The energy challenge

[Did67]

It is perfectly true that some Terrien consume more, much more, than others. But there is no mistake in saying that all consume more and more energy.
It can even move the knife into the wound, adding that it is the poor and emerging countries that grow the most in CO2. Which is desirable and normal. See this diagram, on my website, http://ecologie-illusion.fr/ .



According to International Energy Outlook 2013 and OECD Factbook 2011-2012.

We manage to make the diagrams say what we want!

The diagram on page 1, using very large aggregates (OECD on the one hand, i.e. 34 "liberal" countries roughly the most developed - excluding China and India, in particular ; other countries on the other side, including China and India therefore) ... creates a little confusion ...

In addition, reference should be made to emissions per inhabitants. It is a bit tendentious to compare China or India to France, Germany or Canada! It's a bit like comparing bladders and lanterns ...

Note that a significant part of Chinese emissions comes back to us, via the gray energy contained in products made in China!

If we want to generalize the “American-European-Australian” way of life, we have to imagine a planet with each inhabitant that emits between 15 and 20 tonnes of CO² of fossil origin per year! That is 7,3 billion X let's take 15 tons = roughly 100 billion tons.

We are at 39 billion ... And it heats up !!!

So my answer remains:

a) our view cannot be generalized without exploding the planet

b) and without drastic restrictions with us, we are nothing but bastards and hypocrites!

[Did67]

Regarding the issue of the helicopter, to consider it only from the angle of "saver of life" is rather simplistic: it was first a machine sponsored by the military to destroy lives before being used as medical transport of urgency (the vital necessity seems to me a convincing argument to borrow this mode of locomotion [when one does not risk anything any more!: P]!) and it continues to serve its first use ...

I introduced it only to ask the question of what is "reasonable" (or "worthy" said Pierre-Yves; "normal" I said?) Or is not ...

Exactly, to emphasize that the answer is far from obvious ... That's all.

By digging myself, I might have been able to find another "big consumer" of energy ...

Air conditioning: is it "worthy" to air-condition entire buildings at 20/22 ° ???

For having lived in very hot arid countries for a long time, I claim, because this is what I applied to myself, that when it is very hot, we live and work very well at 27/28 °

[I lived 4 years in Chad without any air conditioning, and I can testify that I approached the physiologically tolerable limit for an Alsatian "white" when the daytime temperatures were close to 50 and especially when at night they no longer went below 38 ° ... By 32 ° / 35 ° dry, we can still "work" - not too physically, but moving, palaver, etc ... In Namibia, I worked in air-conditioned offices, and I had programmed on 28 °; I was the only one among the expatriates and even the local executives - it is then "quite hot", but we do not drip, we are totally efficient ... So when I curdle, in the middle of summer, in offices at home , I think the world has fallen on its head]

[Ahmed]

I understood your intention, but I take this opportunity to "slip" this remark!

Another remark:
Yves stone, you speak of the high cost of education in developed countries: this is explained by the fact that the aim of this education is not to provide the bases allowing "a dignified life" (?), but the capacity to operate in inside a complex technical structure through the competition for power * (which depends on mastery of this technique). The stake is therefore the performance of the agents to obey in a way adapted to the needs of the system. Even the imagination, which might seem superfluous in this context, is encouraged in a small number, provided it is limited to improving and pushing aside the contradictions of the system.

* Personal power, but which leads to global power and competition with other countries for supremacy in the area of ​​extractivism.

[Pierre Yves]

According to International Energy Outlook 2013 and OECD Factbook 2011-2012.

I do not agree with your text. We believe we are on the same subject, but it is not. I hope to succeed in removing the misunderstood.

"We manage to make the diagrams say what we want".
It is not a question here of "making say". This is to illustrate as clearly as possible what is said in the title of the diagram and in the names of the curves: compare the CO2 emissions of developed countries and those of poor or developing countries. These are indeed "large aggregates", but that is what I want to compare. It is not at all a question of comparing emissions per capita, that is another subject. This diagram says nothing, means nothing about this other subject.

