By that I mean what kind of lifestyle do we have to live for it to be sustainable. I’ve heard it been said that we would have to go back to how we lives in the 50s, but that can’t be entirely true. Wouldn’t mass transit, solar power, apartment living and lab-grown meat be enough? Doesn’t sound that different from the life many are living today.
The 1950s? Leaded gasoline, coal, asbestos, DDT?
If we kept (and continued developing) our tech but maintained a 1950s-sized population, we’d probably be okay for quite some time.
“Give up”? It may actually improve lifestyles for many to move to a sustainable approach. If you happen to be a coal mine or oil company executive, you may be on the losing side, but if you are a solar panel developer or wind mill factory owner, you may improve. If you have a low mileage giant SUV, you might pay a bit more in carbon taxes. If you bike to work, you may actually get more in carbon rebates than you pay in increased carbon taxes.
If you breathe air, you’ll probably be better off in some respect.
We can’t do it with our current lifestyle, but we can do it with our current standard of living. Efficient appliances, homes, and vehicles provide the same benefits that inefficient ones do; they just waste less. The problem is just with people who don’t care about waste.
The planet will be fine no matter what we do. 20 million years from now, there’ll be nary a trace of human civilization left on the surface. The ecology will be nicely balanced.
That ecology might not support human life, though. But the planet is in no danger, so rest easy.
I think the first world could conceivably live at the 1950 standard, and that might help the planet. The “problem” is that some third world countries from the 1950s (China and India come to mind) want to live at first world 1950s standard that they certainly didn’t have then. That is a whole lot of emissions, pollution and warming being added to the equation. How do you “tell” those people to keep waiting for their day in the sun??
Why do you think it would help to live at the 1950s standard? (See Bryan Ekers’s post.)
Depends on what you mean by “save the planet”, if global warming is the thing that is going to “kill” the planet (IMO it is, or at least our place on it) then none of those things are going to kill the planet. I am fairly sure the per-capita green house gas emissions in the 1950s were significantly lower that they are today (even in the western world, the developing world they absolutely were, but asking them to return to a time when infant mortality was rampant is a tougher sell) , so the OP is right.
The idea that all “environmentally friendly” factors work towards the same end is simply not true.
Back to the 1950s? So you’re advocating we kill half the population of the world? Or do you mean the 1850s and we kill 75% or more? How about the 1450s and 95%?
Solar power doesn’t work when there’s no sunshine. (Similarly, wind power doesn’t work when there’s no wind.) Mass transit doesn’t work outside metropolitan areas. Apartment living brings social problems.
I take a relaxed, long term, view. We are conquering the problems of pollution and clean energy. It’ll probably take us another century or so, and in 1000 years people will look at the era from 1750 to 2150 as an era of pollution. But we will conquer it, simply because it is becoming practical and economic to do so.
Given the antivax movement, I look forward to the proud return of polio.
Really tough to generalize.
Someone could easily live in a modest-sized unit in a multi-unit building, work at home or use public transportation to commute, and walk/use public transport for most chores/recreation, and not really have to “give up” much to have a quite reasonable carbon footprint.
I think the people who would feel they are “giving up” a lot are those who live in large homes with low walkability scores, drive big cars/trucks long distances, frequently travel by air, and enjoy purchasing disposable goods and products whose low prices depend on cheap fossil fuels.
That’s like saying gas power doesn’t work where there is no gas, You build the windmills where there is wind, and you ship the power to where it is needed. There are no windmills in the Bay Area, but there are hundreds on the Altamont Pass which supply us. We saw at least 100 windmills in the Texas Panhandle, and tons in Illinois, which is damn flat.
And everyone gets some sun, though considering where you live I can see how you’d doubt that.
Mass transit outside of urban areas won’t deliver you to your door, but if we had good train service between major cities (like in Japan) we could cut down the traffic a lot.
In California we have special gas blends, which makes our gas more expensive. However we don’t have smog anymore, unless there is a fire. But in a lot of the world we’ve done a good job on traditional pollution, but not such a good job on CO2.
I was just picking out any pre-global warming standard. One could pick out any time prior to ours as Bryan Ekers did and find things that we wouldn’t want to go back to. Therein lies the issue . . .
That’s a non-trivial problem.
Bad Voyager, bad! 
Yes, like the UK, but the start and end are usually by car.
Yes, we’re doing better step by step; it’s just taking longer than we thought.
Would it help to clarify what we’d actually have to do to save the planet?
Switch completely to alternative power sources?
Stop chopping down trees so much?
Stop having so many fart-producing cows?
Stop having individual transportation?
Stop having water-guzzling lawns?
Stop having babies?
Stop having humans?
What exactly are we talking about here?
Uh, you’d have to go back to 1840 or so to be prior to global warming- it started with the Industrial Revolution and the burning of coal, not in the past 3 decades or so.
You don’t - why install 14.4k modems when you already know broadband exists? They can skip the steps first world countries made, and bypass fossil fuels as much as possible. China could spearhead electric cars and scooters with a broad charging network now, rather than continue to lag behind first world transportation infreastructure tech by 40 years, same with wind and solar and more efficient home technologies.
“How much stuff do I have to give up?”
Reducing meat consumption would help significantly.
About 100 years before that, actually. That would put us firmly in the Little Ice Age.