This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org. License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l. ------------------------ Energy crisis: Fair rationing can provide enough for all By: [] Date: 2022-06 So we don’t know precisely what the cap on energy use needs to be to stay within planetary boundaries, but taking the Global Commons Institute’s proposal, the average Bangladeshi could increase their energy use by five times and stay within healthy limits. The average European would have to cut their usage by more than half. But what kind of life would we be leading if we were to stick to these limits? Could everyone in the world lead a good life using this level of energy, especially since the population is growing? If you are one of the many Europeans having to choose between heating and eating, being told that you should cut your energy use by half may understandably drive you into a fit of rage. But that’s because you currently live in the world of rationing by price. A study from 2020 found that it is in fact possible to provide a decent standard of living to everyone in the world, while living within a healthy planetary boundary for energy use. The researchers attempted to calculate how much energy would be needed to provide a decent living standard to a population of ten billion, which we are predicted to reach by 2050. They started with the premise that human needs are universal and finite, although they can be met in many different ways. This may seem like common sense to mere Earthlings like you and me but it flies in the face of mainstream economic thinking, which assumes that more is always better. The scientists reasoned that for people to be able to flourish, they need: physical health and safety; clean air and water; adequate nutrition; social and political participation; a level of autonomy cultivated through education and learning; and time and space for creativity and play. To achieve this kind of wellbeing, we need material goods and services such as food, housing, heating and cooling, transport, phones, hospitals and schools. Combining eco-efficiency and sufficiency approaches, the scientists conducting the study calculated that we could give these goods and services to a population of ten billion with just 40% of the total energy currently used, or between 310 and 440 kgoe per person per year. That’s three times less than the Global Commons Institute’s already ambitious proposal. In countries that are today’s highest per-capita consumers, this standard of living could be offered to all with energy cuts of 95%. This may evoke images of us living in caves, but these are the energy levels of the 1960s. Let’s face it, the swinging 60s were ‘cool’ (see what I did there with the climate gag?...). What kind of limits on people do the scientists propose to achieve these cuts in energy demand? The model assumes that each person has a 10-metre squared living space plus communal space of 20 metres squared in a household of four people. Everyone gets to have a smartphone and there is one computer per household. People can travel around 10,000 kilometres per year, including just over 1,000 kilometres in plane travel – equating to one short to medium-haul flight every three years. Everyone gets 4kg of new clothing a year. A predominantly plant-based diet is assumed, with some meat. The model includes healthcare for everyone, education for all five- to 19-year-olds, and a high-quality global communications network. Country-based adjustments are made, taking into account, for example, more heating or cooling requirements depending on climate. Reading this, you might find this scenario very restrictive of your freedom, with limits placed on living space, the amount of meat you can eat and plane travel. But remember, the needs of ten billion people are being met in this model, while keeping within planetary boundaries. Even in the richest countries, millions of people are not reaching this standard of living under the current system of rationing by price, never mind the half of humanity who in 2020 were living on less than $7.40 a day. And, as a bonus, in this sufficiency scenario, we aren’t all going to suffer and die in the near future because our planet is burning down. Win-win, I’d say. Breaking free The absolutely crucial point about sufficiency, however, is that it’s carried out in the context of radical equality. In the scenario described above, everyone has access to the same basic goods and services, bar some small changes based on things such as variations in climate. It’s not a life of ‘eco-austerity’ for the many and one long Boris Johnson-style rave-up for the few. Radical equality implies radical democracy. You are not going to achieve a fair allocation of the means of life if your politics consists of elites running the show, while everyone else turns up to a voting station like chumps every five years and goes through the motions of ballot casting. Communities need to actually make decisions about what they prioritise, how to produce what they need and how to allocate resources. For Murray Bookchin, the founder of social ecology, this was the essence of freedom. In Bookchin’s view, freedom wasn’t about doing whatever the heck we want and letting others clean up the mess. Real freedom was the freedom to collectively determine how to satisfy our needs in a precious and finite world. In a situation of radical equality and democracy, provisioning of the means of life needn’t be as rigid as the scenario in the study suggests. If your community wants to configure housing differently or eat a different diet, fine, as long as it is living in harmony with the rest of nature. If your household wants to switch out a couple of phones for an extra laptop, go ahead. Who knows, in this magical realm, maybe we wouldn’t even care about phones or laptops because we’d be too busy dancing with dolphins. Jokes, but the point is that this is about imagining a different society here, where perhaps we wouldn’t feel the need to check Instagram 17,000 times a day or glue ourselves to computer screens for work. This way, ‘equality’ doesn’t have to equate to ‘the same’. It means that all of us, with our different bodies, abilities and priorities, are getting what we need. Bookchin calls this the ‘equality of inequality’ – as opposed to the ‘inequality of equality’, whereby we are all given exactly the same by some top-down power regardless of our differences. Neither of these is to be confused with the ‘inequality of inequality’, which is the situation of rationing by price that we have now. [END] [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/ration-energy-climate-change-renewables-ukraine-gas-oil-carbon-tax-radical-democracy/ [2] url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ OpenDemocracy via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/