What WOULD a "sustainable existence" actually look like for the average person? Is it feasible?

Great Debates
61

It’s not difficult. That’s a tiny amount of land area.

Let’s actually run the numbers. Total agricultural land use is about 50M square kilometers. On the other hand, total world energy use (including oil, etc.) is about 580M TJ/yr, or 1.8E13 W on average.

A square meter of solar panel produces around 25 W on average per square meter (this is after accounting for inefficiency, seasonal variation, and the day/night cycle). That is 7.2E11 m^2, or 720,000 km^2.

So while we need 50M km^2 for food, we need <1M km^2 for solar energy (and that accounts for everything!).

If we switch to indoor farming, we’ll massively increase our energy needs, but massively decrease the required land area. But even if the energy use doubles–to 1.5M km^2–that’s still tiny compared to the savings from needing 50M km^2 of agricultural land to 5M or less.

And that is, IMO, the answer to the op. Our sustainable future is almost entirely solar powered, but it doesn’t require paving over the landscape with panels; instead it will allow a massive reduction in human land use by enabling more efficient agricultural practices. Even if the population hit 10B and everyone was brought up to a Western standard of living, there would still be plenty of land.

To get there, we have to stop burning coal, stop burning oil, and switch our industries to be electric, as well as being made compatible with the intermittency of renewable power. That’s all doable, but people are resistant to change, even if it will benefit them in the long run.

62

I’d sightly recast that:

Said more succinctly: when it’s all about ME & NOW, people are stupidly shortsighted and selfish. And in much of the world, ME & NOW are the de facto religion of the masses.

63

A sustainable existence only goes to the level of subsistence farming if the world population also goes to bronze age levels. Global warming and the related disasters and wars might bring us there.

By far the biggest change I see to standard of living is far, far less meat consumption. Real meat, and possibly other animal products, will be luxury items.

Many other things will change, but objectively won’t be worse. Electrified transportation is the big one here. It doesn’t really matter to your lifestyle if your deliveries come on electric or fossil fueled trucks.

Changes in the cost of particularly ocean shipping will determine what exactly is more economical to produce locally versus globally. This may change lifestyle, as some things may be unavailable, or are more expensive. It’s also possible electric transportation will be so much cheaper that shipping things costs less than it does now.

Some things may be more complicated, but not necessarily worse. Solar and wind power is cheap compared to other forms of generation. When those are working your electricity will be cheap, when wind and solar can’t keep up with demand, then your electricity will be more expensive. Perhaps rates change every few minutes to reflect the cost of production.

The lower cost of wind and solar, right now, makes them more affordable for developing countries.

It’s already too late to prevent some changes. Expect big economic hits on regions where real estate becomes worthless due to lack of fresh water, rising sea levels, or intolerable heat waves. This will also create climate refugees, which will put strains on the places that are still livable.

We will also need to develop sustainable ways to create concrete. If that happens, it is just a shift in production, and won’t matter to most people. If it proves impossible, then building techniques will have to change, which will make everything more expensive.

Assuming society doesn’t collapse, then computers and the Internet will remain, and will be vital for a lower impact existence. Increases in efficiency will require computers and networks. Proof of work crypto currencies are right out, until renewable energy is pervasive.

64

I can’t disagree, but it certainly feels as if there should be a certain distinction between pure self-interest vs. short-term thinking. Self-interest is easy to understand. But short-term thinking is less easy. Like k9bfriender said, it’s like funding your own retirement. Calling the short-term costs a sacrifice isn’t really accurate; it’s an investment in the future that will pay significant dividends to the same people that paid them (unless they are very old). Sometimes I wonder if people think of their future selves as being a completely different person, not worthy of much consideration.

We’ll just have to muddle through it. It helps that renewable sources are legitimately cheap compared to fossil fuels. Coal plants are becoming flat-out uneconomical to run, even ignoring their externalities. I just wish we could push the transition more rapidly than what the current economic situation dictates.

65

Agree overall, but here’s two quibbles.


One:
It’s well established by psych research that humans’ naive approach to long-term thinking is heavily biased to the present. Metaphorically speaking, humans use a massive discount rate when figuring their personal NPV for [whatever] decision. Numbers like 50% APR are common in the literature.

