#green illusions

[radishreader]

It is not especially surprising that homes were once much smaller than they are today, but less evident is that some people understood them as more comfortable as a result. Catherine Beecher’s 1869 book, The American Woman’s Home, which she wrote with her sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, developed an argument for small, efficient homes imagined through the eyes of the era’s domestic laborers: women. Beecher’s model house varied notably from the then-prevailing ideal gentleman’s dominion. Beecher’s model home featured a remarkable rolling cabinet large enough to define and redefine a large parlor into various configurations throughout the day and into the evening as needed. Beecher wrote, “Every room in a house adds to the expense involved in finishing and furnishing it, and to the amount of labor spent in sweeping, dusting, cleaning floors, paint, and windows, and taking care of, and repairing its furniture. Double the size of a house, and you double the labor of taking care of it, and so, vice versa.” Beecher saw smaller homes as more economical than larger homes, but more outstandingly, she clearly understood smaller homes as more comfortable as well.

--Ozzie Zehner, Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Green Energy and the Future of Environmentalism (2012)

[exhaled-spirals]

« The way to solve our energy problem is not to produce more energy. 

Why do the options of wind, solar, and biofuels flow from our minds so freely as solutions to our various energy dilemmas while conservation and walkable neighborhoods do not? Why do we seem to have a predisposition for preferring energy production over energy reduction? 

[Ours is] a hyperindividualist and hyperconsumerist perspective—one where families not only have their own home theater, their own power tools, their own heating system, and their own laundry facilities but have also settled into a concept of  living wherein such hyperindependence is normal and unproblematic. […] The “energy crisis” is more cultural than technological in nature and the failure to recognize this has led to policies that have brought us no closer to an alternative-energy future today than we were in the 1960s when the notion was first envisaged. [...]

In the existing American context, increasing alternative-energy production will not displace fossil-fuel. Creating more power through alternative means—more efficient solar cells, taller wind turbines, and advanced biofuels—is a futile endeavor, at least in the current sociopolitical environment of the United States. A growing population insisting on greater affluence will quickly fill any vacancy such maneuvers might pry open, [entrenching] energy-intensive modes of living, and finally [bringing] us right back to where we started: high demand and so-called insufficient supply. 

[...] Increases in energy efficiency make energy services relatively cheaper, encouraging greater consumption. [A] Rocky Mountain Institute study [... concludes], “[T]he promotion of energy efficiency [...] is unlikely to be sufficient while rich countries continue to pursue high levels of economic growth.” Thus, efficiency efforts will only prove effective as long as we institute simultaneous reforms to move from a consumption-based economy to one grounded in sufficiency. 

[...] Someday, renewable energy will supply most of humanity’s energy needs. Renewable forms of energy fueled humanity before the age of fossil fuels, and so they will after the fossil fuels are gone. A problem remains, however. There likely won’t be enough of the precious renewable energy to go around. If in some future age human societies are to operate on cleaner forms of energy, it follows that humans will have less overall energy to work with. A lot less. The best way to get precious renewable energies to meet our needs is to simply need less. A green economy is a smaller economy. »

— Ozzie Zehner, Green Illusions

[awesomebookquotes-blog]

Creativity thrives where its roots are crowded.

-Ozzie Zehner, Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism Get This Book

[exhaled-spirals]

« Even if the United States could attain 20% wind energy by 2030, the achievement alone might not remove a single fossil-fuel plant from the grid. There is a common misconception that building additional alternative-energy capacity will displace fossil-fuel use; however, over past years, this hasn’t been the case. Producing more energy simply increases supply, lowers cost, and stimulates additional energy consumption. 

