Saving the world through games people play
It is a curious thing - to look at a complex world, and all the complex messages needed to promote "good behavior." Is there any hope?
Yesterday meeting up a protest event with the ""Climate Crisis Coalition of the Twin Cities", I was confronted by an in-your-face self-righteous woman Christine Frank, telling me how we have change everything fast or the world-as-we-know-it is going to disappear fast.
http://www.mwsocialforum.org/node/755
Well, trying to be a voice of reason, I suggested that the world ought to be changed by ordinary citizens making economic choices - like buying into Xcel Energy's "Windsource" program, paying a little extra for windpower for electricity.
Or getting a group of citizens together to invest in a "Wind farm" somewhere nearby to produce electricity directly. You know, why not? Why must we be weaklings who have to wait until those with power and money make the right choice?
Well, the other side of my "solution" is that energy ought to cost about ten times as much as we pay now, via an energy tax, focused most on the most harmful soureces we want to transition away from. I figure with $20/gallon gasoline and $0.60/khw electricity, and such, people would have a financial incentive to conserve AND alternative sources of energy could then compete on a more balanaced playing field, assuming they didn't have equally harmful side effects.
Well, it gets messy how to "account" for costs fairly. Without proper accounting we could just get things like borderline ethanol production with no net improvement over petroleum. Still we might try.
Then there's attempts to promote measure of an ecological footprint (How much land does it take to sustain your lifestyle?) And how much CO2 production does your lifestyle require?
http://www.earthlab.com/index.aspx?ecp=1
Rather than "punishing" people (sin taxes), perhaps it is enough to make people aware of the effects they have and voluntarily move away from the most harmful ones? The voluntary approach is nice because we're all at different abilities to respond to our footprint. People like me, single adults, can perhaps devote more energy and time and money into reduction than someone raising young children.
Now I like the "footprint" approach, and its a great place to start, but to measure improvement you need more than "averages", you need to see ACTUAL numbers from your consumption. I mean like the idea of giving everyone electricity usage monitors, showing what a difference it makes. So you can do a "baseline" measuring electricity usage for a week or month, and then step-by-step look at different components from lights to refrigerators to the million little stand-by appliances draining power for no good reason. So that's a fun game. Even if many "adults" are too busy, its a game kids could get into in a hurry!
Well, I'm sure there's much "low hanging fruit" - things we can do to keep our same lifestyle and consume less. Then it gets harder. That's why I dislike the "simply reduce our CO2 production 2% per year for 40 years and presto 80% reduction by 2040!" NOT! There's surely many levels of action and depending on any average rate is foolish.
Anyway, a second level response comes by financial investments - improving insulation, buying a more appliances. These can be expensive, but still don't have any ongoing costs to lifestyle. Just pay and enjoy!
A third level starts into the world of "compromise". Well, to a person used to using a car, a bike is a serious compromise. It means moving slower, less cargo capacity, and weather protection. It's a serious improvement, and saves money, but easy to ignore. I mean there's a quantum leap of sorts - once you have a car, it PAYS to use it because fixed-costs exceed fuel costs. Cars costs so much to produce, plus insurance, that once you pay these, it seems wasteful to leave such a useful machine unused. So ideally if you can move away from a car, best to have "less cars", like sharing a car between more people, so you have access at times, but don't have exclusive access which makes it too easy to use.
Along with that level, perhaps we might consider moving from a natural gas furnance to burning wood. I don't know about the efficiency comparison, but since natural gas is nonrenewable (by our scale of use anyway), worth considering. Plus, there's also the idea of "co-generation" - using a fuel to produce both electricity and heating. Again I don't know about the feasibility, but I know the idea. Well, whatever is good, there's "lifestyle costs" - natural gas is great - on/off by automation, no startup effort, no soot or ash. If you burn a solid fuel, you have to monitor it, or at least automation is trickier.
Then there's another level, which I think cogeneration makes more sense. Take a whole BLOCK of homes, and build one central boiler that can heat them all, AND produce electricity at the same time. It might gain by efficient of operation, or efficiency of construction costs, or not. But it's a level we've not had to worry about for 50+ years, having easy natural gas available.
Then there's enumerable other projects from passive solar heating to geothermal heatpumps to wind turbines to photovotaics, all expensive retrofits, most may require more maintenance than a single family wants to worry about.
OH, back to "games people play", I got lost on all the details we could do to reduce our foot print. Some are "easy", and some are hard. At least the "easy ones" can be done through giving direct feedback for consumption. I still don't disagree with the "sin tax" approach, but I expect its still "too weak" to make a sufficient difference - i.e. if you raise prices enough to make a difference for a majority, you make life unviable for a large minority.
I do tend to think that the "bottom 20%" are better off not "owning a home", rather renting, and by doing so, the problems of footprints can transfer to property owners who have more financial resources to improve the bigger stuff AND they can give feedback to the renters on the small stuff, create incentives for reducing consumption.
Well, lovely hopeful ideas, unsure, probably they're still "not enough" for the Climate crisis lady to bear. I mean knowing things are going to get worse, what do you do? Get so hopeless you do nothing, or do something and muddle forward as you can? I admit I can get distracted and ambitious as anyone on things that "don't matter" in comparison to the future viability to modern life!
Okay, back to life, but just remember, sometimes games can make a difference! Once you know the score, and you're competing against your past behavior, you have a big UP to fight for!