You conclude in a) that the way of life in developed countries cannot be generalized. But who disputes it? Have I challenged it?
But this diagram, when we do not make him say anything other than what he says, says that the way of life of developed countries is not generalizable ... but thatit is spreading! You shouldn't lie to yourself. So we are going towards the explosion of the planet as you say.
You conclude in b) that "Without drastic restrictions here, we are just bastards and hypocrites!"
Maybe, but this diagram says something else, more. He says that even with drastic restrictions, there will be global warming beyond 2 ° C. He says that if all the developed countries became monsters of economies, that even if they all disappeared, there would still be global warming beyond 2 ° C! It is not about judging, "bastards", "hypocrites", it is about looking the situation in the face and trying to imagine solutions which are twofold: human and technical.

.] Yes, developed countries should reduce their standard of living. but here we fall on human nature, on men-as-they-are, and solutions must be found to make this reduction accepted.
. But even by reducing our lifestyle in a developed country, which is not won, we only solve a small part of the problem. Because there are 5 to 6 billion Earthlings who need to grow. We are not going to ask them to reduce their lifestyle! Here too, solutions of a completely different nature, of a technical nature, must be found.

On the page from which the diagram is drawn ( CO2 emissions and global warming: results and perspectives ), it was accompanied by some comments that I was wrong not to copy, because they allow better understanding. Here they are :

• OECD = "Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development", which brings together most of the developed countries.
• The two trend curves highlight the different trends in developed countries (OECD countries) and emerging countries.
- The growth in emissions from emerging countries is spectacular, as one would expect.
- Emissions from developed countries tend to hardly increase any more, well done, but that's far from compensating.
• The horizontal arrow bar indicates the global emission value at which it should be come back in 2035 to contain the rise in temperatures to only 2 ° C (WEO 2011, factshet).
• This limit is already outdated by the whole planet.
• The projections indicate that we are far from being on the way back to this limit, on the contrary, we are moving further and further away from it.
• This limit will be exceeded very soon only by emerging countries.
• That is to say that even if the developed countries saved to the point of no longer emitting CO2, global warming would be still higher than 2 ° C.

Pierre Yves

[Pierre Yves]

Yves stone, you speak of the high cost of education in developed countries: this is explained by the fact that the aim of this education is not to provide the bases allowing "a dignified life" (?), but the capacity to operate in inside a complex technical structure through the competition for power * (which depends on mastery of this technique). The stake is therefore the performance of the agents to obey in a way adapted to the needs of the system. Even the imagination, which might seem superfluous in this context, is encouraged in a small number, provided it is limited to improving and pushing aside the contradictions of the system.

I am not particularly polarized or traumatized by these stories of performance, of competition for power.
I see things much more mechanical, as excellently said chatelot16 a bit higher :

"a primitive society can subsist in equilibrium on its territory if it remains entirely primitive, therefore the high mortality which goes with it and limits the population ... we cannot consider that as a solution! 

when we introduce half the progress, medicine, we produce overpopulation, and if we leave the rudimentary means that suited a small population we produce the exhaustion of local resources 

cooking food over wood fires is a good example of a catastrophic rudimentary means to desertify "

This applies to cooking over a wood fire, and everything else. As soon as you put your finger on the gear, everything goes through. We replace wood with petroleum, and here are the oil wells, the tankers and the refineries. Or we replace the wood with fossil electricity, even topo. Or we replace be laws with wind turbines, and here are mines, high-end metallurgy, etc.
And in any case you need roads, ports, schools, engineers, books, libraries, apartments, clothes, textile factories, hospitals ...
Pierre Yves

[Ahmed]

You see things more "mechanically" because you are a mechanic, absorbed by the operation of the cogs and who do not worry about the use of the machine ...

Thus, power, which is the apparent goal of technique and the "creation of abstract value" which is the real goal, are indifferent to you and you admit them as unavoidable and anhistorical "data".

[Janic]

You see things more "mechanically" because you are a mechanic, absorbed by the operation of the cogs and who do not worry about the use of the machine ...

Thus, power, which is the apparent goal of technique and the "creation of abstract value" which is the real goal, are indifferent to you and you admit them as unavoidable and anhistorical "data".

Totally agree ! The technique is only means to bring only one type of answer, namely "how" ignoring the most important part which is the "why"!
Pierre Yves underlines this particular point: " Because there are 5 to 6 billion Earthlings who need to develop. As if this race for technical development was the solution when, on the contrary, it is the source of its degradation. In reality, we (business, the materialist economy) want us to believe that this path is the right one and the only one, while it daily demonstrates that it is a dead end.

