Re:Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years
by aidenn0 on Thursday June 16, 2016 @11:34PM
(#11920559)
I'm going to posit that many of your proposed changes to standard of living aren't even downgrades. For the most part, cities eliminate cars in town centers to raise the standard of living, not out of fear of pending ecological disaster.
As far as consumerism, I think a lot of it is driven partly by corporations desperately trying to avoid us ending up in a post-scarcity society; inducing artificial scarcity by emphasizing fashion and planned obsolescence is a great way to capture what otherwise would have been excess wealth.
On top of that, certain resources are either naturally or artificially constrained, which lets the owners of those resources collect rent, again capturing what otherwise would have been excess wealth.
On a side note, I don't have air conditioning, and my house gets much warmer than 30C in the summer. Anywhere above about 32C is just plain too hot for me to do anything other than lay underneath a fan and drink water, so if I need to get work done I go to a coffee shop. At 15C I put on a sweater and am fine down to about 5C (assuming I'm sheltered from the wind). My wife, however is shivering under six layers of blankets and 3 layers of clothes at 5C, but is perfectly chipper up to about 35C. It's lucky we don't have thermostats because we already argue about when the windows should be open!
[edit]
About the clothes dryer... I live in a semi-arid area now, so I understand how clothes lines could work. I grew up in an area where much of the year at least one of the following would apply:
1) Raining
2) over 90% humidity
3) below freezing
clothes lines in those conditions were more than a minor inconvenience.
As far as consumerism, I think a lot of it is driven partly by corporations desperately trying to avoid us ending up in a post-scarcity society; inducing artificial scarcity by emphasizing fashion and planned obsolescence is a great way to capture what otherwise would have been excess wealth.
On top of that, certain resources are either naturally or artificially constrained, which lets the owners of those resources collect rent, again capturing what otherwise would have been excess wealth.
On a side note, I don't have air conditioning, and my house gets much warmer than 30C in the summer. Anywhere above about 32C is just plain too hot for me to do anything other than lay underneath a fan and drink water, so if I need to get work done I go to a coffee shop. At 15C I put on a sweater and am fine down to about 5C (assuming I'm sheltered from the wind). My wife, however is shivering under six layers of blankets and 3 layers of clothes at 5C, but is perfectly chipper up to about 35C. It's lucky we don't have thermostats because we already argue about when the windows should be open!
[edit]
About the clothes dryer... I live in a semi-arid area now, so I understand how clothes lines could work. I grew up in an area where much of the year at least one of the following would apply:
1) Raining
2) over 90% humidity
3) below freezing
clothes lines in those conditions were more than a minor inconvenience.