Help determine what a sustainable economy will be like!

How cost effective are renewable energy sources and what is the highest standard of living that can be maintained for everyone in a country? How much work is needed to manufacture renewable energy sources and the machinery needed to use it and how much energy is needed to produce that work?

I want to answer such questions, so I'm wonderring if anyone is interested in the practical side of things. Are there any groups or sites which look at this and try to envision civilisation after oil and gas runs out and perhaps after coal runs out (or becomes as expensive as it's alternatives)?

 

i've been persuing the practical side of these very things all my life. my mind is like a sive when it comes to trying to remember references. i just remember what i absorb from them and so cannot claim to be any sort of absolute authority on anything.

the amount of human energy required is no greater then what we are squandering now fighting ourselves by fighting nature and beating our heads against a wall that is in a sense our own heads also.

the problem isn't an engineering one primarily. we HAVE the tecnologies and the science, although there's nothing wrong with continuing to develop more and better. but the real obstical to IMPLIMENTING real solutions is the political opposition of major economic interests.

if you want actual numbers you'll have to visit a good university engineering department library. i couldn't quote them to you with any sort of absolute confidence to save my soul. but i can tell you that THE COMBINATION of wind, solar, micro-hydro, geo-thermal and so on, can just fine do everything neccessary the COMBINATION of oil, coal and neuclear, is doing now.

and little people sized trains powered by stored energy recharged from renewables, or even, in the smallest sizes, from onboard solar charging systems, can do for us everything combustion powered automobiles are doing for us now; WITHOUT having to pave over half the countryside to run them on.

what will it look like? depends on the relocalized cultural values in each place as places are forced to fall back on doing with what is local to them. but generally, roofs, nearly all of them, covered with solar cells, feeding in to local power grids, which may or may not still by tied into regeonal interties, and mom and pop farmer jones medium scale wind farms, as much or more then those super gigantic ones the centralized power producers insist upon, just lots and lots of them. what you will see for centralized power is geothermal, which is a matter of drilling down to where the rocks are hot, which really isn't more then a few miles, streight down, just about anyplace.

one problem of course IS creating incentives for the social organization neccessary for infrastructure, which the comfort zone no one wants to give up indeed depends upon.

and there again compromises are inevitable. some places deciding to be happy with less comfort zone as this relieves the need for as much group effort, while others, we will see once again a diversity of ingenuity not seen since the early to middle of the previous century if not the one before that.

ah, there are links and groups. i don't have them off hand. there's something called association for post petrolium local economy. something like that that has links. there's carfree.com or something like that which has a zillion links or a link to a big link farm about the subject. and again, and good university engineering libarary and a willingness to do your own leg/home-work is another good place to start.

=^^=
.../\...

 

Yes, politics is as much a practical a factor as the functional considerations, it is not just a case of saying "if people would just...", market forces must be taken into account. I don't want this to turn into a political slugfest however, I don't think manipulating people without telling them why you are so obsessed with something is a good idea. I will look at those links and meditate on this some more.

 

a sustainable "economy" will NOT be capitolist, NOR marxist, but it will be "green". there is no other "sustainability" without harmony with that.

anyone trying to pretend otherwise is just listning to their own ass talking with their head up inside of it.

real alternatives exist and are proven and only the short sightedness of major economic interests stand in their way. energy and transportation are not single source now and never have been. the mix will shift, chainge and evolve, as must lifestyle demands on them.

=^^=
.../\...

 

An efficient economic system would make up a vital element of a sustainable economy so that people make the best use of the resources they are allowed to use and are less motivated to use resources they aren't.

 

If every man and woman on Earth were to provide for themselves, nobody would go hungry or desperate again.


Grow your own vegatbles, raise your own meat and build your own home. It would be good. Also, if once a year, there was a giving day, where such supplies needed to poorer regions of the world could benefit. But then in turn they would need to give medicinal herbs and medicines to the western hemisphere.This is just an idea. I think money and greed and the state of our economy at present will soon come to an abrupt crash. And everyone throughout the world will feel its affects. It is time we exploited nature, whilst taking care of her at the same time. When humans can get the balance right, can there truly be a sustainable economy.There is just too much greed in the world for immediate changes.