>It does not mean going back to how people lived in the Middle Age.
It basically does though. The clever technology that allows you to have a smaller carbon energy footprint usually just outsources the cost to somewhere else.
There's just no way I can see how people would have anywhere near today's quality of life without the corresponding energy consumption. Number one reason would straight up be political. You're going to have to curb a lot of freedoms from people to do it and they will have a reduction in quality of life since you will never be able to understand what's important to them.
First, it is important to realize that it's not a choice, really. Fossil energy is not unlimited. Either we start preparing for that, or it will happen and we will be unprepared (which will be worse).
> There's just no way I can see how people would have anywhere near today's quality of life without the corresponding energy consumption.
I think that there is a lot we can do without changing the quality of life.
First, we don't need to take the plane for a weekend trip, and for professional reasons many times it can be solved with a video call. My grand parents and even my parents did not fly nearly as much as I did, and I wouldn't say they were living in the Middle Age.
Then we don't need to eat meat. Not so long ago, again, people were not used to cheap meat like today in many places in the world. And pretty clearly, meat is less efficient to grow than plants.
I grew up in a world without smartphones, and I don't feel like I live much better today. Do we really need to swipe TikTok over 5G whenever we have a few minutes (or much more) to lose? Do we really need to have 50 machines running a 1h build on the Cloud for every single commit we push? Do we really need generative AI? I literally lived without it my whole life.
I grew up in the 90s/2000s, I wouldn't call that Middle Age. Many things today are more efficient than they used to be, the problem is the rebound effects. I would argue that we could do a lot already without altering our quality of life in any meaningful way (we would just need to change some habits, like losing 3h on social network everyday).
Of course that's not enough, we need to do a lot more, and that will be more painful. But if we don't manage to start with the part that is not painful, how will we ever get to the next part?
I understand where you are coming from, but this will never happen in the US. This is tantamount to political suicide here. We will all sooner die, or there will be war and revolution before the US gives up its individualism.
That's what I think as well. No way countries like the US (and others, obviously) can make that kind of changes. Unfortunately we're all on the same boat, we will all sink together.
It basically does though. The clever technology that allows you to have a smaller carbon energy footprint usually just outsources the cost to somewhere else.
There's just no way I can see how people would have anywhere near today's quality of life without the corresponding energy consumption. Number one reason would straight up be political. You're going to have to curb a lot of freedoms from people to do it and they will have a reduction in quality of life since you will never be able to understand what's important to them.