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- Jun 28, 2004
I was talking with my uncle who is a consultant for solar energy and home energy conservation, he has been various State of California task forces and is someone whose expertise, on alternative energy and its application, I consider to be top notch. He and I arrived independent of this conclusion, that the image that is put forth by proponent of green energy is a very unappealing one for most Americans and that the images of a world that fully and successfully embraces green technology is often times one that looks like dystopian science fiction.
The image of the ideal green city is almost always one with people growing crops in their high rise apartments, riding public transportation and/or walking and biking every where, having one or zero children, living in ugly and unfamiliar glass and metal structures, eating completely vegan diets and generally not having cars, big houses, nuclear families, elbow room and the lifestyle that a majority of Americans want. Although my uncle is a self described progressive, he says that he realizes that most people want a traditional middle class or upper middle class life and they feel that pursuing radical solutions for clean energy and a sustainable global economy involves a guarantees that they will never have a decent middle class lifestyle and that they will be unfree and poor.
I and my uncle, whose job is to promote sustainability, alternative energy and sustainable living said that the goal of green technology should not be to force radical lifestyle changes but to reduce and eventually eliminate pollution as well to lower the cost of living. A successful green revolution should be marketed as something that will make the position of the middle class and upper middle class more secure and will bring hundreds of millions of people into a middle class or better standard of living. The goal should be a world where improving technology in solar power makes it so that people can have cheap, efficient and discrete solar collection devices that power their home, power their 300 hp electric car and puts so much power make into the grid that fossil fuels caps and taxes will be redundant and that energy will be cheaper then it has ever been.
The image of world where green technology triumphs must be one that shows that rather than stifling economic growth, it advances it and it makes everything that we consume cheaper in terms of money (energy and durable would be cheaper and there would be more money to pay for things whose prices do not fall) and in non pecuniary terms, that are also tangible such as more stable weather, clear ocean water at urban beaches, an abundance of species on public lands and a lack of guilt from eating animal products when meat, eggs and diary products can be grown without the need to harvest them from sentient beings).
As an environmentalist, I have been thinking this for a while now and I feel like some are using the very real concerns over unsustainability and environmental degradation to attack the average person's tastes and preferences (the notion among some that driving cars is anti social, that people who live in the suburbs are selfish (and usually racist), that eating meat is primitive and that having more then one child is simply wrong) for reasons beyond their environmental costs.
This development is troubling because it obscures the promise of cheap and low and no carbon energy sources and instead of using this current wave of widespread environmental awareness to excoriate the evil of the quarter acre lot and the white picket fence, we should promote green technologies as the thing that will turn your white picket fence into the thing that pays you electric bills and powers your car and creates a world where everyone can now have a white picket fence if they so choose and whose who choose to have children will not be scorned as being people who recklessly overpopulate the Earth but rather children should be seen as people whose futures will not just full of blue skies and a clean blue earth but will live in a world where the future is something that is viewed with giddy anticipation instead of apocalyptic dread.
Cliff notes: Today's environmental movement is being abused by those who dislike American style prosperity and as a result they make environmentalism look a like a force that is hostile to Middle Class Westerners and hostile to the billions of people who want to rise economically and live as well as middle class Americans. The reality is that the refinement of, the creation of and the widespread use of new and better green technology will make existing affluence more secure and will greatly expand the ranks of the affluent and if green technology being the way to greater and more widespread prosperity became the dominant theme of environmentalism, there would be be much more public support, more wide spread public engagement in the process and green policies would be shaped by forces who are more representative of ordinary citizens and the world would become a much better place.
Tragically, if the face of the environmental movement continues to be or continues to appear to be those who are out of touch, contemptuous of the average person's goals and aspirations and is run by those who are hostile to humanity itself, the green movement could become merely a political football, a casualty of the culture wars that are periodically fought in politics. That outcome would be detrimental for everyone.
What do guys think NT?
The image of the ideal green city is almost always one with people growing crops in their high rise apartments, riding public transportation and/or walking and biking every where, having one or zero children, living in ugly and unfamiliar glass and metal structures, eating completely vegan diets and generally not having cars, big houses, nuclear families, elbow room and the lifestyle that a majority of Americans want. Although my uncle is a self described progressive, he says that he realizes that most people want a traditional middle class or upper middle class life and they feel that pursuing radical solutions for clean energy and a sustainable global economy involves a guarantees that they will never have a decent middle class lifestyle and that they will be unfree and poor.
I and my uncle, whose job is to promote sustainability, alternative energy and sustainable living said that the goal of green technology should not be to force radical lifestyle changes but to reduce and eventually eliminate pollution as well to lower the cost of living. A successful green revolution should be marketed as something that will make the position of the middle class and upper middle class more secure and will bring hundreds of millions of people into a middle class or better standard of living. The goal should be a world where improving technology in solar power makes it so that people can have cheap, efficient and discrete solar collection devices that power their home, power their 300 hp electric car and puts so much power make into the grid that fossil fuels caps and taxes will be redundant and that energy will be cheaper then it has ever been.
The image of world where green technology triumphs must be one that shows that rather than stifling economic growth, it advances it and it makes everything that we consume cheaper in terms of money (energy and durable would be cheaper and there would be more money to pay for things whose prices do not fall) and in non pecuniary terms, that are also tangible such as more stable weather, clear ocean water at urban beaches, an abundance of species on public lands and a lack of guilt from eating animal products when meat, eggs and diary products can be grown without the need to harvest them from sentient beings).
As an environmentalist, I have been thinking this for a while now and I feel like some are using the very real concerns over unsustainability and environmental degradation to attack the average person's tastes and preferences (the notion among some that driving cars is anti social, that people who live in the suburbs are selfish (and usually racist), that eating meat is primitive and that having more then one child is simply wrong) for reasons beyond their environmental costs.
This development is troubling because it obscures the promise of cheap and low and no carbon energy sources and instead of using this current wave of widespread environmental awareness to excoriate the evil of the quarter acre lot and the white picket fence, we should promote green technologies as the thing that will turn your white picket fence into the thing that pays you electric bills and powers your car and creates a world where everyone can now have a white picket fence if they so choose and whose who choose to have children will not be scorned as being people who recklessly overpopulate the Earth but rather children should be seen as people whose futures will not just full of blue skies and a clean blue earth but will live in a world where the future is something that is viewed with giddy anticipation instead of apocalyptic dread.
Cliff notes: Today's environmental movement is being abused by those who dislike American style prosperity and as a result they make environmentalism look a like a force that is hostile to Middle Class Westerners and hostile to the billions of people who want to rise economically and live as well as middle class Americans. The reality is that the refinement of, the creation of and the widespread use of new and better green technology will make existing affluence more secure and will greatly expand the ranks of the affluent and if green technology being the way to greater and more widespread prosperity became the dominant theme of environmentalism, there would be be much more public support, more wide spread public engagement in the process and green policies would be shaped by forces who are more representative of ordinary citizens and the world would become a much better place.
Tragically, if the face of the environmental movement continues to be or continues to appear to be those who are out of touch, contemptuous of the average person's goals and aspirations and is run by those who are hostile to humanity itself, the green movement could become merely a political football, a casualty of the culture wars that are periodically fought in politics. That outcome would be detrimental for everyone.
What do guys think NT?
