Right, in any case we need to vastly reduce consumption, especially that of the top 10-20% of consumers who use up 50-80% of the energy and other resources.
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Can't "vastly reduce consumption" any time soon. It's as impossible as expecting whoe Tibet to slowly rise up, all those kilometers of mountains, and fly to the moon all on its own. Really. It pains me when i see people seriously hoping for significant reduction of consumption levels, that's how unrealistic it is, in my opinion.
Here's why. There are two main parts of high per-capita (let's call it "western") consumtion: 1st, most high per-capita consumption, which is done by truly rich people (let's call this "rich class", which is somewhat less than 0,05% of world population), and 2nd, high per-capita consumption done by ~10% of consumers (i.e. ~0,7 billion people), let's call it "middle class" for simplicity. Neither can be reduced any much any fast, unless it is _physically_ impossible to maintain and increase consumption levels (a big asteroid hitting Earth, global nuclear war, etc), because:
- rich class does not want to reduce it, because they do not care about planet/others suffering. Vast majority of they truly don't, for a very simple reason: in a capitalistic society, individuals who do not care about others - have a large advantage in competing for raising and preserving their monetary capital. It's similar to natural selection - in nature, "strongest" thrives, because strength of body is deciding; in capitalistic society, most selfish and cruel thrives - because _greed_ (generally speaking) is deciding. Very obvious, too. So, the richer people we talk about, the less mercy, compassion and honesty they have. That's _exactly_ why those managed to get that much richer (in terms of money) than most other people. Don't be fooled by their nice manners and seemingly peaceful appearance: most of truly rich people - are truly cruel and selfish, but for "public relations", it certainly helps to look white and fluffy, which they do (also for profit, of course). Exceptions happen, mainly due heritage, in rare cases- due to one's genius, but those few can't bring in significant change - tha main mass or the rich class will feverishly consume as much as they feel they like to, which is alot. Being less than ~0,05% population, we can call them names if we'd like - "freaks", "heartless degenerates", whatever, - if this would help to explain why those relatively few people behave the way they do. But we better not do it any loud, eh
, since rich class is _the_ ultimate power on Earth at this time (and in observable future), - there is no force to _make_ the rich class to consume less;
- middle class can't reduce its consumption any much, even if it would want to. Consumtion by the so-called "middle class" is the holy cow of modern capitalism (including rapidly growing same-model societies in Asia and South America). Reducing it means less profits for the rich class (among other things), and is, therefore, unacceptable by the rich class (which is, again, the ultimate ruler or Earth). The opposite process took a definite (and HUGE!) shape during 20th century, and is still going: i.e., the increase of consumption of the middle class. The term "consumerism" is well known and describes the effect of this increase. The cause of this increase remains way less known, - but it's rather obvious: rich class _designed_ this "rush to supermarkets", this "epidemy of consumerism". Parts of the grand design are education systems, mass media systems, advertisement "industry", even effects and properties of products themselves (product designs which intentionally cause chain-consumption, times less than possible product service time, etc), fashion, and many other methods, even rumors - all designed to fulfill a simple goal: to icnrease consumtion. Rich class "harvests" a fraction of every cent spent by "average Joe" in western society. It is no secret that during last few decades, the fraction of wealth accumulated by 0,1% of richest people - rose very sharply. One can easily find papers with all the numbers about this. That's how and that's why middle class can't reduce its consumption: the primary force on Earth, the force which literally shapes modern societies to be what they are, - i.e., the rich people of (practically planetary now) capitalistic system, - those cruel people will not allow it, and there is no force to make them. They made sure there wouldn't be.
Another trait of rich people - is being smart (again, there are exceptions, quite many actually, but those are usually people who inherited their capital; often, they actually lose control over it - proper "sharks" of the big business take it, letting poor offsprings of old-day business sharks to remain the "face" of a company, but little more than that). Being smart - also helps to win in the merciful capitalistic competition for profit. Being smart, rich people know full well what are the dangers of proletariat. They know very well what happened with rich people after the Great October Revolution of 1917 in Russia (some were simply killed, and all truly rich were ripped of their riches). That's why rich people of today made themselves several independant "insurances", by designing economies, markets, laws - but most of all, real rpoduction and service technologies, - in such a way that they, rich people, are very required part of the system. Nowadays, without rich class,
- paychecks won't come to Average Joe (hey there, Federal Reserve! Like Randy Newman sings: we give them money, but are they grateful? No, they are spiteful and they're hateful...
),
- transport will stop (hey there, owners of big oil and gas companies, we love you... NOT!
),
- food won't be grown (hey, Monsanto, may be let some small bit of India to grow their own varieties of crops, just for diversity, you may need it yourself in the future, you know?),
- nearly all modern communications will halt (hey AT&T, you knew the deal even in 19th century, eh? Nice job, nice job...);
- etc.
And, of course, the rich class does much to ensure that people are unable to learn about any alternatives (to the mainstream crucially important systems, which rich class has full control of). Therefore, even simply killing all rich people in the world can't solve the problem anymore: with them gone, whole global civilization will definitely fall apart - rich ones had all the keys, all the rights to sign, all the passwords; and we all (mankind) don't have an alternate global (heck, even any significant regional!) civilization to go on with. I'm not counting few remaining wild regions, like some parts of Amazon, which still have native not-much-modernly-civilized tribes which are able to survive. Why? Very simple. Incoming thermal maximum will ensure that traditional ways - simply subsistence, hunter/gatherer and similar life styles, - will become impossible in nearly all (perhaps literally all) areas they were possible until recently, or even still possible. If human species is to survive, it gotta be quite educated, quite scientific, quite able technologically civilization. Only then we have a chance to exist any long _after_ the thermal maximum caused by AGW (i think it'll reach its peak some time in 22th century, 40 years of thermal inertia plus all those positive climate feedbacks need much time to act, too).
