Clothes dryers during summer for most of us, are totally wasteful endeavors which serve not much at all as to function and only minimally with ease. It is in fashion.
I also need to preface my remarks with a "no offense intended" disclaimer; this is a debate over opinions and preferences, not facts. But I think most people who would claim that a clothes dryer is simply a "fashion" and isn't much of a labor-saving device, has most likely never lived without one. I have; when I was a child, a clothes line is what we used to dry clothes. And it's possible to do so even in the middle of a Minnesota winter; you can string up a clothes line inside. I've done that, too, when living in a studio apartment with no clothes washer or dryer in the apartment.
But like all labor-saving devices, from dishwashers to clothes washers to using a word processor on a computer instead of a typewriter, very few of those who have used the more advanced tech would ever voluntarily go back to the hand-operated method.
In the modern world, the solution to clothes dryers using a lot of energy is to switch to renewable sources of energy, not giving up the labor-saving device. On the other hand, if someone could invent a clothes dryer which uses a lot less energy, I'd certainly be in favor of that!
But the more I participate in climate change discussion and run into things like this, the more it is I realize there is not a iceballs chance in hell for us. We are doomed to suffer the result which is not a one desired and will result in many untimely demises in the end.
But the problem is that the proposed solutions from the "green" crowd generally involve living more simply, with fewer modern conveniences. That's not going to sell. Worse, it's ignoring the most fundamental problem: Overpopulation. Even if everyone lived like a third-world farmer, that wouldn't solve the problem.
Just look at all the slash-and-burn agriculture which is destroying the Amazon rain forest. I saw a documentary on that situation. They interviewed a farmer, who said he knew what he was doing was illegal, but what could he do? "I have to feed my family", he said. And that argument is going to trump all the arguments that the "green movement" comes up with. Nobody is going to convince someone to voluntarily give up his lifestyle if it means his family is going to starve.
We can try for a half-a-loaf... or more accurately, a quarter-of-a-loaf partial solution; one that will only slow global warming and climate change. A partial solution involving everyone in first-world countries voluntarily choosing to live like those in third-world countries.
But the actual solution to the problem will require draconian birth control, and strict population limits. The human population must be limited to what the carrying capacity of the Earth's ecosystem can handle. Very clearly, we have exceeded that limit. Talking about the problems of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions is only talking about the
symptom of the real problem of overpopulation. To some extent, I think it's a deliberate attempt to distract from the underlying cause.
If we human beings can limit our numbers to something reasonable, then there's no reason we can't all "live rich". There's no reason, other than greed and ignorance and indifference, for anyone to live poor. It's the total amount of greenhouse gases and pollution that the human species emits that's the ultimate problem. Trying to limit just those whose lifestyle causes the most emissions and the most pollution, trying to limit them to a lower standard of living, isn't a long-term solution to the problem. It's short-term thinking.
In fact, it's the richest countries in the world which are successfully controlling their populations. Europe is actually seeing a very slight population decline over time. And in the U.S., the only reason the population keeps rising is that far more immigrants (both legal and illegal) come here to live every year. Now, I'm not saying that first-world countries don't have an overpopulation problem. Probably most of them do need to reduce their numbers, but at least the problem there isn't getting
worse every year.
It's the third-world countries where populations are exploding. So limiting everyone to living at a third-world standard would actually be counter-productive.
With sufficient limits to the numbers of humans on Planet Earth, the problems of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions would vanish. Pollution would once again become just a local problem, not a global one. Imposing such draconian population limits in third-world countries seems impossible. I don't see how it can be done in a manner widespread and effective enough to actually
solve the problem. Sadly, the only effective method of population control in such regions would be ones that only megalomaniac madman would propose; "solutions" such as deliberately spreading epidemic diseases.
Of course, if there was an easy solution, then we'd already be using it.
Just kidding, your point about money for other things of more importance is well taken.
