A truly thoughtful essay from Harry Eyres, Freedom and the price of oil, appeared in this past weekend’s “FT.” It’s a meditation, to a great extent, on the ecologist Ivan Illich. Eyres writes of Illich: “He had the barmy-seeming idea that we would do better – that is to say would lead more human, fairer and freer lives – if we consumed less energy. Far from freeing us up, the addiction to ever-greater quanta of energy enslaves our souls, making us passive consumers rather than active doers, and concentrates power in mega-institutions.”
I wrote on a similar theme about a year ago: “Can we reduce our dangerous rates of consumption and maintain and improve our standards of living worldwide? You bet. Making Peace with the Planet will also make us happier. You can take that to the bank.” (See Galloping Consumption.)
Or, as Bill McKibben wrote in a review of Tom Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded, “Does it ever occur to him, in the grip of a fantasia like this, that if the sun is shining brightly, or the breeze is blowing steadily, you could dry your clothes on a $14 piece of rope strung off your back deck, or for that matter on a foldable rack in the apartment hallway? And that since most of the world already knows how to do it, we might be smarter moving in their direction instead of insisting that they buy into our entire high-technology suburban dream?” (See my review of McKibben’s review here.)