161 comments on Electricity - No Easy Answers
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161 comments on Electricity - No Easy Answers
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GAIA Host Collective
Sure... and the savings would amount to what?
For most people, saving electricity is more of a moral thing.
the savings would amount to what?
Whatever amount their efforts led to. There's certainly no one set number.
For most people, saving electricity is more of a moral thing.
Interesting; would you say 'most people' are moral or immoral?
Amoral.
Most are moral in my limited experience. Right or wrong is another question entirely.
Moral and amoral generally have circles. A person may behave morally to his wife and children and amorally at work or to people of a different ethnicity or sexual orientation. In the AGW and Peak Oil sphere we have to add the dimension of future generations, humanity as a species, other species etc. One might make a moral decision to burn a bit less electricity or other fuels and yet be perceived as amoral by future generations for not cutting back more.
Remember that many Nazi guards were good husbands and fathers. It all depends on how you draw the circle. In the light of what the world will look like for future humans I would say that all first world and second world people (mayself included) will be judged as amoral or immoral by humans of the future (should any exist)
I see people trying to save the tiniest amount of electricity all the time. And I see people from around the world talking about it on the web. They're not doing that to save enough money to buy a beer every other week or something.
People may be superficial, weak, willfully ignorant and so on. This may make them watt-wise and kW-foolish. But amoral? A minority for sure.
The way the first and second worlders are living is using up the ancient energy sources that might be spread out for use by future generations. The way first and second worlders are using that fuel is causing climate change that could possibly make the world uninhabitable for most or even all future humans. Hardly anyone in the first or second world views those actions as immoral or amoral. They might have twinges of concern or guilt and take some small actions to change how they live but by an large they feel their lifestyle is earned (or even I have had people tell me their right as Americans). However no doubt future generations should humanity continue to exist will feel that they they were greedy, irresponsible, evil, immoral, amoral etc. If it was us living in that hot depleted world and we knew that a few generation earlier people lived may levels of energy use higher than humans had ever lived before and did not change when the scientists told them Global Warming Disaster was coming, Peak Oil was coming, we would no doubt feel the same.
Its easy to say foolish, weak, ignorant when we are the ones bringing the disaster to its final stages, but no doubt those who have to live in the disaster will have quite different words for this generation. Perhaps amoral is not relevant, perhaps we are just not programmed to such energy wealth and incapable of responding correctly. No morals need apply, just a species that created a niche it could no longer live in much like the early anaerobic bacteria that created an oxygenated world and then had to move underground. But we humans label each other guilty or not, moral or not and I do believe that future generations will judge us harshly - I can't blame them.