Environmentalism is about comfortable living and good jobs.

[Porcupine]

A few hints for our presidential candidates and a reminder for the rest of us. What environmentals really want is this:

We want you to have secure jobs. Trains, windmills and solar installations require regular maintenance by trained personnel. They require skilled labor at skilled labor wage rates. Bio-fuels projects are most efficient when plants are close to the source of raw materials. All of these projects could provide well paying rural jobs.

We want your house to be warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Improved insulation and geo-exchange HVAC saves energy but also provides greater comfort. Environmental friendly super-insulated and straw bale houses are most notably comfortable and quiet.

We want you to have a well lit house. LEDS, and compact fluorescents give 3 bulbs worth of light for one incandescent bulbs energy.

We want you to eat fresh and local foods. A farm policy that promotes small, quality farms over corporate ag. could also fund greenhouses, small fish farms and organic production of foods. Small farm practices can also promote carbon sequestration in preference to our carbon emitting agro-corporations. Viable small farms support families and solid farm communities.

We want you to have more time with your family. Four day, 36 hour, work weeks could do this and save huge amounts of fuel now spent commuting. Policies that promote full shifts, 6+ hours, save trips for work produced and promote job security. We want workers to have one good job instead of driving to three bad ones. We want the jobs to move closer to where you live so you don't have to live in your car.

We want you to be more fit. Walking distance neighborhood shops promote this. Big-box retailing promotes obesity as well as multiple car trips. Bicycling whenever possible, even using electrically assisted bikes, gets you outside and exercising.

We want you to have longer vacations. So that you can travel by bike, train, bus, boat or airship. So that you don't try to fly to Florida for three separate weekends. Take a train and stay 2 weeks.

We want you to have a nice, affordable, car. Recent studies showed that Toyota Prius hybrid drivers saved an average of $13,000 in five years over the cost of a comparable Toyota sedan. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles would save even more money for drivers and provide quiet comfortable transportation. Electric motors require less maintenance and last longer than standard automobile engines meaning your electric car would be a better value as well as cutting carbon emissions.

We even want you to have better relationships. People who are satisfied with their lives, who don't have gaping holes where they feel inadequate might not compensate with fast cars, monster trucks, jet-ski's, guns and other forms of power displays.

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Outstanding!

I like that whole "we want you to have ..." format.

As they say in New England, it's a winnah.

--p!

[rodeodance]

2. I am going to send to all I know.

[The2ndWheel]

3. No downside then?

Everyone gets to have everything? That will at least get you elected, which is what it's all about anyway.

Nothing comes for free. To live in such a utopia, what are we giving up?

[Porcupine]

6. Wage slavery, 1/2 shifts and SUV's.......

covering acres of parking lots at Walmart. We will have to give up high-speed air travel but airships are very fuel efficient. Food will be more expensive but the cost will be offset by higher averages wages and savings on energy costs.

Short work shifts are great for employers but they suck for staff as you schedule your life around 4 hours that doesn't pay the bills.

There must be something else but I can't think of it right now.

[The2ndWheel]

10. In my mind, I'm a radical environmentalist

But I know what that would mean if we stopped living this life we live. We must continue to grow, or else we're all in a lot of trouble.

The only reason I'm asking is because it still sounds like we can all have everything.

"Food will be more expensive but the cost will be offset by higher averages wages and savings on energy costs."

So food being more expensive wouldn't be much of a downside then. Who's growing the food? Machines? If so, people aren't needed, except for the specialized maintenance crew. That leaves everyone else to do what? Be a wage slave at whatever small business is selling the food? Profits would have to be kept up, or else a business would close. That would lead to mergers and consolidation, and then we'd have the same problem we have today.

We give up high-speed air travel, but airships are fuel efficient. So we're not giving anything up. In fact, we'd all travel more because it's so efficient.

There has to be a counter-balance to these things. For example, today we have a machine churning out energy and productivity called society/civilization/whatever, and we're losing a habitat because of it.

If we want more time with our family, and more money, something has to be on the opposite side of the scale. The only reason the wealthy class today can do both is because millions around the world can't do that.

I think we still live in a world of limits. If we don't, then everyone can have everything. If we do, then everyone can't.

[GliderGuider]

11. My biggest gripe is that this is a regional list but the problem is global

It's yet another America-centric view of the world.

"Food will be more expensive but the cost will be offset by higher averages wages and savings on energy costs." In India and Botswana and Indonesia and Australia and Russia as well as the USA?

Globally I fear we are heading into a period of re-agrarianization. Do farmers work 36 hour, 4-day weeks?

In such a Brave New World fitness will be unavoidable.

As a message to Americans to counter the elitist image of Greenpeace environmentalism this may be useful, but...

[Porcupine]

14. I can't tout Terra Preta farming in India.

since I'm a little far away.

http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/terra_preta/TerraPretahome.htm

Or mixed canopy permaculture or any of the other solutions that might be appropriate for them. I think I should start with my own culture first and this is the biggest soapbox I have.

