Planetary Boundaries versus Wasteful and Polluting Gratification

Although prices encourage producers to use less resources, and consumers (sometimes) to be frugal, business (markets / trade / commerce) rewards, favours and incentivises gratuitous (Lat.) consumption, addiction, gluttony, and the potlatch. So, some countries now “use” (?):

• - 15 kg oil+gas/person/day & 275 million vehicles for 330 million people [usa]
• - 8 kg coal/person/day _ 600 kg/steel/capita/year [cn]
• - 3,550 air-passenger-km/person/year (causing 875 kgCO2eq/p/yr) [eu]
• - 350 g of meat/person/day [many countries]

or

• - 39 million vehicles for 28 million households [uk]
• - and 100 g offal/person/day going to waste (afaik/bbc) [uk]

or

• - 2,040 Watts of fossil energy consumed, for every person (of humans, whose maintenance body/metabolic energy requirement is 20-30 Watts) [globally in 2019]

People, all around the world, hope for these. (Especially because they are much promoted and marketed).

Commerce promotes (is #rewarded by) ever greater consumption (in excess and waste). That is mostly wasteful, destructive, and polluting. For example, in excess sports-vehicles/cars/airtravel/concrete/steel, excess meat/dairy, and other harmful & unnecessary gratification.

"Hi @JohnKerry / #XiJinping / @EUClimateAction and @NarendraModi with #WhatAreYouGoingToDoAboutThis?"

I would be very interested to hear your thoughts.

“THE GLOBAL COMMISSION ON THE ECONOMY AND CLIMATE” (2014, EU+, 308 pages) mentioned:

• - growth 753 times
• - but limits/constraints/cuts only around 100 times

What is Going on: Ecosystem or Economy? (we need the ecosystem..)

In a letter in the Cambridge Independent last year - which was truthful and factual - however (for what I guess must be good reasons) the (rabid/gibberish) response, that they chose to publish, libelled-insulted-and-belittled-me. But, as local colleagues chose not to help with legal action, I gave up on the matter (as I imagined that I must have got it wrong).

But, just now, a few other emails (on 'talk-meetings' / 'protest' / 'green') prompt me to think that maybe the silence is unhelpful. (And that the libel in the paper was perhaps from Dark Forces / Misguided).

It was clear in Perth (WA) that the prawns we caught would soon die off from Lawn Fertiliser (in the 1980's) and that watering Lawn's was utter madness (in a low rainfall area). As is the suicidal use in 2020 of: oil/gas (14.4 kgoilgas/cap/day = 15.5 tCO2/cap/yr + NOx); 600 kg/cap/yr steel (or 8 kg/coal/cap/day = 6 tCO2/cap/yr + NOx); and the 37.9 kg of offal totally wasted (?/afaik) each year per person in the UK. The shocking inequities in this consumption (which is utterly pointless waste, arising from perverse incentives, afaik?), and destruction of habitat, is something that perhaps would merit more realism.

But, when I suggested a photo essay (the allotted per capita per year barrel/s of oil_eq/sacks-grain/pulses/veg-oil/sides-animals/tanks-water/steel/plastic/bricks/appliances/cars, in EU/Aus/NAm and Sri Lanka/Kerala), and got no response, I imagined that it must be a bad idea.

There is Piketty (untrue anyway, but also it's only 'wealth' ie/tokens..), which is important in what people think, but may have little impact on people's aspirations. (Consider: 'if you are in a bus age 35, you can count yourself a failure': as Margaret Thatcher said in 1986, Hansard). Which are also notably absent from the media and debate. And from our local planning (the spec of our footprint parameters, fixed up until 2040 at least: everyone commuting 10 miles each way per day, for eg, stone age construction (?), etc).

The prawns (migratory) have long since died off from that place (?). Every house in Perth still has a lawn, supplied from fossil water and gas-powered desalination.

Liquor (booze) is a huge part of our retail economy, and many others...

We talk about these, like talking about it is a meaningful activity. In 'party meetings', 'media debates', 'protests', 'speeches', 'letters', 'greenpeace/friends-of-the-earth/msf/xr', parliament and the UN/etc. But the prawn situation was absolutely obvious, and nothing was done. (So the green party (and greenpeace/etc) was a waste of time! Or was it worse?). But what happened / actions speak loud.

What do you advise? I can't understand.

Secretary of the Interior, UCLA, 1971? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH1cZwSkc94

"We found 1.5 trillion barrells of oil" (1971)
Oil guy: "Let's burn it all!"