by Bradley Knockel
Many of the links below are from the Kurzgesagt YouTube channel. Can we trust them? I struggle with finding what I consider to be objective sources, and I hope to at least get close to the facts.
Interestingly, the human brain is rarely persuaded by facts. This is a very serious limitation that we must all think about in order to overcome it! I dream of a world where the solutions to problems are actually implemented. In this world, we would all understand the solutions and therefore appreciate and enjoy the efforts and rewards, and a healthy fact-based debate fueled by curiosity will continue.
Why protect humanity? Why not let the next several generations be the final ones who use up all the resources then leave the planet to the remaining species? Personally, I want a future like Star Trek: The Next Generation, where there is no longer a need for money, and everyone can just focus on being the best versions of themselves. If there is a chance of this ever happening, let's keep this humanity train going!
Timelapse of the far future (the end of the video gets very speculative)
How the universe could kill everything in it without warning
Great Filter (I must point out that there could be multiple Great Filters)
Technological singularity is when/if computers become better at designing better computers than we are, which might occur (keep in mind that nature favors logistic growth over permanent exponential growth)
Inevitable death of the Sun, or the much sooner supercontinent possibly changing the climate enough to kill all mammals
Here is a comprehensive Wikipedia article
This is a very incomplete list. There are many more concerns that the next sections may address.
Nuclear bombs (and war in general).
High-altitude nuclear detonations or solar flares destroying critical components of entire power grids (would we be okay?). You may be shocked to see how likely a disastrous solar storm is.
Humans are in a predicament regarding technological progress and sustainability. Human progress is inevitable and permanent because (1) our species has always attempted to achieve "the impossible" even if long-term great risk exists and (2) the population rise caused by progress causes an irreversible situation in that many people would die if we would revert back to the way life was. Population and infrastructure have exponentially grown (as has mining, plastic production, inappropriate agriculture turning fertile land into deserts, and chemicals in our atmosphere) suffocating the ecosystems on our planet. The question is, can we find new sustainable methods of obtaining materials, food, and energy and find new sustainable methods for disposing of waste before the planet runs out of resources, clean air, and healthy ecosystems? If the current manmade Holocene extinction event causes the planet to undergo something like a global ecological collapse, will human population drop occur via starvation, disease, or wars? Which people will be the ones to die? Here are some Wikipedia articles about world energy consumption and overpopulation. The world has never seen such numbers of human beings, so these times are unprecedented.
I generally am not worried about something just because my naturally small-minded and weak human brain feels offended or scared. I value thinking globally on longer time scales because we now live in a global world even though our brains are not meant for these times. Regarding overpopulation, we must think in the long-term and not always get what we want in the present.
When I look around the world, I see beauty in nature and in humanity, but I also am highly annoyed with human adults. To quote The Matrix: "Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague, and we are the cure." This might be an insult to cancer! But seriously, we need to do better.
Let's set the stage with some history. Agriculture allowed human population to increase greatly. Interestingly, looking at bones of people before and after the rise of agriculture, people were healthier before. Then, the industrial revolution and cities allowed huge population rise, and disease, filth, and misery became the norm. Population growth was a selfish and necessary thing. Your family and country needed high numbers to fight off others to control resources. How is this very different from cancer cells or virus replicating?
Recently, technology has finally allowed the quality of life to increase perhaps above the levels of nomadic times. Certainly we are living longer than those times. Human suffering still exists, but it is quickly reducing (though not quickly enough in my opinion!). For the next several decades, limited resources aren't really an issue on the global scale (until we use them up), so I predict that this quality of life will continue for a while. Giraffes, elephants, and tigers will see their habitat disappear, but humans will have quality of life for many more decades. But do we want to live in a world where we don't even have room for giraffes?
I look around at the problems the world is facing, and they can all be improved (sometimes fixed!) by slowly reducing population. Taking COVID-19 as an example, pandemics are much worse in high population density (and poverty causes faster spread of disease). But here is where things might get tricky: which family or country should lead in reducing population? Luckily, educated families and countries already are leading the way! So let's educate the world! To lower population, it is especially important to educate women. Why can't knowledge save us? Why can't we overcome the ancient programming of our brains to make the modern world a permanently good one?
What should our population goal be? From what I can find, 9 billion is the certain max when we run out of non-renewable energy sources decades from now, so, at 8 billion, we really should at least stop growing the population, especially as global warming reduces the population capacity of Earth. But why reach the certain max? Why not instead aim for health and happiness? 4 billion is likely safe in the long term. 2 billion allows for everyone to be comfortable. I see no need to go below 2 billion. More people means more progress towards things like curing disease, but why do we need fast progress if everyone is already happy and there are not too many of them that can get sick? In fact, overall fewer people will die with a small happy population because there will be more progress per capita. My main concern is that I want humans to leave Earth before the Sun cooks it and to leave the Solar System before the Sun dies, so 2 billion is a good minimum number.
We are not playing God by planning and shaping our world. If this is playing God, then humans have been doing it since agriculture and since our first LEGOs as children, and we have been behaving as a very cruel, arrogant, and short-sighted god.
