Robelto's Friends

2,000 Watts.
I saw on the news yesterday that Switzerland is apparently trying to create something they call a "2,000 watt society," that is, a civilization wherein each member only uses 2,000 watts of energy. That is apparently the mean energy usage of every human being if you do nothing but divide energy usage by population where Zimbabwe and Norway, Micronesia and Moscow are all included in the same figures. Currently your average European uses about 6,000 watts. Your average American uses twice as much.

They interviewed a woman who has redesigned her home to be as energy efficient as possible. It even recycles body heat for shower water. Her family eats only locally produced food. They're about as hardcore as a Swiss family can get. Their energy usage: 3,500 watts per person. That makes it seem like this might not be a realistic goal. In addition to having energy efficient homes and eating locally produced food the Swiss are also encouraged to save energy by biking or walking to work, conserving electricity by turning out lights and using all of the traditional methods people have been taught to save energy.

Why?

I mean that.

What's the point of all of this conservation? What's their endgame? Do we just continue to reduce, reuse, recycle, and turn everything off so that we can stack ourselves higher and more efficiently? Is that where we want to be headed? 12 or 15 billion shivering, half-starved bodies huddling together in the dark waiting for dawn to herald another day's trudge?

I listen to these green advocates and all I hear them talk about is less, less, less. Go slower. Go shorter distances. Don't go at all. Sure, your life ultimately has less happening in it, but we'll all continue to exist a little longer, and that's worth any sacrifice, isn't it? The green movement to me seems ultimately about having less than our parents. Doing less than our grandparents. Going fewer places than we ever thought we would and somehow being satisfied with it. Maybe in a perfect, enlightened world we could do that, but as far as I'm concerned these people are just peddling misery.

I don't have the answers here. I don't know if we should colonize space, tie our tubes, or just kick off a good old-fashioned thermonuclear donnybrook to give ourselves some breathing room. Maybe we should just merrily march over the edge and see what comes next after it all collapses. I just don't want to think that we're at or have already passed humanity's peak. I don't want to be part of the first generation that can talk about the good old days honestly because they really were better than now.

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