[GliderGuider]

15. Fair enough. The scale of the problem is a hobby-horse of mine

I meet far too many people who don't seem to understand why there's a "Global" in "Global Warming". Sorry if it seemed like I was jumping to that kind of conclusion about your list. The kind of attitudes toward environmental activists that are endemic in the US need a rebuttal like this, and overall I agree with the approach.

[FredStembottom]

4. Really, really good!

That's just the kind of stuff many of us envision when we think of America's possible new future - My kids have grown up with me telling them of things like this. That a really beautiful, meaningful and probably fun future is ahead for them, once we start becoming the new energy independent America.

This is such a great way to present that kind of vision!

Thanks, Porcupine!

[madrchsod]

5. you are right

but we live in the hallucinations of a madman.

[4dsc]

7. So what about peak oil??

Looks as though you believe it will business as usual when we enter the era of peaking oil production.. Is it your belief that somehow biofuels will be able to take the place of oil?? COuld we run our society on biofuels while oil supplies diminish worldwide??

I love the rest of the post though but have a hard time with questions not asked..

[GliderGuider]

9. This list is more about what we want than what we can deliver.

I agree that it doesn't address the complications of oil depletion - or fresh water depletion or fish stock declines either for that matter. However, it does speak to motivation, which is a typical club environmentalists get beaten with. To that end, I also think the last item should be either struck or reworded.

It would be a much harder sell if each clause began with, "What we think will happen" and then opened a can of realistic whoop-ass on them...

[Porcupine]

13. Our current culture is not an option.....

We don't get to all have cars and drive 15 miles to Walmart to buy stuff from China. That option is out; it's not sustainable. We have to work out what we get to have with the resources that will be available.

We can have 1/5th of our populace continuing the current culture with 2/5ths sliding backward every year and 2/5ths in third world poverty. That's an option.

Or we can restructure our economy to maximize the services delivered to people with the amount of energy we have. Very few people would drive in commute traffic if it was not the only realistic way of having a job and a reasonable lifestyle. Commuting is not a goal but it is a major energy user.

We need to look at how other cultures are able to provide high standards of living while using less energy. Sometimes that might mean spending a little more in groceries and less on gas.

[Forrest Greene]

8. Nice List

Really, very well done, but I have one sugestion: true as it may be, delete that last clause, the one about better relationships. One of the most effective charges made against environmentalists is that they are elitists. Snooty, judgemental, over-educated sneerers at the "average" person. That last clause will play right into that belief.

[Porcupine]

16. Companionship is a cultural service.

Advertising giants spend huge $$$ convincing us that we will be happier if we just buy the next thing. It rarely works but we keep purchasing stuff. Look at the craze for highly decorated fingernails on women; have you ever seen a guy reject a girl because of her nails?

Likewise young men believe they need to have fast cars or large trucks in order to get laid. This attitude is also a result of advertising. Promoting healthy interaction could go a long way towards reducing fuel demands. There was a famous commercial for the new Mini-Cooper that hit this on the head. It involved mens perception of their "manhoods" with the size of their vehicle.

As long as people use excess petrochemicals securing relationships it will be an issue that needs to be addressed.

[Forrest Greene]

17. You're Absolutely Right

...& that last clause is correct. I didn't say it wasn't. But the OP presented the list as a way to persuade non-environmentalists to see the positive outcomes for them in environmentalism. Trying to encourage environmentalism on the grounds cited in the last clause is a self-defeating tactic. To tell a non-environmentalist that their giant SUV is compensation for feelings of inferiority will do nothing but irritate & offend them, & cause them to see the environmentalist as a judgmental elitist, thereby turning them off to the cause.

[Forrest Greene]

18. Oh, Sorry, Porcupine

Didn't notice that you are the OP. Is my assertion that "...the OP presented the list as a way to persuade non-environmentalists to see the positive outcomes for them in environmentalism" correct? Can you see how the analysis in your last clause might offend & drive away the very people that most need to be converted?

[Porcupine]

19. I know I'm preaching to the choir here.

Advertising is always about relationships. Until we convince people of both sexes that driving a hybrid is a prelude to hot sex we are fighting an uphill battle.

Our culture is going to be paying some very high prices for climate change THIS year. That is the stick.

We need to offer people a carrot too. I don't really think that you can tell people "help us conserve energy and you'll be more likely to get laid." We have to have comercials that imply that Mr. Green will have women hanging off of him and Mrs. Green will be the envy of the local bridge club." Hollywood already says that in dozens of movies and it works.

We have to offer people the carrot if they are going to bite on the changes we will be asking them to make in their lives.

[Forrest Greene]

20. When Preaching To The Congregation Full Of Sinners

...a positive message is usually most effective (which is what I find wise in your list at the start), so, sure, "Buy a hybrid & get laid" will work just fine. It's the difference between that & a negative message such as "Hey, you only need that SUV 'cuz you're insecure" that I hope to point out.

[info being]

12. Sign me up

[Odin2005]

21. Great post.

There is this stupid idea pushed by both Big Business and Luddite/Doomer types that having a high standard of living and a high-tech society on one hand and an ecologically sustainable society on the other are mutually exclusive, they are not.