As for how to reduce population, this is where it gets tricky. We would have to slowly reduce population because less kids means fewer people to run the world when we are all old and need to be cared for. We can either (1) make two-children or three-children laws with harsh consequences or (2) solve many of the world's problems allowing for all people (especially females) to be educated enough to make good decisions. Educating people, especially females, has been shown to greatly help! I have hope that technological progress will solve most technological problems allowing for a global standard of living that allows for everyone to become educated and maintain no more than the current population. But we must invest in sustainable technologies before we run out of time!
Even though I choose to have hope, I am worried about how scientific progress has been getting diminishing returns in recent decades. Humans are investing more and more money to get the same or less total results. Experiments and technology are getting so complicated that troubleshooting issues is becoming slower and slower. While improvements of current technology will of course continue, newer technologies might take centuries to develop. Fusion power would be great, and there could be some quick breakthroughs that we must keep looking for, but I feel it would be wise to not plan on breakthroughs. As a scientist, I would like to say that science will allow the current population to continue for centuries, but how could I know this?
The way I see it, the whole point of the wild freedoms in the US (for example, we can openly carry guns in public—and the cost of these gun laws are very high murder rates)—is to generate a culture of freely trying the impossible. I sure hope that there are still "impossible" discoveries and inventions that can be accomplished.
Our own ignorance is the greatest threat to ourselves and the world. I think everyone must agree that to harm society without personally benefitting is irrational. There are many people in the US who refused to wear masks during the COVID-19 crisis after the CDC recommended that at-least-cloth masks be worn. Refusing to wear a mask is literally killing immunocompromised people and harming the economy, and you only slightly benefit by not wearing a mask in terms of comfort, which is not a benefit if you contract COVID-19. I am a huge fan of protecting the economy, so let's follow the simple safety rules to control the spread of the disease so that the economy can be sustainably reopened (anything to reduce R0 helps!). Why are people harming their country so deeply just so they aren't inconvenienced to wear a mask? Ignorance. Ignorance is certainly a great threat.
There are countless examples of ignorance causing harm...
• In high school, I believed in various quackery: ch'i, organic farming, non-GMO food (though various corporations being bad probably isn't quackery), and filtering US water. To my defense, I was young, the Internet was brand new, and many of these lines of thinking aren't completely incorrect. Even after college, I once got tendonitis quite badly in my ankles and, after extensive Internet research, thought that rest was very important. It wasn't until my Mom dragged (carried?) my adult self to the doctor that I learned that strengthening my ankles in a healthy way was what I badly needed to cure my tendonitis after I allowed them to become very weak from prolonged rest. I was ignorant.
• When Arizona governor Doug Ducey blocked mayors from requiring people to wear masks during the COVID-19 crisis (causing hospitals to become full), some of the people who went into public buildings without masks blamed the governor for their choice. They were ignorant of their responsibility to wear a mask and of their responsibility to not blame others for their actions. Would these people stab people if stabbing was legal? Would they go along with the Nazi Party if they were living in Germany during World War II? I sort of understand a freedom-obsessed person saying that the government shouldn't require people to not spread disease, but I will never understand an individual choosing to spread disease and shut down economies, and I despise the attitude of not taking responsibility for one's actions.
By the way, I don't really understand keeping the government out of forcing people to wear masks because (1) businesses that try to kick people out for not wearing masks are met with violence, and (2) seatbelt laws exist, and unlike wearing masks, wearing a seatbelt doesn't prevent you from killing other people.
• In the middle of 2021, when much of the world was desperate for COVID vaccines, the US witnessed the absurd battle to get various large groups—the immoral, the narcissists, and those who need help understanding the issues—vaccinated so that life could return back to normal and so that hospitals could stop being in constant danger of filling up. The immoral were those who wouldn't get the vaccine simply because no one had made them do it yet. I call them the immoral because they are worse than the torturers in the famous Milgram experiment—and perhaps worse than the Germans who obeyed the Nazis and who inspired the Milgram experiment—in that they don't just mindlessly obey; they want someone to tell them what to do, which is scary. They never learned responsibility, empathy for society, risk management, or how to be motivated internally, though it is never too late to learn. On the other extreme are the narcissists who refused to be told what to do and would actively find conspiracy theories and protest groups that supported their choice to be uniquely allowed to destroy lives. Luckily, capitalism motivated the immoral when employers, events, and insurance companies started requiring people to be vaccinated. As for the narcissists, there isn't much to be done to help them. However, there are plenty of people who just need to have emotional conversations with people they trust to feel that they have been listened to and that their doubts are understood. These people clearly don't value scientific, long-term, or statistical thinking—perhaps because they have been made to feel stupid from attempting this in the past—so explaining the logic of vaccines is not the strategy to take. Instead, they respond to the emotional argument of how safety, freedom, and helping society are better than asphyxiation and death. Only about 15% of US citizens are the narcissists who believe that the vaccine is bad, but these 15% have put doubt in other people's minds and have prevented common sense rules like mandatory COVID vaccines to enter a school—a rule no different from having to wear seatbelts or having to get other non-COVID vaccines before entering schools.
