One possibility is just to tag along with the fantasists in government
and industry who would have us believe that we can pursue our ideals of
affluence, comfort, mobility, and leisure indefinitely. 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.
Wendell BerryThe
Unsettling of America (1977)
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