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We don't have an energy crisis. We have a consumption crisis. And this book, which takes aim at cherished assumptions regarding energy, offers refreshingly straight talk about what's wrong with the way we think and talk about the problem. Though we generally believe we can solve environmental problems with more energy--more solar cells, wind turbines, and biofuels--alternative technologies come with their own side effects and limitations. How, for instance, do solar cells cause harm? Why can't engineers solve wind power's biggest obstacle? Why won't contraception solve the problem of overpopulation lying at the heart of our concerns about energy, and what will? This practical, environmentally informed, and lucid book persuasively argues for a change of perspective. If consumption is the problem, as Ozzie Zehner suggests, then we need to shift our focus from suspect alternative energies to improving social and political fundamentals: walkable communities, improved consumption, enlightened governance, and, most notably, women's rights. The dozens of first steps he offers are surprisingly straightforward. For instance, he introduces a simple sticker that promises a greater impact than all of the nation's solar cells. He uncovers why carbon taxes won't solve our energy challenges (and presents two taxes that could). Finally, he explores how future environmentalists will focus on similarly fresh alternatives that are affordable, clean, and can actually improve our well-being. Watch a book trailer.… (more)
User reviews
Yes, it could be that people in cities may have a smaller individual average carbon footprint (or it may simply be more obscured). But then, the pigs on a factory hog farm have a smaller individual average carbon footprint than the hogs living on pasturage. One problem is that a city, like a factory farm, cannot be sustained indefinitely. It requires the continued extraction and importation of resources from the outlying country. More than that, we need to see a city as more than the sum of the individuals living there. If we want to calculate the footprint of a place like New York City, we need to ask ourselves: what is the carbon footprint of the businesses located there? What is the carbon footprint of the New York Stock Exchange? What is the carbon footprint of the ports? And also, we need to ask: where do the materials to build and maintain this city come from? Where does the food and water come from? Who are these things being taken from? What is the ecological and human cost of the mining, the manufacturing, and transportation going into this?
I appreciate the challenges the author presents to many of the technological fantasies of the bright green environmentalists and their corporate sponsors, but I wish he hadn't been so quick to accept wholesale some of their other fantasies.