Yesterday meeting up a protest event with the ""Climate Crisis Coalition of the Twin Cities", I was confronted by an in-your-face self-righteous woman Christine Frank, telling me how we have change everything fast or the world-as-we-know-it is going to disappear fast.
http://www.mwsocialforum.org/node/755
Well, trying to be a voice of reason, I suggested that the world ought to be changed by ordinary citizens making economic choices - like buying into Xcel Energy's "Windsource" program, paying a little extra for windpower for electricity.
Or getting a group of citizens together to invest in a "Wind farm" somewhere nearby to produce electricity directly. You know, why not? Why must we be weaklings who have to wait until those with power and money make the right choice?
Well, the other side of my "solution" is that energy ought to cost about ten times as much as we pay now, via an energy tax, focused most on the most harmful soureces we want to transition away from. I figure with $20/gallon gasoline and $0.60/khw electricity, and such, people would have a financial incentive to conserve AND alternative sources of energy could then compete on a more balanaced playing field, assuming they didn't have equally harmful side effects.
Well, it gets messy how to "account" for costs fairly. Without proper accounting we could just get things like borderline ethanol production with no net improvement over petroleum. Still we might try.
Then there's attempts to promote measure of an ecological footprint (How much land does it take to sustain your lifestyle?) And how much CO2 production does your lifestyle require?
http://www.earthlab.com/index.aspx?ecp=1
Rather than "punishing" people (sin taxes), perhaps it is enough to make people aware of the effects they have and voluntarily move away from the most harmful ones? The voluntary approach is nice because we're all at different abilities to respond to our footprint. People like me, single adults, can perhaps devote more energy and time and money into reduction than someone raising young children.
Now I like the "footprint" approach, and its a great place to start, but to measure improvement you need more than "averages", you need to see ACTUAL numbers from your consumption. I mean like the idea of giving everyone electricity usage monitors, showing what a difference it makes. So you can do a "baseline" measuring electricity usage for a week or month, and then step-by-step look at different components from lights to refrigerators to the million little stand-by appliances draining power for no good reason. So that's a fun game. Even if many "adults" are too busy, its a game kids could get into in a hurry!
Well, I'm sure there's much "low hanging fruit" - things we can do to keep our same lifestyle and consume less. Then it gets harder. That's why I dislike the "simply reduce our CO2 production 2% per year for 40 years and presto 80% reduction by 2040!" NOT! There's surely many levels of action and depending on any average rate is foolish.
Anyway, a second level response comes by financial investments - improving insulation, buying a more appliances. These can be expensive, but still don't have any ongoing costs to lifestyle. Just pay and enjoy!
A third level starts into the world of "compromise". Well, to a person used to using a car, a bike is a serious compromise. It means moving slower, less cargo capacity, and weather protection. It's a serious improvement, and saves money, but easy to ignore. I mean there's a quantum leap of sorts - once you have a car, it PAYS to use it because fixed-costs exceed fuel costs. Cars costs so much to produce, plus insurance, that once you pay these, it seems wasteful to leave such a useful machine unused. So ideally if you can move away from a car, best to have "less cars", like sharing a car between more people, so you have access at times, but don't have exclusive access which makes it too easy to use.
Along with that level, perhaps we might consider moving from a natural gas furnance to burning wood. I don't know about the efficiency comparison, but since natural gas is nonrenewable (by our scale of use anyway), worth considering. Plus, there's also the idea of "co-generation" - using a fuel to produce both electricity and heating. Again I don't know about the feasibility, but I know the idea. Well, whatever is good, there's "lifestyle costs" - natural gas is great - on/off by automation, no startup effort, no soot or ash. If you burn a solid fuel, you have to monitor it, or at least automation is trickier.
Then there's another level, which I think cogeneration makes more sense. Take a whole BLOCK of homes, and build one central boiler that can heat them all, AND produce electricity at the same time. It might gain by efficient of operation, or efficiency of construction costs, or not. But it's a level we've not had to worry about for 50+ years, having easy natural gas available.
Then there's enumerable other projects from passive solar heating to geothermal heatpumps to wind turbines to photovotaics, all expensive retrofits, most may require more maintenance than a single family wants to worry about.
OH, back to "games people play", I got lost on all the details we could do to reduce our foot print. Some are "easy", and some are hard. At least the "easy ones" can be done through giving direct feedback for consumption. I still don't disagree with the "sin tax" approach, but I expect its still "too weak" to make a sufficient difference - i.e. if you raise prices enough to make a difference for a majority, you make life unviable for a large minority.
I do tend to think that the "bottom 20%" are better off not "owning a home", rather renting, and by doing so, the problems of footprints can transfer to property owners who have more financial resources to improve the bigger stuff AND they can give feedback to the renters on the small stuff, create incentives for reducing consumption.
Well, lovely hopeful ideas, unsure, probably they're still "not enough" for the Climate crisis lady to bear. I mean knowing things are going to get worse, what do you do? Get so hopeless you do nothing, or do something and muddle forward as you can? I admit I can get distracted and ambitious as anyone on things that "don't matter" in comparison to the future viability to modern life!
Okay, back to life, but just remember, sometimes games can make a difference! Once you know the score, and you're competing against your past behavior, you have a big UP to fight for!
posted by Ares Olympus at 5:19 PM
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