07-01-2019, 08:38 AM
(06-29-2019, 10:11 AM)beechnut79 Wrote: In a horoscope publication I have there was indication that today you might want to indulge your senses by taking a walk in nature. Doing so could definitely improve our collective carbon footprint. My question is: is today's society far too wired up to slow down enough to enjoy such things? It has now been nearly a half century since our much fabled gasoline shortage, where folks had to wait in long line to get gas and filling stations reduced their operating hours. Sadly, not much has changed in all of this time, and our dependency on the auto has increased since that time as the exurbs have mushroomed. When do you think American society will get serious about one branch of the global warming issue, that is the reduction of carbon footprints? With so many folks now having all these projects on-the-go, do you feel that we are spreading ourselves too thin?
Horoscope or not, indulging one's senses (in part, relaxing some senses from excesses of some banal-but-obnoxious stimuli) by experiencing nature is a good idea. May of us are excessively wired-up, and one way to escape such is to literally get away from one stimulus to appreciate another.The symphony in a darkened concert hall or the art in a quiet gallery? Such allows us to concentrate at times.
The solution for the gasoline shortage was higher gas prices which often resulted in more exploration for petroleum, a nationwide "double-nickel" speed limit, people giving up Sunday drives, auto-makers selling lighter cars, and people seeing energy as a legitimate cost to be constrained. People replaced high-cost appliances with low-cost appliances. They started carpooling.
Much of the pollution comes not only from the burning of motor fuels (catalytic converters did wonders for that and had the wonderful bonus of getting tetraethyl lead out of motor fuels) but from manufacturing.
Let us remember that the worst waste of energy was in the 'socialist' bloc, where governments trivialized the costs of energy depletion and of pollution. World consumption of fossil fuels plummeted in the 1990s as more market-based societies started recognizing energy as a cost instead of a 'free good'.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.