{"id":60276,"date":"2021-11-04T08:04:27","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T13:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60276"},"modified":"2021-11-04T08:04:27","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T13:04:27","slug":"returning-to-a-1970s-economy-could-save-our-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60276","title":{"rendered":"Returning to a 1970s Economy Could Save Our Future"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Returning to a 1970s Economy Could Save Our Future<\/a><\/h3>\n

We\u2019d contract energy use by half. Shrinking consumption is the solution we can actually live with. Second of two.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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A society that consumes less energy and stuff could rehumanize society and heal the biosphere.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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[Editor\u2019s note: Read part one of this two-parter\u00a0here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

Thanks to bright green technologies, we can continuously grow the level of consumption on planet Earth and deliver a bloated North American lifestyle to all without inviting climate catastrophe or a general breakdown of natural ecosystems that support all living things.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the big bold lie that politicians are telling themselves this week at yet another climate conference. Greta Thunberg calls such dissembling just so much \u201cblah, blah, blah.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ll share in this piece, a number of brilliant energy critics from Vaclav Smil to William Rees have done the figuring, acknowledged the physical limits of things, and told us the truth. A truth that is not as uncomfortable as you might think.<\/p>\n

It is this. We must contract the global economy, restructure technological society and restore what\u2019s left of natural ecosystems if we want to live and breathe.<\/p>\n

The appeal of the \u201ctech will save us\u201d charade crosses ideological lines. No sacrifice is necessary; no wisdom is required; no change is necessary. Both Green New Dealers and the Business-as-Usual Crowd believe a variety of so-called green technologies forged by the burning of more fossil fuels will save the day and postpone what is already happening: a great unsettling.<\/p>\n

These green illusions, as I\u00a0explained yesterday<\/a>, represent the worst kind of falsehood. Many of these techno fixes, such as direct air capture, are largely unproven, don\u2019t scale up or will invite bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Returning to a 1970s Economy Could Save Our Future We\u2019d contract energy use by half. Shrinking consumption is the solution we can actually live with. Second of two. A society that consumes less energy and stuff could rehumanize society and heal the biosphere. [Editor\u2019s note: Read part one of this two-parter\u00a0here.] Thanks to bright green […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4,6,7],"tags":[5549,162,203,23884],"class_list":["post-60276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-andrew-nikiforuk","tag-consumption","tag-degrowth","tag-thetyee-ca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60277,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60276\/revisions\/60277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}