• A brief glance at the Middle East reveals how extremism poisons civilized society. The US also has extremism as the two political parties move farther apart as the social media "filter bubble" increases our ignorance. Once the majority of citizens become sufficiently ignorant, a representative democracy cannot exist. The Internet is making smart people smarter and has a lot of quackery ready for those who do not know how to ask the right questions.
• Instead of coming from a position of strength, self love, and a spirit of giving, many people have kids because they are broken. Parents may want somebody to love them, somebody to make up for their mistakes, or just want kids because it's expected.
• Populism, such as people following demagogues like Trump.
Extremism cannot be removed by ignoring the extremists. The tribes/denominations in the Middle East get power at the cost of ignoring the other tribes/denominations, which always propagates the cycle of extremism. However tempting it is, we must not do anything like rob anti vaxxers of their right to vote, even though it would get rid of both conservative and liberal extremists all at once from the voting pool. Anti-vaxxer tactics would just become more extreme. Unlike children and felons who typically cannot vote, the narcissists who are anti vaxxers just want to feel like they are better than everyone else, not worse, so they would act out even more. We must never believe what they say, but we must not humiliate them more than we must. We must treat them like any other human beings. The road to a healthy mind is slow and cannot be forced.
How do we fix ignorance? Shame or mockery does not work. It makes people fight harder. One thing that works is leading by example or sharing why you personally do what you do without attacking other choices. For those wonderful people who are still open to learning, education is the solution.
While I believe that controlling overpopulation helps all other global problems, there is something that fixes overpopulation and other things such as our personal lives: education. By education, I certainly mean school, but I also very much mean emotional and experiential learning that occurs outside of school, like journaling and learning from any wise members of our families!
As a science person, I see great value to science education, including political science, economics, and psychology. If people could learn how to think about the larger systems they live in, they would all have worn masks during the COVID-19 crisis, vaccinate their children against the measles, not get their news from social media, etc. That is, people will make better decisions with information once they can process their emotions enough to act rationally.
As a human being, I see great value to English class. Here, we can learn to write, reflect, and journal. By being exposed to many different perspectives, we can start to figure out who we are and who we want to be. We can learn to see the world as our neighbors, victims, and enemies see it. I believe that most (all?) of human actions and beliefs are rooted in feelings and emotion. It is vital that we all process (work through) our feelings and emotions, and stories help us do that. Everyone doing this would solve many of the worlds problems as irrationality and internal barriers would be greatly reduced. I work through my emotions by journaling approximately every other day, and I highly recommend it. Before that, I was blind to things, and I didn't know I was. After I started journaling, some great things happened: I broke up with my girlfriend of 7 years, I started reconnecting with people I had written off, and I made it through grad school. Please share your feelings at whatever stage they're at with someone and/or, if you're like me, journal. Our feelings will be different depending on our priorities and life experiences, and that's great! All feelings are valid! Not all actions are good, but processing all emotions is how we can get better actions. Hopefully, in addition to emotional development, a good English class will teach us technical skills as well: how to question informative texts for their logic and reliability, write concisely about technical topics, and writing in various contexts!
I don't mean to shame anyone who doesn't like school. I never cared for English class due to its tendency to reward writing pages of meaningless yet pretty-sounding bullshit and due to us reading antiquated fiction stories that I had no say in. I still made sure I learned how to write well, though open-ended writing took me a while to figure out. I'll certainly make sure that reading is a large part of my kids' lives starting at a young age because an exposure to reading at a young age is very helpful for becoming educated. Also, in English class, I learned a lot of types of fiction that I don't like, which is also a valuable experience, though I honestly don't think it was worth the cost. I hope English classes have improved by reading more relevant texts (not forcing us to read Shakespeare's plays!) or by just watching movies or reading short stories instead of forcing everyone to read stupid huge long novels. I didn't care for English class, but I learned enough from it to help shape my life. Similar to my dislike of English class, my wife never cared to take any more science classes than required because she doesn't much care about the physical details of how things work, but she learned enough about science to certainly believe science, and many of the elementary students she teaches look forward to science because of how fun she makes it! Feel free to have your favorite subjects and ways of learning, but learn. It may be hard to see in the short-term, but learning is of great importance to you and the world.
As for people not wearing masks during the COVID outbreak, having completed more school does not greatly increase a person's odds of wearing a mask! Instead, people don't wear a mask for often silly reasons like not wanting to appear weak or, as a response to stress, wanting to return to a comfortable way of life. I conclude that emotional education is what the US is in desperate need of. We must be able to process our emotions else we are enslaved by them causing irrationality and ignorance.
At the very least, children must have as many caring adults in their lives as possible to prevent people being on the very lowest end of the antisocial spectrum. If it weren't for the very worst people, there wouldn't be dictators, there would be many fewer cops and lawyers and prisons, the need for complicated and expensive security would not exist, recycling would not be regularly contaminated and thrown out, and there would be fewer wildfires, very little litter, nowhere to get drugs like meth and heroin and cocaine, etc. Most people are mostly good! We all are partly bad! But we should understand that the worst do a lot of damage.
