge on plane tickets), but they were fooled.

Your story fits your alternative ideology of consumerism: The consumers are responsible for everything, the actual TPTBs for nothing. If the consumers fall prey to the lies of advertisers, you blame the consumers for being consumers.

It's pretty simple: if the product is being advertised, it's probably not carbon-neutral, eco-friendly, or animal-friendly. It probably IS non-toxic, to the consumer, but probably not so when being manufactured, transported, or disposed of. If the product is being advertised as carbon-neutral, eco-friendly, non-toxic, or animal-friendly, it isn't.

Yes, that's certainly simple , and every consumer should be aware that unless they till their own fields plowed by oxen, they themselves as consumers are the cause of the greenhouse effect.

You're seeing the effects of resource limitations. If a business isn't making a profit due to higher resource costs it can either raise prices, lower other costs (i.e. wages), or produce less. All of those reduce consumption in the end, either by their employees or by their potential customers or both.

Corporate greed and managerial class greed is also a factor here, in that lowering those costs (e.g. executive and managerial salaries) is also a hypothetical option but is never considered. There's no doubt that the rest of the populace would be a lot better off if wealth were distributed more equitably.

But, do not mistake that for the cause of or the solution to environmental problems. Redistributing wealth so that many more people can afford cars and suburban homes and imported foods and the trendiest sneakers would not slow down carbon emissions or reduce sprawl or cause rare earth metals to leap harmlessly from the ground.

You remain deliberately blind to the fact that production and infrastructure are what cause the burning of fossil fuel, and you end up with the extremely reactionary opposition to doing what it would take for "the rest of the populace" to "be a lot better off" because securing better lives for "the populace" would just make them "consume" more, and in your austerity gospel there is no room for improving the standards of living for ordinary people.

As for your idea that manufacturers lower wages and raise prices because of "resource limitations," it has nothing to do with reality. Capitalists raise prices and lower wages because and whenever they can get away with it. They may resort to arguments like 'resource limitations' to justify those lowered wages and raised prices, but whenever they can get away with it, they raise prices and lower wages. It's the way to increase profits.

And you seem to be fine with that because, after all, lower wages and higher prices lower the consumption of the 90%. (If only those factory owners and CEOs weren't also so greedy, which, of course, goes against your austerity gospel but doesn't need to be seriously addressed. The consumers' decreased spending will take care of that. - No, wait. That's how capitalists increase their profits. Never mind, the important thing is that people don't consume so much. In particular, the one's who have three jobs to make ends meet.)

Oh, so a central planning committee directing a nation's economic development has never actually been tried? Interesting. Do you think it should be?

Do I think that central planning is necessary to lower CO₂ emissions or change infrastructure, for instance by commissioning the building of more wind turbines or changing infrastructure? I do, indeed. It's not a thing that individuals start doing on their own initiative, is it? Even Biden's funding of the new "Occidental Petroleum project in Texas is among two initial recipients of federal grant programme" (Financial Times, Aug 11, 2023). Central planning, obviously, not local. So was Biden's recent promoting of fracking and other extraction of fossil fuels: "After Biden took office, his administration kept issuing oil and gas permits and did so at a slightly faster pace than his predecessor Donald Trump." (Washington Examiner, Mar 7, 2023). Not good, obviously but central planning none the less. And Occidental Petroleum will do what they can to help him get reelected. (Central planning is always necessary, but some central planning is ******. The one that industry pays politicians for almost always is.)

All the "real world practical alternatives" don't change the fact that about 82% of the power humans currently use worldwide comes from fossil fuels.

Of course, it doesn't. Your austerity gospel also doesn't change that fact. The difference is that the real world practical alternatives are changing where the "power humans currently use" comes from: more and more from renewables. (By the way, I notice your use of the word humans as if Americans don't use considerable more than most, and some Americans considerably more than most Americans, but there is no reason to look at such distinctions or the question why. At least not, if your main interest is in coming up with reasons for people to sacrifice themselves according to the austerity gospel..)

I already discussed the problems and sacrifices[/I] needed for a rapid all-out build-up of additional supplies of renewable power. So I'm talking about the present, not some speculative future scenario. And in the present, the simple fact is you can't get 100% of the production using the 18% of the available power that's from renewable sources.

But according to your austerity gospel, it is possible in "the present, not some speculative future scenario" to make everybody take cold showers, lower indoor temperatures in the winter and raise them in the summer, and use bicycles instead of cars - even in areas where infrastructure doesn't encourage it - to put it mildly. That could be done here and now, right? Dream on, sweet summer child. "The simple fact is" that other things, things that actually work, have been done and are being done, but you remain in denial of this simple fact because it doesn't exist in (and is a threat to) the austerity gospel. (Which, by the way, may be losing its popularity even among conservatives.)

Do you understand why "let them eat cake" is considered an insultingly clueless response to "there's not enough bread," rather than clever outside-the-box thinking? (Never mind if the story itself is apocryphal. The meaning of the narrative is clear regardless.) You're essentially telling the world's economy "let them use wind and solar" but you won't stand for any decrease in total production. This after having admitted you have no idea how the products you use are manufactured or transported.

