http://www.ysnews.com/stories/2007/04/040507_conservation.html

The reality is that impact is a multiple of consumption and population - both need to be addressed, but the first most important project is to get consumption down in the rich world.

As for whether people will ever voluntarily reduce their consumption or change their society in any deep way - well, the only models we have are historical, and in fact, revolutionary change has happened before. Whether it will in this case, I can only speculate upon.

Sharon

On the other hand, I think relying on Thomas Friedman, the advocate and to an extent architect of the absolute cultural presumption of globalization to direct us to real change is beyond unwise - Friedman has made it absolutely clear in _The World is Flat_ and in his columns that what he seeks is the status quo made more so. The idea that one of his columns would guide us in the direction of real change is ridiculous.

Sharon

Waste not, want not: making conservation #1, #2 priority
By Lauren Heaton

Yellow Springs community members Larry Halpern and Gail Keen have spent the past several years reducing their household reliance on energy and are now using one-fourth of the energy they used in the past.

for DVDs of the presentations, including Larry Halpern’s and Sharon’s:
http://www.communitysolution.org/07confdvds.html

–sgl

“But the inconvenient truth we seek to forget is that the Clinton-Gore administration did even greater damage [than the Bush administration]. Bush might have pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto Protocol, but the Clinton administration destroyed the Protocol as an effective instrument — for everyone. It insisted on measures which allow countries to trade hot air and launder fake cuts. It encouraged other countries to reduce their targets (and thereby allow a higher level of emissions). In his speech to the Kyoto conference in December 1997, Al Gore used the same mendacious formula George Bush now employs, claiming that limiting carbon emissions the U.S. might otherwise have produced in a hypothetical future equates to real cuts in actual emissions. It was one of the most disgraceful moments in the Clinton presidency, and is impossible to reconcile with the subsequent career of the former next president of the United States. Clinton failed to submit the protocol to the Senate, Bush refused to do so. There is little practical difference.

In other words the china had already been smashed when Bush took office: he simply ground it into dust. I admire Al Gore’s film and Bill Clinton’s Climate Initiative, but they also stick in the throat. Like many former leaders, they do a much better job of governing when out of office.”

~Vegan/Leaving So.FL

True that “change is coming from all levels and soon, whether we like it or not.” However, our culture would be spared much unnecessary suffering if people in our society would voluntarily realize that downsizing or simplifying our lifestyles is necessary to avert the extinction of our species and that it is the ethical and noble thing to do. With that realization, then, it would be easier to address the actions needed for the transition. As opposed to, say, people thinking that the magic elixir of technology or a particular leader would remedy our problems and ignore the fact that radical lifestyle changes are needed. This is what I meant when I said that change to be effective and least chaotic must come from the inside out.

I’m rather skeptical about the possibility of the majority of Americans pursuing simplifying their lifestyles. I don’t think that it would be voluntarily pursued en masse.

~Vegan/Leaving So.FL

Sharon, if you were to do a more in-depth write-up of reaction to the Riot, I would enjoy reading it.