In an ideal world where everyone was much smarter, life would be wonderful! No more idiotic ads. Complicated financial savings accounts with complicated rules would not have to exist because we would all have the self control to simply save and invest wisely. Finding competent employees would be easy. Everyone would drive intelligently. Senseless waste could be prevented in many ways.
You see things, and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were, and I say "Why not?" – George Bernard Shaw
Global problems are a relatively new challenge for humans to solve. Global problems need international solutions. Luckily, the scientific community is good at collaborating internationally. Scientists just need the funding! Sometimes, private industry can find enough money. Regardless, individuals and communities will play a key role in inspiring politicians and entrepreneurs to make the necessary changes. Personally, even if some countries or the majority of voters do the wrong thing, I want to be able to one day tell my grandkids that I was smart about trying to prevent the global crises.
Helping other countries improve their infrastructure (such as their economies and schools) helps everyone. Once the infrastructure exists, countries can become democracies, which are more peaceful and usually do not threaten each other with nukes. The same logic applies to the poor areas of our own cities so that they can contribute in more ways that crime.
Global warming has a doable multi-part solution (such as converting to natural refrigerants)! Unlike "organic" farming, regenerative farming seems to be a wise choice.
We need to make burning our remaining fossil fuels clean, and we need to use and develop new renewable energy sources such as concentrated solar power with thermal energy storage. We will need to invest in a Smart Grid to protect us from the unexpected. 100% renewable energy could be possible! Since it takes generations to change the infrastructure of the world, we need to start now! Did you know that the US still heavily subsidizes fossil fuels?! Fuel will still be needed for the military and other applications that require high energy-density, but I have a vision of cities having fleets of self-driving electric buses and "Uber" cars that are cheaper per mile than owning your own vehicle (companies like Zipcar and U-Haul should still exist!). Perhaps spending money on building a new infrastructure to cleanly burn our remaining fossil fuels is not worth it, but exciting technologies like the Allam cycle for cleanly and efficiently burning natural gas exist! I have a hunch that humans will keep finding more ways to economically get fossil fuels, so we should be prepared to offer clean ways of using it.
Developing and implementing technology such as skylights, GMOs, LED bulbs, Hyperloops, geothermal heat pumps (or, for desert climates, evaporative coolers also work), hybrid engines, etc. will allow us to use our resources more wisely.
Programs of nuclear disarmament, disease control&eradication (videos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6), solar flare detection, power grid protection, asteroid detection&deflection, etc. must continue!
I would strongly argue for free-of-charge family planning resources (such as education, condoms, and vasectomies) to all human beings. Whether or not a child is wanted is highly correlated to how productive that person will be and inversely correlated to how much of a drain on society the person will be. 40% of children in the world are unintended! Prevention of unwanted children via family planning is the cheapest way for a society to help many of its problems such as poverty, overrun prisons, overpopulation, and, if done early enough, abortions. In addition to making successful people, only having wanted children also greatly helps the parents! Statistically, children only increase the happiness of parents when the parents are financially and emotionally ready for the children, else the children decrease the parents' happiness.
We have a trash problem! And our world and bodies are becoming more plastic. Should we copy the laws of San Francisco? Here are some recent developments for answering this question. I wonder if what France is doing is a good idea. Eventually, unless we can find a way of safely destroying plastic, I think plastic production will have to become very rare.
We are running out of sand, which industrial recycling, such as concrete recycling, can help. We are running out of helium, and, since it is non-renewable, we can never get it back. Yet, helium is still legal to use it in party balloons.
We must prevent or destroy space trash to prevent a chain reaction of destruction! Wikipedia has a great article about this.
We need to start attempting to travel beyond our Solar System by colonizing the Moon and Mars! I believe that becoming a sustainable planet should be our top priority at the moment, but many people are passionate about space, and passion and curiosity almost always lead to important technological discoveries with unforeseen uses, so let's do it now! Though, thinking long term is a great skill to develop!
In general, science needs funding. If we can create scaled-up quantum computers, scientific progress may speed up tremendously! If we can replace humans with robots/computers for many jobs and reorganize the economy to allow the majority of people to barely work, humans may suddenly become much better people without the daily grind holding them back, allowing them to volunteer to solve problems. Or will they lose motivation and become uneducated?
We should explore LFTR and, more importantly, fusion-power technology! Here is an overview of fusion power. Nuclear power has great promise, but also great challenges. Renewable energy often does much damage to Earth via mining minerals, and nuclear power can help this problem! We cannot wait for a breakthrough in nuclear power to start switching from fossil fuels, and we cannot postpone the long process of researching this technology.
Is there anything individuals can do? Yes, we can make smart decisions by being well informed. But knowledge can do harm before it does good. From my experience, knowledge often comes in three steps: (1) an oversimplified or wrong story mistakenly given to young children and often believed throughout one's life, (2) the moral superiority and extremism of a person who starts to learn that reality is different from what they were once told, and (3) the balanced mind of an educated, experienced, and wise adult. The second step is where knowledge can do harm, and the final step is never fully reached, so keep in mind that making mistakes is part of the endless learning process! Please do your own thorough research before making any huge changes, but I recommend that we all do little life experiments when we can!