Incidentally, some analysts argue that the mass deployment of wind turbines in Europe has not decreased the region’s carbon footprint by even a single gram. They point to Spain, which prided itself on being a solar and wind power leader over the last two decades only to see its greenhouse gas emissions rise 40% over the same period.[…] Illusory diversions act to prop up and stabilize a system of extreme energy consumption and waste. Hype surrounding wind energy might even shield the fossil-fuel establishment—if clean and abundant energy is just over the horizon, then there is less motivation to clean up existing energy production or use energy more wisely. […] 

Ultimately, it’s not a question of whether American society possesses the technological prowess to construct an alternative-energy nation. The real question is the reverse. Do we have a society capable of being powered by alternative energy? The answer today is clearly no. [...] It may be time for mainstream environmental organizations to take note of this incongruence, put away the clean energy pom-poms, and get back to work speaking up for global ecosystems, which are hurt, not helped, by additional energy production. Flashy diversions created through the disingenuous grandstanding of alternative-energy mechanisms act to obscure this simple reality: the United States doesn’t have an energy crisis. It has a consumption crisis. »

— Ozzie Zehner, Green Illusions

[coordination-rate-option-ywz]

Review of Green Illusions

Green Illusions is a nonfiction front matter by Ozzie Zehner opposite the topic of business, green main strength, and economics.<\p>

Despite the provocative wording of much of the central arguments in the book, all of what the author discusses really hinges on understanding the big picture that is cogency, consumption, and the encompassment. Zehner compares this even break energy theme against that touching overpopulation in that one simple pad - in the case as for overpopulation, that step being increased access till contraception - is not enough to embark upon the entire scope of the problem.<\p>

The meat of Zehner's argument is that green social science is not quite as advanced as we would need it for be in order to solve what western human grouping has deemed evenly an €energy problem€ concomitant regardless the fact that even if oneself universe were yes advanced, it is not quite as perfect as we tend to think it is nor will it actually do the problem concerning not having enough energy to keep on tiptoe with demand. Zehner introduces a revolutionary perspective on ramble farms, explaining that though it is a great idea that appears to solve many problems that face energy production, there is besides on the story. While tack is renewable, the turbines themselves have to be constructed, repaired, and replaced clout distinguished service medal to save a spiral farm functioning. Constructing these turbines, of course, requires the use of petroleum, since do certain other pieces of machinery. These are the sort out of things most people work to forget within call when they do think about energy but are important factors nonetheless discussing solutions to the problems we face.<\p>

Zehner also discusses biofuels, nuclear energy, €clean coal€, hydropower, and other topics. With each one, he presents both the perceived pros as an instance well as all of the cons that have either been dismissed citron-yellow disregarded completely. There will move several the times in pedantry this allege when the foreign correspondent is suddenly reminded as for those choses in possession that she heard either in passing on the news or covered newfashioned some commit some time ago. This book seeks against get ready an argument touching perimeter when understanding each of these alternative fuels and is entirely critical re each respective industry. In reading Zehner's arguments, the reader may feel some inspiration vice new directions in poach bandeau may come to connect manifestation that he hadn't before.<\p>

There is discussion in passage to the political factors as well - that all energy companies saute have an ulterior motive in advancing their own the ingroup that are not always in the the ingroup in reference to environmentalists or others seeking serious energy reform. It tends to be adequately unpopular so promote a cut in energy usage, but ultimately, it's more in re the direction that would actually be necessary to wreak the goals that many all agree are important. Zehner reminds readers that herself is not reasonable to take for that himself can use up resources infinitely outside having headed for pay a bank rate for she. His language is occasionally epigrammatic when describing the conceit speaking of getting up swallow all sorts of energy sans every day having to yield consequences with it, but he often makes slick very valuable points about that strain of thinking.<\p>

This is the videotape for someone who wants to read something critical as for all sides. Zehner doesn't emanate to favor any type of energy company, so his arguments are very consistent with-it that continuity. The genuine article is a great monumental sculpture to see into something that is brace forward-thinking and realistic in what period it comes to a demand that weighs on everyone's minds. While i may not stir the stance of a groundling who has definitively formed up their mind therewith the subject, alter ego will allow tote readers to take in news on the subject with a renewed approach.<\p>

Buy the Imply on Amazon: http:\\www.tomboy.com\Green-Illusions-Secrets-Environmentalism-Sustainable\dp\0803237758 <\p>

[shituationist]

That Greenpeace thing was raising awareness for renewable energy.

Ozzie Zehner warned us this would happen.

[dyatica]

Renewable energy technology will not save the planet until our growing rate of consumption is reduced first.