Atomic Dreams
(Page 8 of 9)
January / February 2008
by Jason Mark, from Earth Island Journal
Many environmentalists, however, see reducing electricity use as the easiest, and cheapest, way to cut carbon emissions. For example, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute has convincingly demonstrated that we can maintain many of our modern conveniences while using a fraction of the energy we currently expend.
RELATED CONTENT
Escalators are such commonplace conveniences that riders rarely give them a second thought. The for...
Greg Watson and the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust have the job of allocating $140 million to...
Neighborhood “energy raisers" -- organized barn-raiser style that bring together neighbors, acquain...
The nuclear power industry knows that the term "nuclear" is, from a public relations vantage point,...
Got Solar? March 7, 2003 Issue By Special Report, Greenpeace “Aluminum foil is expensive.” “Yeah, ...
The dilemma for environmental organizations is that the word conservation is sometimes interpreted to mean compromise—and asking Americans to sacrifice has become the untouchable third rail of U.S. environmentalism.
“If you say something like that [cutting back on energy consumption], you sound almost un-American,” Greenpeace’s Riccio says.
Asked whether energy conservation would require Americans to change their manner of living, the Sierra Club’s Dorner is careful to distance his organization from any suggestion of discomfort: “It’s about changing the backdrop as opposed to changing the fundamentals. Instead of people having a ton of lights on in their house that are wasting a ton of energy, they will have a lot of efficient lights on that are wasting less energy. . . . People will be able to continue living their lives without having to make big sacrifices.”
Other environmental activists aren’t so sure. They say that long-term sustainability—a vision that doesn’t include radioactive waste stored for hundreds of generations—will require some deeper changes. If we want to preserve the climate without relying on atomic energy, we will need to rethink our modes of transportation, our ways of eating, the size of our houses, and the generation and distribution of our energy.
“As we make the arguments over nuclear energy, we’re about to reenter the historic debate about how power is structured,” says the Center for the American Dream’s Taylor. “If you look at the nuclear story in particular, it was always this utopian vision that we would take care of everything—we could have our American way of life and not worry about energy. When we got into that dream, it had some real darkness to it. . . . I do think we are coming back to the old celebration of self-reliance and alternative technology at the local level. If we have a future with less oil and less nuclear, we will live differently, with less stuff and less energy consumption, but with more joy and more security. But we will have to rethink the McMansions and the two SUVs in the garage.”
Energy Justice Network organizer Reitman agrees. “We are going to have to face some kind of cultural shift,” he says. “The culture we have created for ourselves, a society based on a lot of excess and consumerism, really has let a lot of people down. The prospect of getting together in a serious way as a country [to stop climate change] is a great opportunity to get back to the roots of what it means to be an American, which is to be neighborly. It’s a great way to reenergize our culture, as well as our economy and our power grid.”
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9 |
Next >>