Malevolent threats to national security are the product of human choice, such as terrorists choosing to attack our electricity grid or oil production facilities in the Middle East. Malignant threats are associated with the collapse of a complex system — the electric grid, a human body, the Earth’s climate — when it is unintentionally disturbed […]
Destroying wild rivers to generate electricity is a false solution to humanity’s need for energy, with extremely high costs to individuals, communities, and ecosystems. The negative impacts of large dams are multidimensional—degrading watersheds, riparian zones, coastal ecosystems, and even oceans. We must reject the lure of megadams and the energy gluttony they perpetuate, which deters […]
There is a relationship between sustainability and beauty. Beauty is our way of describing encounters with life-affirmative patterns of relationships. The current energy economy produces ugliness, a form of violence against the world and its creatures, which have aesthetic worth and intrinsic value. Does our inability to speak forthrightly about ugliness make us unintentionally complicit […]
The invention of agriculture ten millennia ago was the first step towards the current problem of climate change. Humans then began a way of life that would exploit the first of five relatively nonrenewable pools of energy-rich carbon–soil. Trees, coal, oil, and natural gas would follow as additional pools to rob from. We are the […]
Discussions about peak oil and the predicament of industrial society constantly revolve around two completely different, and in fact opposite, sets of assumptions and beliefs about the future. Most people insist that no matter what problems crop up before us, modern science, technology, and raw human ingenuity will inevitable win out and make the world […]
Our goal is to help change the national and global conversation about energy–to help it evolve quickly from one of how to grow energy production to one of how to shrink our appetites to fit nature’s ability to sustain itself. Take a good look at what it takes to power our human world of cities […]
“Peak oil” – when petroleum extraction globally reaches its maximum and begins an inevitable decline – may be near, and the consequences are likely to be devastating to societies accustomed to abundant, inexpensive fossil fuels. Petroleum is the world’s most important energy resource. There is no ready substitute, and decades will be required to wean […]
We have founded our present society upon delusional assumptions of limitlessness. Our national faith is a sort of autistic industrialism. This necessarily leads to limitless violence, waste, war, and destruction. Our great need now is for sciences and technologies of limits. The limits would be the accepted contexts of places, communities, and neighborhoods, both natural […]
Industrial-scale wind and solar power projects can produce significant quantities of renewable energy, but distributed renewable energy generation—particularly rooftop photovoltaic installations—can achieve the same objective much faster without the environmental harm and at lower cost. With state and federal policies that favor distributed energy, the U.S. could greatly expand the direct involvement of individuals and […]
Oil shales, if they live up to proponents’ expectations and can be produced commercially, could change the economic and political fortunes of the United States and transform the geopolitical map of the world. But any large-scale effort to exploit oil shales will threaten wildlife habitat and water quality, and exacerbate climate change. This is a […]