True changes must occur for the entire system, so voting to protect humanity is extremely important, but our personal choices can motivate the larger system to change and can make us wealthier, happier, and more involved. Where do each of us start? Perhaps find the things that you would most want changed in the world, then think about what you enjoy doing, and go from there.
Reduce. Studies have shown that money and promotions make us happier to a point. But, above a certain income, money makes us less happy. Other things in life matter more such as family, short commutes to work, hobbies, and being appreciative of and creative with what you have. Bigger is not always better. Applying this wisdom allows us to reduce our use of global resources.
To reduce our use of resources and save money, we often have to first spend more money initially. Hybrid cars are more expensive and require more resources to build but will reduce your gasoline expenses. LED bulbs, digital documents, solar panels on your roof, now-better-designed low-flow toilets and shower heads, dish washers, and well-insulated homes are more expensive, but you can save money in the long term, especially if you can get government assistance that helps low-income households become greener. Think of every purchase as a vote showing the world that there is a demand for these great products.
I personally do not worry about taking an extra long shower or leaving a couple lights on when they could have been turned off. Most of the water is used by farms and power plants, most of the electricity is used by commerce and industry. If you want to save water and electricity, don't listen as much to ads and any culture of consumerism and only buy the things that actually bring you joy. This prevents all the resources from being used upstream in production and distribution! However, since heating and cooling costs are expensive, I try not to keep outside doors open, and I turn the heating and cooling way down when I go on vacation. Also, showering every day takes time and is too often for most people's skin to be healthy!
Personally, I do not enjoy gyms and silly workout clothes. I would much rather go for a hike, run, or do some of my favorite bodyweight exercises. The park I often walk to has a pull-up bar. Swimming with my family is also great exercise. One way I have reduced in the past is bicycling to work and class (taking the bus would also reduce resources and save money). I got a good often-fun workout from this until my cheap bicycle broke (I donated it to a charity that would fix it up for someone who needed it). This is just an example of something that made sense to me, and I felt cool (I never wore the silly clothes), and I never had to worry about buying a parking permit! We should all just do things that make sense for us!
Modern transportation is not great for the environment. If driving, especially a long distance, carpool if you can! If going long distances, try to take the train instead of a plane! Here are the numbers. But I personally wouldn't skip a vacation. I'm not the one who overpopulated the Earth or chose to not invest in better infrastructure, and I'll do my research in regards to protecting the planet, but voting to allow everyone to be responsible is the only real solution. The US needs more trains!
As for plastic drinking straws, why do some people regularly use straws? People usually only use straws for sweet things like soda, but why are they regularly drinking these very unhealthy things? So, if a company decides to not hand out plastic straws (by, let's say, giving metal straws instead), can we not freak out? Sure, we waste much more plastic than these, but what's wrong with fixing something? No large problem can be fixed all at once, and we must start somewhere. For example, most coffee places will let you bring your own container, or, if at home, why not reuse your straw? I try to let only large issues affect my life in large ways, so, if straws play a large role in your life, I guess you may freak out?
I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is a hot desert. If you own a house in a hot desert, you can easily save money and reduce by doing the following smart things...
Having a lawn is a bad choice in a hot desert. Lawns require lawn mowers, lawn mowing, regular watering, and other work, they produce trash (lawn clippings, which are compostable), and deserts do not have rain, nor do they have water in rivers or aquifers to compensate for the lack of rain. In a desert, no other residential use of water comes close to how much you need to care for a full lawn (toilets are the next worst, but are much better). Yes, lawns provide cooling as the water you provided it evaporates from the grass, but there are much better ways of getting cooling: trees and shade sails. During the summer, I put up a shade sail between a shed and my house. Shade sails only last so many years, and trees are obviously better, though be careful that trees will not eventually block potential solar panel locations.
The only real advantage of a lawn is having somewhere kids can roll around (as opposed to dirt, gravel, or bark chips), but a similar thing could be said for a swimming pool. You can have plenty of fun on dirt or gravel, and rolling can be done on indoor carpet, rugs, or beds, and nearby parks (and swimming pools) exist. A bit of AstroTurf works too, but it gets very hot in the summer.
On the topic of grass, go to places like Topgolf instead of using golf courses, because golf courses use tons of water. Topgolf is way more fun, you can still go on a walk before or after (golf is a good walk spoiled), and you don't have to interact with golfers.
Get rooftop solar panels! If you're getting a new roof or have a not-ancient metal roof (metal roofs are great!) and there aren't trees that you care about leaning over much of your house, now is the time! In a hot desert without many clouds, you will save money. While you are at it, get a cool (reflective) roof to reduce cooling costs and reduce global warming by reflecting heat back out into space. Financing plans for solar panels exist if you cannot pay up front. They will last around 30 years, and all I need to do is clean mine once a year with a rag. Where I live, extra power from the panels goes into the city's power grid, and I can use that amount of power for free any time unless I move. Keep in mind that some solar companies will rip you off, so do your research so that you know what you want, then call around to many places.