Do you understand why 'let them have convenient bike lanes, efficient public transport and wind energy' is not an insultingly clueless response to 'cold showers, freezing indoor temperature in the winter and sweating profusely in the summer'? What I won't stand for is any decrease in ordinary people's standards of living. Do you understand that my ignorance about where my chicken comes from is something I declared openly. It only turns into an admission for somebody who thinks that it is something people should be ashamed of. Unless you have that chicken in your backyard, killed and plucked it with your own two hands, you also don't know where it came from. At least, I am fairly certain that the chickens I eat aren't "infected with salmonella or campylobacter—or both." (Peta) I say "fairly" because I don't pretend to be omniscient. Others do ...

The irony of your 'alternatives' is that you see no alternatives to sacrifice and austerity,

There are plenty of alternatives. For instance, ecological devastation and/or complete collapse of industrial civilization are perfectly plausible, even likely, alternative outcomes. (Of course, sacrifice and austerity eventually follow from those too, but indirectly, so it's all good. No one has to suffer the indignity of voluntarily consuming less than they possibly can. Everyone can keep their AC running full blast until the lights go out completely.)

So let us ignore the simple fact that everyone can keep their AC running full blast if that AC runs on wind and solar, which you refuse to acknowledge because it isn't allowed by the austerity gospel. Your "complete collapse of industrial civilization" is the dream scenario of gospel preachers who look forward to the punishment of the infidels who didn't listen and act according to their gospel.

here described as the "power (!) to adapt," i.e. voluntary self-inflicted sacrifice versus enforced sacrifice.

That's how I describe it, yes.

In accordance with the austerity gospel.

You've caught me out. I'm truly unable to imagine producing 100% of the world's economic product using 18% of its available power (as in, total energy per unit time, not specifically electricity). I might be missing out on some imagination-boosting drug that would introduce the necessary amount of absurdity to my scenarios.

What a beautiful strawman! Let us ignore that wind and solar have been introduced in post after post as the prerequisite for "producing 100% of the world's economic product" and let us pretend that this change is impossible because it would ruin the teachings of the austerity gospel. It's not your imagination that's faulty. It's your denial of any actually viable alternative to sacrifice and austerity.

I could have used this example myself for showing the absurdity of carbon-neutral alternative production as a cure-all. Even if the whole scheme had been carried out as advertised, there's no way it nets any less CO2 output than farming Christmas trees and then tossing them in landfills after Christmas. Better still? Mulch it and toss it in your yard instead (not everyone will have this option of course). Better still? You don't need a Christmas tree. Or if you must, get an artificial one and store and maintain it carefully so it lasts for decades.

It is no surprise that your "better still" alternative is the renunciation of the world and its pleasures - at least for ordinary people. It's what the austerity gospel preaches. Christmas trees are not something people "must have, so you don't think they should have them - like their extravagant hot showers. However, people like Christmas trees! They don't buy them because they must. Children love Christmas trees! And the artificial trees look like **** and they don't smell right.

Schemes like 100% Eco's feed on the same illusion you're trying to promote here: we don't have to change anything about what or how we consume, as long as we buy the good products from the good suppliers instead of the bad ones from the bad ones. Generations of recreational shopping have turned us all into expert shoppers; surely we can shop our way out of this environmental dilemma! If only employers would raise salaries so we could all shop faster!

Your new strawman isn't any better than the previous one: I never said that "we don't have to change anything about what or how we consume, as long as we buy the good products from the good suppliers instead of the bad ones from the bad ones." On the contrary, in fact. At this point, I don't think anybody who has been following this thread is in doubt about my stance: The electricity we consume has to come from wind and solar. So does the electricity used for the production of what we consume, but that is not a decision we can make as consumers. I have stressed, and did so in the most recent posts, that as consumers we are not omniscient and can't tell allegedly good suppliers from the bad ones. Your austerity gospel has contaminated the ideas you post to the extent where they now consist of nightmare scenarios like the one about the frenzy of recreational shoppers, which makes me suspect that you may have been binge-watching too many episodes of Sex & the City - with or without "aggressive advertising." As for Christmas trees, the perfect solution already exists, but since it doesn't appeal to your austerity gospel, I'm pretty sure that you won't like it. This is how they do it in my municipality, but I don't see why it wouldn't work in yours if you can persuade your own municipal "central planning committee" to implement it: Sådan kommer du af med dit aflagte juletræ (Frederiksberg.dk, 25 dec. 2022). How to get rid of your Christmas tree after you've used it So let yourself go next December and consume a Christmas tree without a bad conscience. It will make you feel better and may even help relieve the misanthropy. And it would be perfect if you can also persuade your mayor/local council (whatever it's called in your part of the world) to go all in on wind and solar. Imagine a Christmas season where nobody has to get all riled up about their neighbours' extravagant energy-consuming Christmas decorations. (I know. You'd probably hate it.)