The greens want us to go back to a preindustrial existence. It would be deadly. There is no way we could feed the world with that level of technology. There would be a massive die-off but that doesn’t seem like a bad thing for the extreme environmentalists. They assume there will be enough peasants around to make sure that they have the good wines and cheese to go with their bean sprouts. They assume tofu will survive.
For those of us not in the elites and managing to survive, it will be incredibly boring. Think about two glorious things we take for granted that would have been miracles before cheap electricity.
Hot showers
Cold apples
Two modern marvels are involved. The first is hot water on demand or, if you want to go another step, clean water on demand. Because of the modern infrastructure you don’t need to chop wood, dig peat or haul coal. Then you face the challenge of starting the fire. You don’t need to stomp through the snow, break the ice and hope that the rope doesn’t break as you draw water that you then must tote back to your drafty, insect infested house.
And how about them refrigerators? You think your Brussels sprouts go bad quickly now then how fast do you think it would happen without the old ice box? For ice you push a lever. You don’t need to go out in the middle of the winter and saw blocks of ice out of the local pond, pile it in a big hole you dug and surround it with sawdust, hoping that it won’t melt before your 4th of July party.
That pretty much says it all. You could multiply this list endlessly but simply put, “Would you rather have cold showers and room temperature apples?” The poor people of America live at a level that was beyond the reach of kings in the old days.
That is poverty I can live with.
homo unius libri
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