My system is 3.84 kW, but I should have gotten it larger now that I have learned that one or two space heaters can heat my house just fine in the winter (I am very happy with my Vornado Velocity 3R). If I ever want an electric water heater or an electric car, I would need more panels (and would need to rewire my house), though there might eventually be electric vehicle charging station throughout the city as well. Note that cars burning gasoline is worse for the environment than burning natural gas for anything such as furnaces or water heaters (your stove and dryer should for sure be electric). When interpreting the 3.84 kW, keep in mind that I do not have refrigerated air, which leads to my next topic...
Use evaporative coolers (often called swamp coolers) instead of refrigerated air! Also, blinds, ceiling fans, insulation, a cool (reflective) roof, and intelligence are great! In a hot climate, the financial and environmental cost of electricity for refrigerated air is enormous. Evaporative coolers use much less electricity, and ceiling fans use far less than that. My evaporative cooler sits on my roof and needs an hour of servicing (easily done by myself) at the beginning and end of summer. Some designs are better than others, but the idea is to cool air as it passes through moist pads (the latent heat of vaporization of water is enormous, so evaporation provides lots of cooling). Air then leaves the house through cracked windows (or sometimes ceiling vents that open in response to the pressure of incoming air). Some argue that evaporative coolers use too much water (comparable to the usage by toilets in the home, so it's cheap), but guess what also uses a lot of water: generating electricity for refrigerated air using fossil fuels. The water adds humidity to the otherwise often very dry air, which I personally enjoy (on the other hand, refrigerated air removes water from the air). I also enjoy the fresh air, with most allergens and dust filtered out by the moist pads.
I am regularly amazed at how people who have lived in my city for many decades still do not understand how to use evaporative coolers correctly, causing their houses to be hot. There is a simple principle: do not let hot air be blown into your house. Seems simple enough, so let's apply this principle. (1) When de-winterizing your cooler, make sure that none of the water tubing is blocked and that none of the top holes in the side panels are blocked. If there are dry spots on the pads, hot (often over 90 °F) outside air rushes straight through the pad into your house. (2) When opening windows to let the air flow through your house, make sure that the area of total open windows is about equal to the area of the main air duct leaving your cooler. If not, any wind will cause windows on a side of your house to have hot air pushed inside. When very windy, you can try turning up the fan speed, but, if it is hot outside, I just close the window on that side of the house. You will know that wind is entering your house when you hear blinds clattering against the window. If the clattering isn't loud enough to hear, the wind is probably nothing to worry about. If you have no blinds, you will notice that only certain rooms are hot. My weather app has an hour-by-hour wind speed and wind direction forecast, which is somewhat accurate. By the way, try to open windows only in rooms that allow air to flow across the parts of the house that should be cooled. (3) When turning off your cooler, make sure that you either close the windows or, if at night, that the average nighttime temperature for that night is not higher than the average closed-window temperature that would have occurred. Overnight, I almost always leave the windows open because, even though the outside temperature is initially high, it rapidly falls and my house is initially cool (I don't think I ever close all the windows at night because closing enough stops cross ventilation). (4) Ideally, if it is hot outside, run the water pump for 5 minutes before turning on the fan. The pads need to be moist before cooling can happen! Some controllers do this automatically with a built-in timer, but I just do random 5-minute tasks between turning things on (often when I just get home from work). In the morning, when it is usually cold outside, I often turn them both on at the same time, but I do turn on the pump to get the maximal cooling out of the work the fan is doing. If it is raining hard, you don't need to turn on the water pump beforehand, but I do recommend turning it on for maximal cooling and air filtration because I will forget to turn it on when the rain stops (the water pump uses a small fraction of the electricity of the fan). Some people don't run the cooler when it's raining because they don't want the humidity in their house, but the outdoor air is usually cold enough to provide cooling in my house (already cooled off by the rain instead of needing the pads to do the cooling) partly because I don't run the cooler during the hottest part of the day (rain is typically in the evening where I live).
Even if you do all of the above, there will be days when the cooler does not work well: hot and humid days. The cooling occurs due to evaporation, and evaporation does not much occur when there is water already in the air. This image shows the output temperature of an evaporate cooler given different outdoor temperatures and humidities. Using the Tetens equation, I drew some lines showing constant outdoor absolute humidities to help guide the eye to later parts of the day because absolute humidity tends to stay about the same throughout large parts of the day. It may get 20 F° hotter outside, but the output temperature may only go up by 10 F°, though it will be much more humid air and 10 F° is significant. If you want your house to be 72 °F, you would ideally want the output temperature to be well below 70 °F so that the heat will quickly flow into the colder air. This image provides the apparent temperature due to both temperature and humidity. The leftmost yellow column is likely the most useful one if you are indoors. This image shows how, at temperatures when even unnoticeably light sweating would occur, a humid home makes it feel hotter because humidity slows the evaporation of sweat. Luckily, having a ceiling fan on can counter the affect of humidity, or just go to the pool these afternoons! I would hate to have my sense of normal be so skewed by this modern consumerist world that I think that minor inconveniences are unacceptable. Being a bit warm is actually great for you and your kids, because your body adapts to the temperature, then going out into nature (you should do this with your kids!) doesn't cause everyone to whine the whole time. If you feel the need to fight nature so much by paying for refrigerated air, perhaps move to a colder climate? Before you do that, consider that using your brain to solve real concrete problems such as being a bit hot is very human and is interesting.
