Comments for Be afraid of cheap carbon-free energy! at http://www.footprintconsulting.org , comment 1 to 1 out of 1 comments http://www.footprintconsulting.org Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:37:47 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.footprintconsulting.org/blog/38-views/110-be-afraid-of-cheap-carbon-free-energy#comment-15 Absolutely correct. Energy is only one part of the 'problem' facing humanity. The fundamental is the problem of civilisation (e.g. Derrick Jensen, Endgame). Civilisation (driven by exponential energy usage) is in danger of stripping the planet bare of life. The only potential solution (I say potential because it is mute as to whether we are capable of achieving this given our societies' hierachical blind obedience to dominant culture) is to localise (e.g., Bill Mollision, Ghandi). Localising means local responsibility and local accountability for everything on which we depend. If we don't have a local source of something then our community must exist without it, if we damage our local resources our local community must contract. Only then can the sustainable level of energy consumption (subservient to human-natural ecology) be determined. Whether or not the Authoritarian Personaility within us (dominant at the heart of our hiererchical society, as in politics, as in socio-economic structure) will permit our societies to decentralise to the necessary restructure of generally rhizome rather than hierarchy (i.e. cities and tech-industrially based culture dependent on importation of resources from the land base it dominates), that is the fundamental question. Derrick Jensen et al argue that we need to move to a decentralised horticultural 'civilisation' but he is far from sanguine as to whether we are likely to make any effort towards this. Our consciousness, our culture, is far to powerful and dominant. We seem to have a 'civilisation gene' that makes us dominate nature and each other for power. How do we change that? - Alastair McGowan Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:52:42 +0100