Not that humans perform that mathematical calculation like economists might, but rather that their informal emotional rationalizing thought processes about spend today vs save for tomorrow, or go the gym vs get sedentary & fat all seem to apply about that large a discount factor to future concerns. Which probably makes sense in evolutionary terms from when we were perpetual semi-starving nomads fleeing famine & predators during our nasty, brutish, and mostly short lives.

We’d like to believe our modern society could rise above raw human nature and be guided mostly by our smarter, more educated natures. Historical evidence around the world is that some societies can do that in some places for some time, then there’s a reversion to the mean.

Here is a blog post by a financial planner I follow on the topic of future self. It makes for interesting reading and has a few relevant links to further reading:

Two:
I am fast coming up on age 64. I hope to live another 30 & ideally 40 years. Despite my favorable attitude to tech progress and social progress, and a deep-seated awareness that AGW is 100% real and 100% bad news, I have a hard time believing “going green” will have a net positive ROI in my personal remaining lifetime. I could certainly profit financially by making a lucky early investment in whichever future company(s) come to dominate the relevant tech(s). But other than that I see the economic and social changes needed for AGW adaptation, mitigation, and reduction as pure drags on the consumer and producer economy.

With me as an (aging) example of the “Good Guys” and considering how many “Bad Guys” there are out there, ISTM that sucess has a very, very tough row to hoe.

I personally have enough foresight & concern for the future that I will vote, and buy, in an ever more “green” direction. But it will feel like shouldering a burden because it’s the right thing to do for future people. It will not feel like “this will benefit me personally in any meaningful way.”

I would probably feel differently were I 25 years old. Probably. The power of short-term rationalization is strong in the young too.

66

Yeah, assuming that we don’t keep going as we are going until we run into a wall and no longer have any control over our fate, I really think that most people are really only going to see two changes in their lives, much less meat in their diet, and much less air travel.

Most everything else in their lives can simply be changed a bit, either behind the scenes or as new consumer products, to be less wasteful and more efficient.

I don’t know about ocean shipping. Sure it’s rather polluting as an industry, but that’s just because there is so much of it. Per item shipped, it’s by far the most efficient way to move things.

I meant that more as an analogy that humanity is getting close to retirement age, and has nothing invested, rather than individuals. But as to that point, I’d say that it’s similar to grandparents buying series E bonds for their young grandchildren. You certainly won’t benefit from their college education, and may not even be around to see them go, but it’s an investment you are willing to make in the future, rather than spending that money on a momentary pleasure now.

Probably. I know there’s been a few times when I was like, “Future @k9bfriender is going to be pissed when he finds out what I’ve done here.”

My fear is that we do not do it voluntarily fast enough, and so involuntarily, it goes much faster.

67

I’m not sure that rates an “only” except in a relative sense; the ripple effects are kind of surprisingly huge when you think about them. I’m not even sure how to go about lessening their impact, though of course, it’s almost certainly better than the alternative.

68

Well, I don’t see them being outlawed so much as being priced out of the range of staple goods and services.

But, if there are acceptable alternatives, then their impact is lowered. So, ground beef is $25 a pound, but lab grown “meet” is $1.99, and no one but the snobbiest of foodies can claim to tell the difference.

A plane ticket from LA to Houston may cost $5,000, but a train ticket is less than $200, and while it takes a bit longer, has much better leg room and other amenities along the way.

69

I was thinking on a larger level than the personal, like what happens to the fast food/restaurant industries? How do they shift? Can they all shift? What happens to places like Hawaii when they have to lean so much more heavily on the locals to support the economy? (Even within countries; I recently read about areas of Japan that are facing massive economic hardship looming because of the travel restrictions and their dependence on tourism.) Like I said, such questions are a lot better than a lot of alternatives, but the scope of the issues to be resolved is, to me, pretty mind blowing. And that’s just from meat and air travel! I guess it’s one of the big reasons I created this thread: to explore just how much needs to fundamentally change.

70

Well fast food chains are starting to really step-up their plant based offerings. Burger King and Taco Bell come to mind and Kevin Hart just started a vegan chain. I’m pretty confident that industry will be able to adapt fine.

71

I think that’s one of the easier parts. They just start using “meet” rather than beef, and GTG.

I think that an effort to try to solve all these questions before acting is not useful, as it means that we never get to act. There will always be one more question as to how it will affect some other thing in this near infinite combinatorial system that is the world economy.

