Pirate's Cove

Who’s going to make this happen?

To Stop Climate Change Americans Must Cut Energy Use by 90 Percent, Live in 640 Square Feet, and Fly Only Once Every 3 Years, Says Study

In order to save the planet from catastrophic climate change, Americans will have to cut their energy use by more than 90 percent and families of four should live in housing no larger than 640 square feet. That’s at least according to a team of European researchers led by University of Leeds sustainability researcher Jefim Vogel. In their new study, “Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use,” in Global Environmental Change, they calculate that public transportation should account for most travel. Travel should, in any case, be limited to between 3,000 to 10,000 miles per person annually.

Vogel and his colleagues set themselves the goal of figuring out how to “provide sufficient need satisfaction at much lower, ecologically sustainable levels of energy use.” Referencing earlier sustainability studies they argue that human needs are sufficiently satisfied when each person has access to the energy equivalent of 7,500 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per capita. That is about how much energy the average Bolivian uses. Currently, Americans use about 80,000 kWh annually per capita. With respect to transportation and physical mobility, the average person would be limited to using the energy equivalent of 16–40 gallons of gasoline per year. People are assumed to take one short- to medium-haul airplane trip every three years or so.

You’re down with all this in your own lives, right, Warmists? You’re happy to comply, right?

In addition, food consumption per capita would vary depending on age and other conditions, but the average would be 2,100 calories per day. While just over 10 percent of the world’s people are unfortunately still undernourished, the Food and Agriculture Organization reports that the daily global average food supply now stands at just under 3,000 calories per person. Each individual is allocated a new clothing allowance of nine pounds per year, and clothes may be washed 20 times annually. The good news is that everyone over age 10 is permitted a mobile phone and each household can have a laptop.

Still good, Warmists? You want to live this life, right? Who is supposed to make all this happen? The study avoids mentioning the answer.

Vogel and his colleagues are undaunted by the fact that there are absolutely no examples of low-energy societies providing decent living standards—as defined by the researchers themselves—for their citizens. So they proceed to jigger the various provisioning factors until they find that what is really needed is a “more fundamental transformation of the political-economic regime.” That fundamental transformation includes free government-provided high-quality public services in areas such as health, education, and public transport.

There aren’t any, not during this time period. What might have been considered decent living standards hundreds of years ago with no energy aren’t these days.

“We also found that a fairer income distribution is crucial for achieving decent living standards at low energy use,” said co-author Daniel O’Neill, from Leeds’ School of Earth and Environment. “To reduce existing income disparities, governments could raise minimum wages, provide a Universal Basic Income, and introduce a maximum income level. We also need much higher taxes on high incomes, and lower taxes on low incomes.”

Two things that humanity for sure doesn’t need according to the study are economic growth or the continued extraction of natural resources such as oil, coal, gas, or minerals. Vogel concluded: “In short, we need to abandon economic growth in affluent countries, scale back resource extraction, and prioritize public services, basic infrastructures and fair income distributions everywhere.” He added, “In my view, the most promising and integral vision for the required transformation is the idea of degrowth—it is an idea whose time has come.”

Oh, so a completely political study. Who’s actually making money which low energy and no travel? Where’s it coming from for all this stuff with no economic growth? What would really be massive devolution of economies.

Read: To Stop Climate Crisis (scam), Americans Must Reduce Their Energy Use By 90% »

I just got done deleting a bunch of articles about climate cultists Blaming the collapse of the Surfside building on anthropogenic climate change (and, yes, a quick peak sees moron cultists on Twitter still climablaming), and then I run across this insane bit of climate crazy while looking for climate change articles, which takes it to a new level

Climate change could cost condo boards billions. They aren’t ready for it.

The collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium building in Surfside, Fla., is a terrible tragedy. Besides the stories of the victims and their grieving loved ones, early attention has focused on the causes of the collapse, such as how the building was constructed, the effects of saltwater on reinforced concrete and whether the condominium association was properly maintaining the high-rise.

Those are important matters, but the disaster exemplifies a bigger problem, one that will still loom once we have answers about what went wrong in Surfside: The untrained, unpaid and unsupervised volunteer directors of the nation’s more than 350,000 condo and homeowners’ associations, armed with limited financial resources, are expected to deal with the unprecedented infrastructure challenges that climate change poses to their communities. And there is no reason to believe that they are up to that task.

Well, I’m glad that Evan McKenzie, who teaches in the political science department and the law school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is here to tell us that Doom is coming. Remember when we were only supposed to listen to actual climate scientists? Regardless, what you have here is the Cult of Climastrology doing what they do best: taking one incident, blaming it on their cult belief of ‘climate change’ doom, then expanding this one incident to say that there is going to be much wider Doom soon.

As condos and HOAs blossomed across the country in the last 50 years, little or no thought was given to the eventual effects of climate change, in terms of location or construction quality. The common-interest housing sector emerged in the 1960s as a way to put more people on less land, increasing developer profits and local property tax revenue. The model spread rapidly, and condos and HOAs are now the default options for new construction in many states, not just across the Sun Belt where they originated but in older metro areas as well.

Now, McKenzie does seem to have a pretty good knowledge about HOAs and condos, having written several books on the subject, but, has he asked why so many grand high poobahs in the Cult of Climastrology, like Barack Obama, have purchased homes so close to the ocean. And, no, no one cared 50 years ago, and seeing how so many companies continue to put up buildings near the ocean, no one cares now. You don’t have to throw in the climate emergency when discussing putting up tall building near the ocean in areas that do not have a lot of bedrock, aren’t that far above sea level, and areas that are prone to violent storms. After a long lead up about the pitfalls of privately run HOAs, we get

In effect, condo and HOA developments are a huge experiment in privatization of local government functions, and sometimes the offloading of government responsibilities goes too far. We can expect a condo or HOA board to handle garbage collection, get the leaves and snow removed from private streets, and broadly live up to its responsibilities to residents. But when private communities took off in the 1960s, we didn’t even know what climate change was. We cannot realistically expect condo boards to prevent damage from sea level rise, more-frequent severe storms, extreme heat and drought, and other major changes in the environment — especially not in buildings that weren’t built to withstand such conditions. If the proliferation of condos and HOAs is to continue in the time of climate change, federal, state and local governments must play a more supportive, directive and protective role. Otherwise, millions of owners and their volunteer community leaders will be swamped by forces beyond their control.

In other words, the Government should take over running of condos and HOAs. Who is surprised that a climate cultist wants to go this route? It seems that Government control is part and parcel of the climate cult doctrine.

Oh, and as for climate apocalypse

How to cope with the climate apocalypse

The Financial Times screed is behind a true paywall, but, the point here is that it is really one of the first instances I’ve seen of a major news outlet using that phrase, climate apocalypse, for real, after those of us on the Skeptic side have used it to make fun of the climate cult.

BTW, there are some who are already linking the D.C. building collapse Thursday to ‘climate change’.

Read: Washington Post: Climate Apocalypse Could Cost Condo Boards Billions »