If you're awesome, you can save even more money (use less water and electricity) and have to do less maintenance on your cooler (just twice a year). First of all, radiant heat is a thing, so close blinds on the sides of the house that get direct sunlight going through the windows. Secondly, wind chill cools you down (unless the air temperature is over 95 °F, at which time the wind replaces the air cooled by your sweat with hotter air), so get ceiling fans in rooms that get warm (perhaps these rooms get warm because they are far from the vents or close to sun-exposed exterior walls): bedrooms at night or living areas during hottest part of the day. Note that ceiling fans do not actually cool a room (in fact, they make it hotter for a couple reasons), but wind chill (removal of hot air near your skin) is how they help you (not the room). My awesome strategy is then to run the cooler only twice each day: run it in the morning as close to dawn as possible, and run it in the evening before bed. Basically, turn off the cooler when at work and overnight, and run it only for short times if not deep summer. On humid days, run it for longer times or maybe on the high setting, but only twice a day.
If you are even more awesome in that you care to understand, this timing strategy is wise because of physics. Cooling your house is much more efficient when it is colder outside (this is even slightly true for refrigerated air), and colder outside air becomes indoor air with lower absolute humidity (the absolute humidity of the outside air does not change much throughout large parts of the day, and colder outside air causes less evaporation at the pads). Humidity increases the apparent temperature, so we want to minimize it inside the house. If you keep running the cooler too late into the morning, the rising outside temperature allows for more evaporation, so the output temperature is only a bit hotter, but is more humid, so it feels hotter. The idea is to instead lock in the coldness from morning cooling through the hottest part of the day. This saves more water than one might expect because a lot of water evaporates during the hottest part of the day. I like to get it as cold as possible, ideally requiring me to wear a hoodie, since cold air feels nice in the morning as if camping. Another thing to understand is that the CFM (cubic feet per minute) of the fan is large enough to replace all the air in your home within minutes. At first, this constant dumping of cold air to the outside seems to be a huge waste, but keep in mind that: (1) indoor evaporative coolers, ones that do not pull in (often hot) outside air or exhaust to the outdoors, very quickly stop working once the air is as humid as it can get, (2) the cooling of the air is very cheap because of the huge latent heat of vaporization of water since moving air takes much less electricity than what would be needed to cool it via refrigeration, and (3) the thermal mass of the air in your house is much less than the thermal mass of your house. When first turning on the cooler, there are many stages. (1) Within minutes, if the house is hot and the incoming air is not very cold, the house at some distance from the vents might feel hotter as the house gets quickly humid, but the air temperature is still hot as the cold air from the vents hits the hot house and heats up. (2) Minutes after this, you and eventually thermometers will feel cool as the surfaces of the inside of the house cool. You will feel cool perhaps due to air temperature being cool or the surfaces not radiating as much infrared. Surfaces will quickly go back to their previous temperature if turning off the cooler at this time. Finally, (3) after several hours, the majority of the mass of the house has become as cold as it will get. After this, there is little gained by running the cooler and the strategy should be to lock in the coldness. The cooler should not be run overnight simply because that is too many hours, when only several hours are needed. Yes, the outdoor air is quickly cooling after the sun goes down, but there are diminishing returns after several hours, and, with the help of ceiling fans in certain bedrooms, the house should be cold enough until dawn.
You might be wondering about the best weekend schedule when you're home for the hottest part of the day. Well, I am a teacher, so I have summers off, so the above plan was actually developed for "weekends". On the afternoons of the worst days, I may have to start the cooler at 2pm, when the hottest rooms of my house get over 80 °F, and the temperature (and apparent temperature) drops when turning it on, though not as much as it would drop if I would have waited until something like 4pm. Then I keep it on until I go to bed. Regardless of when the cooler is turned on, I still had the cooler off for many hours, so I don't let myself get miserable as long as I had turned it off. You might now be wondering if running in the morning can be skipped on weekdays since no one is home during the day. On work days, I only ever have time to run it for about an hour in the morning, which actually does much of the cooling, and makes the morning and coming home after work more enjoyable.
Reuse. It makes sense to buy real plates and silverware because part of enjoying a meal is about the experience of eating, so buy some dishes that you'll like rather than using immense amounts of disposable items that are expensive over time. Similarly, why do people in countries with clean water buy bottled water instead of just refilling a reusable bottle or glass? If you think tap water tastes bad, filter it like a sane person! As for shopping, plastic shopping bags probably need to be replaced with reusable bags, but not cotton bags! As for daily lunches, reusable containers (or just reusing plastic bags) is a great idea!
