RE: [pf] current philosophy challenged.

>Betsy Barnum wrote:
>> Please ... tell me how people (motivated to change by shame ..) who
decide to reduce their consumption in their own lives are going to change
these realities.
>>
On Fri, 18-May-2001 15:15:12 GMT, David A wrote:
>I think only slowly and gradually. But I am not an optimist. I think we
need to recognize that even among us there are certain limits of how far
we're willing to go, practically, to reduce our own consumption. ...
>
>I think the planet's "health" is probably going to get worse, ...
>
· We may be able to see the likely route by looking at industrial history
in the USA.

· I see the main hope for the future in the rest-of-the-world's unanimity
in supporting the Kyoto Agreement about what to do about climate change.
  I hope that the USA will be left out of more and more of the new economic
activities in the rest of the OECD (developed world), the readjusting from
high energy-and-materials-use industry to something much more sustainable.
It's already happening (e.g. windturbine production replacing some of the
huge numbers of fossil-fuelled power stations) in the European Union. And
to a small extent (so far) in Japan.

· My point is that this change from "smokestack" industry to "cleanroom"
industry in the USA, ("from Pittsburg to Silicon Valley"), has shown how
States and Regions can be left behind as newer ways of doing things are
taken up and made successful in previously scorned places.

· Leaving the traditionalists to scramble to catch up if they can (and they
usually don't ever really catch up - Gary: what about PA?).

· I am no student of history. Can someone confirm that we can learn this?

· To get back to Betsy B's and David A's assumption that it's either
virtually impossible or will take a very long time, for the American
"culture" to change. 
  How did the movers-and-shakers in the late 18th & early 19th centuries in
those States where the power and wealth was, change, adjust, adapt, when
they realised that history was moving on and leaving them behind?

· Can we see from the between-States shift back then, how things might
happen now, in a between-Nations (or: between-power-blocs) shift in the
near future? How did the old industries stumble, stagnate, collapse? And
the people involved (both directors and workers): did they have to die-off
before there was a chance for a complete shift in those old states (as in
many parts of the development of Science)?
  Are we once again dependent on the young, to take us into a different
world? And even if so, what part can aware leaders and ordinary people
play, in this change?

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
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