It is particularly sad when you realise that all this stuff drives climate change. While not necessarily making anyone happier. And then people advocate to expand nuclear power so we can produce even more stuff.
That's not why we need nuclear energy. We need it for two things. One, it's very unrealistic to expect people to cut down on this stuff in meaningful amounts and short time (and if you tried to force them, a lot of blood would be shed and a lot of misery caused; we've covered that topic in other threads of the past few days, I saw you there ;)). Two, we kind of need clean energy for other things as well. Undoing the environmental damage, in particular, will be energy-intensive.
Hi there. I hope the discussion is not over yet :)
It depends on what you mean by "unrealistic". If you mean politically unrealistic, then it's hard to disagree. Entrenched interests are too powerful and motivated to give it up easily. (That's not to say that we shouldn't try)
If you mean it's unrealistic because it's human nature to consume more and more, that it's inherent human desire, then I will disagree. We don't need to force anyone to stop consuming. It's the other way around - we need to stop forcing them to consume. And force them we do. It takes a massive constant propaganda campaign to keep the desire to consume alive. Campaign that costs us about 1% of GDP. You know what I am talking about. Marketing.
If you mean it's unrealistic because most people already consume the bare minimum to guarantee their livelihoods and there is not much to cut. Well, the good news (or bad, depending how you look at it) is that most people don't emit most emissions. David Wallace-Wells in "The Uninhabitable Earth" writes: "If the world's most conspicuous emitters, the top 10 percent, reduced their emissions to only the E.U. average, total global emissions would fall by 35 percent." Is it too much to ask the rich to lower their emissions to the E.U. average?
When I say cutting down consumption to meaningful levels is unrealistic, I mean a few things.
One, the level itself isn't "EU average"; to offset the expected rise of emissions of developing nations, EU and US need to become carbon neutral.
Two, it's not necessarily human nature to consume more (but it is to improve one's life when one has means and options for it). It is human nature however to not like having freedoms, choices and comfort taken away. This (among other things) makes voluntary cuts unlikely (not at the level that's needed), and forced cuts painful. Carbon tax is probably the least unrest-building option here (it's not really about cutting consumption, just moving it around, but at least initially, reduced consumption is expected), and plenty of people are already up in arms about it (c.f. yellow vests in france).
Three, related to point two - even if, by means of a miracle, consumption went down significantly and rapidly, the effect on economies of western countries would be severe to disastrous. Our economies are too strongly tied to consumption at this point. That's another argument for why we need emission-free alternatives to consume instead of just trying to get by without buying stuff.
Ultimately, I believe we can kick the habit of consumption. It'll just have to happen very gradually, on the order of decades (at least).
Something like 70% of the us economy is entirely driven by consumer spending....the acquisition of more and more trinkets. If people reduced their consumption then the USA would immediately go into a recession. That would be a serious problem considering how many people live paycheck to paycheck with no savings at all.