I'm not an engineer, but I've noticed that engineers tend to be great at finding simple solutions to various problems using on old hose, jar, or trinket (from an assorted pile of tiny trinkets). I haven't mastered this skill, but I, similar to a typical engineer, enjoy it when I can find new uses for old stuff. Often, if you think about it, you can find what you want for free if you are clever enough to ask the right person who might be throwing it away (and who would be glad to have you take it off their hands).
Lastly, donate old stuff rather than throwing it away. For only a short trip to the local secondhand shop once or twice a year, you can help people out and maybe find something cheap and interesting—or a lot of cool things—for yourself.
Recycle. This one also is not very difficult and prevents e-waste from contaminating the environment. Just Google where to get rid of e-waste, and please Google your city's rules for recycling because so many people do the stupidest things when recycling often causing entire batches to be thrown in the garbage due to contamination from idiots. Yes, it is becoming difficult for cities to find processing centers willing to take their recycling (largely due to contamination making recyclables undesirable), but, after e-waste, the most important things to recycle are aluminum, plastic, paper, and steel. However, plastic recycling is messy and creates tons of microplastics, so reducing plastic usage is obviously the best choice. Why do people use liquid hand soap in plastic bottles (worse yet, watered down foaming hand soap) when Dove bars exist? While lasting changes can easily be made (like switching to Dove bars), I try not to enforce recycling at parties, which are temporary.
Composting always seemed fun to me. Most paper and plants can be turned into great soil for you and your neighbors! But my city doesn't take compost yet, and I have nowhere to put the soil.
Many people say that two kids—if you have the genetic, emotional, and physical resources—is the perfect amount because you can reuse items, you can reuse your knowledge, they can entertain each other, and there is less pressure for the one kid to be perfect. To me, these seem like horrible reasons to have another kid. Some argue that three kids is great because, if you have two somewhat close together, you will greatly appreciate it once the older kids start going to school and become easier to raise. I personally feel that I would want to wait for my first to be easier to raise before trying thinking about a second, though I don't want a huge age gap with any second. Regardless, you better have great genetic, emotional, educational, and physical resources to provide. Two or sometimes three kids (taking into account infant deaths, 2.1 kids to be exact) is what is needed to maintain a stable population! If you live in an area that is particularly suffering from overpopulation, this should be taken into account in your decision to have kids! And having kids should be a decision, so use birth control as needed! Keep in mind that, if you are thinking about the consequences of having kids on the world, you're probably the type of person that should be having kids, and we can't have a world where all the children are growing up in uneducated families.
Eat only small amounts of meat—especially processed meat and non-lean red meat! Check out MyPlate for all options for a balanced diet. Your health, your wallet, and your planet will thank you! This is a newer video about how much beef harms the planet. Ground turkey can replace ground beef! If your wallet is doing well, switching to something like Beyond Burger, Impossible Sausage Patties, Beyond Brats, and Impossible Brats will help your health and planet, though I don't like its taste in all recipes (keep in mind that the price of meat substitutes will decrease as supply increases).
Being a vegetarian is easy. I know this because I was a vegan for two years when I was young (to not support factory farming). Beans, cheese, eggs, and milk are delicious, cheap, and easy to prepare, and whatever you begin to eat will make your diet much more interesting and fun. But I would never recommend that anyone become a strict vegetarian (unless medically ordered). There are parts of the world where deer are pests, and wisely-regulated hunting is a great solution. These deer lived happy lives and will be put to good use in death. An absurd part of being a strict vegetarian is not eating meat that would otherwise be thrown away (people in the US waste a lot of food). An animal died to produce that meat, so why let all those resources go to waste to just produce methane in a landfill while you eat other food that required resources to produce and money to buy? Eating a little meat is not unhealthy as it can be part of a balanced diet. In fact, actually eating unhealthy once in a while is not unhealthy! I was a poor student for too long to not greatly enjoy putting good free food to good use! If the meat is already cooked, I suppose you could drive around looking for a homeless person to take the food, but, to be logically consistent and to further support vegetarian foods, you should then drive around looking for a homeless person to take vegetarian unwanted leftovers as well, and you need to think about gas prices and all the plastic silverware the homeless person might need. Another absurd part of being a strict vegetarian is that half of all chicks of the egg-laying breed of chickens (the boys) are quickly thrown into a grinder, so, if they actually care about not killing, eggs are also bad (I personally feel worse for the chick that has to grow up in a factory farm).
We should be smart with the food we buy and throw away. Why not plant a fruit tree in your yard? And, before we throw "expired" food away, let's spend a minute on Google to see if it is safe to eat (it probably is). As for the local-food movement, farmers' markets can be nice if you want to socialize with your community, help the local economy, and eat fresh food, and it might even help the larger world if the local small farmers practice regenerative farming techniques.
To help cure disease, see my page on volunteer computing
At the end of the day, we can help the world by being people: (1) pursuing education—formal or otherwise—that interests us with whatever resources we have (especially in STEM fields), (2) working to make a democracy that is strong by becoming well-informed independents who vote based on logic rather than labels such as conservative or Democrat, and (3) help our community by doing whatever we enjoy with whatever resources we have. A well-educated, happy population with a well-functioning government will carry the human race a long way.
