stabby_cicada

A lot of people in this thread are deliberately missing the point because they don't want to hear it.

They want to live in independent suburban homes, in isolated subdivisions where you can only get to jobs or groceries or social events by car, with big yards soaked in pesticides so they don't have bugs in their houses, etc, etc.

They want to live high consumption lifestyles. They don't want to live in resource efficient, high density housing because they imagine it will reduce their standard of living.

So they nitpick the image and make up reasons why it's unrealistic because they don't want to admit the kinds of homes seen on the left are unsustainable and unrealistic in the long term.

There's a difference between "renewable and abundant" and "infinite".

It would take the resources of five Earths for everyone on the planet to live like an American. More solar panels aren't going to change that.

What will bring sustainability is Americans, and other people living wealthy Western lifestyles, learning to live comfortably with fewer resources. You can be comfortable without eating beef for dinner every night. You can be comfortable living in a resource-efficient apartment instead of a sprawling subdivision. You can be comfortable taking public transit instead of owning a car, or teleworking instead of commuting daily, or having a low flow shower in your home instead of a tub.

Home ownership, car ownership, a meat heavy diet, fast fashion, disposable technology, plastic everything, are entitlements that you receive as a benefit of living in the imperial core. These are not necessities of life. You just think they are because patriotic and corporate propaganda has convinced you of it to make you a collaborator in its colonial extraction of the world's resources.

A sustainable comfortable future doesn't just mean improving the standard of living of the poorest in the world. It means the world's wealthiest need to check their entitlement and learn the difference between comfort and luxury.

This thread is an object lesson in why the whole world hates Americans.

It's precisely as inaccurate and ethnocentric as American media's discussion of, say, politicians in Africa or Latin America would be. Which is the joke.

Yes, and, once established, a grove of trees can continue providing biomass for literally centuries. Look up coppicing.

"Poor Americans don't deserve electricity because rich Americans are privileged and wasteful" is certainly one of the takes of all time.

You spent a lot of paragraphs on a "dumb" argument. Sounds like, despite your insistence it doesn't matter, it really does matter to you.

USians gonna US, I guess.

When you think about it, it's kind of offensive to call ourselves (US residents) "Americans" as if in all of North and South America we're the only country that matters.

You might look up cohousing.

In this case, the "who" is human biology. Humans evolved in tribes, not nuclear families.

There's always the "cool aunt/uncle/friend with no children who's always available to babysit" option. Communal child rearing generally starts with extended family - those without minor children pitch in to help the adults with minor children - and you don't need kids of your own to help out that way.

But you do kind of need a trusting relationship with those adults first, so they'll be willing to trust you with their kids, and it's hard to build those relationships from scratch, or rebuild them with family members if you've lost that trust already.

Done