And most of the answers reached at this point will be incomplete or wrong anyway. This is one of the areas that capitalism is superior to a command economy. All I have to do is raise the cost of a good substantially, while providing a cheaper and acceptable alternative, and the market will get around to answering the rest of those questions on its own. Some of those answers we may have predicted, and some of them we would not have.

The thing is, is that it’s not going to be change on an individual level that makes a difference. If you switch to “meet” and trains, that’s not going to make any difference at all. What needs to be done is that governments need to get in on things, and mandate certain changes. The easiest way to do so with with tax policy. Rather than subsidizing cattle, tax cattle and subsidize the alternatives. Rather than bailing out and subsidizing airlines, tax airlines and subsidize trains.

72

Absolutely the perfect is the enemy of the good, but when someone from, say, Hawaii hears “much less air travel” and goes, “hey, does this mean I’m going to die of starvation? Do I have to leave my home to survive?” it’d probably be useful to have some kind of answer to keep up public support. We already have this issue with the coal miners and such, and this kind of thing is a lot less clear cut (which is something else we have to stop doing, probably). I think I’ve said this before, but one of the things I’m seeking with this thread is clarity, because I feel it has direct relevance to the difficulty of making the political and practical struggles necessary to save human civilization.

Of course, we mere mortals and laymen might not be able to gain clarity or explain it to others; we have the luxury of just shrugging and saying, whatever, it’s got to be done somehow. But it interests me regardless!

73

Or hit it at the source. Tax carbon, subsidize non-carbon emitting power generation and let the market work it out. Let the taxes scale up gradually (over decades) so it isn’t an economy breaking shock. Don’t try to pick winner/loser areas or companies. Everybody can decide for themselves what things are worth paying more or less for. Air travel will probably end up out of reach for all but the wealthiest, but maybe carbon neutral artificial fuel will be not too expensive.

That’s my recommendation, but I doubt it will actually happen.

74

One question about meat: we always talk about this in absolute terms (“meat” vs “no meat”), perhaps because vegetarians often see a moral / ethical dimension to their dietary choices, or else in relative terms within that binary.

But what impact might it have if we just gave up beef, and continued with chicken / turkey / pork / lamb / goat / rabbit / etc.? One source I looked at (not linked, because I have no idea how to vet it), suggested that beef and lamb have higher carbon footprints than the others. I imagine you’d have to take into account the utilities of any wool or leather biproducts, and I wouldn’t have the first clue how.

75

Do we actually have several decades to allow the economy to gradually transition?

76

None of these things are binary yes/no things. A gradual transition is better than a sudden, forced one. A gradual policy lets people go electric as old cars wear out, etc. instead of saying “you must completely change everything you do right now!” which nobody will actually do. Means there is a chance for the high tech optimistic sustainable existence we hope for, instead of the low tech one we want to try to avoid.

77

IME, present-day back-to-the-landers, who arguably do just what the future holds for most of us, raise mostly rabbit, chicken and goats for their protein needs. Meat rabbits, for instance, grow on much less feed per pound than the bigger, more usual Western meat animals. Chickens are raised for the eggs (but eaten when they stop producing), and benefit from free-range foraging on the farmyard for insects etc., while goats, who famously “subsist on almost anything” are mostly milk animals, but some are slaughtered for meat.

78

“If you want to turn green land into desert, there’s nothing like a goat” is something I’ve heard more than ones from people doing development work in the Sahel.

79

Wool and leather will become too expensive to afford. Cotton is environmentally unsustainable too, not to speak of petroleum-based fibers. The future is sustainable hemp fiber, hempen clothing.

80

Cotton is environmentally unsustainable? I live in south Texas, and I see cotton being grown in the second half of the summer every year. This year was a drought year*, and the crops from the first half of the year all died, based on their appearance to my uneducated (WRT to farming) eye. Around here that includes things like sorghum, wheat, and corn. The cotton, although the plants appeared a little smaller than usual, however, did yield a crop. Based on that and similar experiences in previous drought years, I would have guessed that cotton would do just fine with less water. Of course I am not a farmer and am basing my guess on what I see. Does cotton use a lot water, or is there some other problem with it?

  • Sadly for the farmers, the rains started just as soon as the cotton harvest was over. We’ve had more rain in the past week than we’d had since the beginning of the year.