A Quote by Ivan Illich
Even if nonpolluting power were feasible and abundant, the use of energy on a massive scale acts on society like a drug that is physically harmless but psychically enslaving. A community can choose between Methadone and "cold turkey"-between maintaining its addiction to alien energy and kicking it in painful cramps-but no society can have a population that is hooked on progressively larger numbers of energy slaves and whose members are also autonomously active.
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Power is not something we should be afraid of. Power is great, power is energy. And in terms of energy, the most important energy is human spiritual energy and when I say spiritual, I feel like have to be very careful, I don't mean religious, I mean the energy of the mind, the energy that exists within us.
Surveying the available alternative energy sources for criteria such as energy density, environmental impacts, reliance on depleting raw materials, intermittency versus constancy of supply, and the percentage of energy returned on the energy invested in energy production, none currently appears capable of perpetuating this kind of society.
I would like to help people have honest and constructive conversations about energy. We need to understand how much energy our modern lifestyles use, decide how much energy we would like to use in the future, and choose where we will get that energy from.
I like the analogy that the way that we live in Western Society, the energy that we consume in the form of fossil fuels, is the energy equivalent in pre-fossil fuel terms of having 500 slaves.
There are a lot of different ways of building a prosperous society, and some of them use much less energy than others. And it is possible and more practical to talk about rebuilding systems to use much less energy than it is to think about trying to meet greater demands of energy through clean energy alone.
We wasted a lot of creative energy in that immediate post colonial era, when there was a struggle between, you know, the Cold War between the capitalism and communism. Many writers just wasted their energy and their talent because they want to be ideologically correct and of course all they produced was propaganda.
Everything we think about regarding sustainability - from energy to agriculture to manufacturing to population - has a water footprint. Almost all of the water on Earth is salt water, and the remaining freshwater supplies are split between agricultural use and human use - as well as maintaining the existing natural environment.
This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on. This is fantastical because the basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity: it is moral ignorance and weakness of character. We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy.
I sincerely believe that energy grows from itself and the more energy you expand the more you create within yourself. I also believe that energy is habit -- which can be created quite easily. In other words, use your energy and more energy flows and then it is very hard to stop it -- as if one would ever want to!
We believe that part of the answer lies in pricing energy on the basis of its full costs to society. One reason we use energy so lavishly today is that the price of energy does not include all of the social costs of producing it. The costs incurred in protecting the environment and the health and safety of workers, for example, are part of the real costs of producing energy-but they are not now all included in the price of the product.
Music is energy, and energy is the single most important form of it in the world. Without energy, there is no life. The only difference between a dead person and a live person is the energy, the electricity flowing inside their system, and that's what makes music.
I've been very passionate about renewable energy for many years, particularly solar energy and its capacity to bring abundant clean, sustainable energy to millions around the globe.
We want to see...the efficient production and use of energy, so that the products we produce and the way we produce them pose no threat to the world's natural environment...economic development...so that more and more of the world's population can enjoy...the things which the energy industry supplies...(and) a society in which ideas and knowledge move freely.
Energy is gained by giving energy. When we give energy, we gain energy. This is different than having someone manipulate you and take your energy.
I wouldn't call myself anti-nuclear. I seek a society non-reliant on nuclear energy, a society that can do without nuclear energy, and Japan can prove a role model. It’s possible.
Turkey's energy bill due to imports will fall with the increase in use of renewable energy sources. We have no control over the prices of petroleum and natural gas.
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