[Pierre Yves]

You see things more "mechanically" because you are a mechanic, absorbed by the operation of the cogs and who do not worry about the use of the machine ...

This is what you could call an online psychoanalysis session!
But the analysis is not very good; maybe I should change my shrink.
I don't think, doctor, that I am "absorbed" by the workings of the cogs. I observe them indeed, but, I hope, lucidly. I try to understand what is happening, hoping to see better in which direction the solution lies.

1] The observation of the cogs shows that the progress of medicine and agriculture means that we are seven billion.
2] History allows us to have a fairly good idea of ​​the bad behavior of men. They are not saints, never were, probably will not be in a long time. We have to do with men-as-we-are.
And it would be a mistake to be blinded by a few who have the vocation of a hermit, living on the morning dew and the desert wind. They are very rare these, we will see them on a pilgrimage as they strike our curiosity.

Here is the data, we must do with it. The first consequence is that there are seven billion mouths to feed, and that number is growing. We are therefore condemned to produce more and more food; by further increasing yields on increasingly scarce land, in competition with roads, homes, etc. It takes a lot of cogs and technique to achieve this.
I say that it takes a lot of technique as opposed for example to what a dreamer could imagine, that the solution would be the small house on the prairie, with its small garden, and its hoe to cultivate the small garden. This solution is guaranteed famine; because it consumes too much of an increasingly rare earth. Seven billion Terrans is only possible if many live in cities, in increasingly tall buildings, with a small footprint.
But the city, the 300m high buildings, this also requires technique, to build the buildings, the roads and the ports to supply the city, trucks and boats, etc.
These are the cogs that I observe, and how I view the use of the machine. Without being "absorbed".
Pierre Yves

[Pierre Yves]

As if this race for technical development was the solution when, on the contrary, it is the source of its degradation.

On a practical level, of immediate necessity, this path is the only way to feed the planet today. The hoe is no longer enough.
That in tomorrow there may be another, more intelligent technical development, that is what we are looking for, but in any case it will be a technical development. More efficient, more targeted, but technical development. The mines are running out, metal recovery is necessary, and it requires technique: better technique = better recovery.

[we] want to make believe that this path is the right one and the only one whereas it demonstrates daily that it is a dead end.

Yes, as it is, it has no way out. But it has had its successes again:
"The total population of people living in good material conditions is higher today than the total population of the planet was two centuries ago."
(Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, Oxford University Press, 2007 - http://www.seuil.com/extraits/9782020977197.pdf )

Yes, as it is, there is no way out for the future. But then what?
Whether it is "good" is a consideration of another order. Good, good, bad, are relative notions in time and space. Good for who or what?
Pierre Yves

[chatelot16]

You see things more "mechanically" because you are a mechanic, absorbed by the operation of the cogs and who do not worry about the use of the machine ....

I like this word mechanic ... when I was little and someone asked me what I would do when I was older, I said mechanic ... because I did not know the word engineer ... for me the mechanic was the one who invented the mechanic

to advance society you need a good mechanical engineer to make effective technique ... and you need good governor to make the whole move in the right direction

engineers in general have the quality of confronting the reality of the matter: verifying by experience what works ... they should be more competent than some politician to govern effectively

this is what happened at a prosperous period in the history of France, where engineers were not only serving as mechanics: companies were founded and directed by engineers, not by financiers ...

in my generation it derailed in 2 ways: the majority of engineers receive training that is too theoretical and too technical ... complete absence of human training ... 2nd problem the management of companies is occupied by financiers who do not leave engineers go up in the hierarchy

the result is the poor quality of design of the material because it is the financial and marketing who decides what to do ... and when the company manufactures pigmeat unsuitable to the needs of the customer, we no longer count on the competence of engineers to study the conception of the society of the future

at another time great engineers were very motivated to advance society: for example diesel: his goal was to make a small high-efficiency engine to get around the problem of the steam engine which was good only very large and were therefore inaccessible to small business: his goal was social, and he found a technical way ... he did not find it by chance, he searched in all directions ... and then he traveled the world to distribute manufacturing licenses for his patent in the 4 corner of the world so that it is not used only in Germany