A really inconvenient truth

To keep our planet clean, until we find some truly clean energy source that is technologically and economically feasible (if there is such a thing), we have to significantly cut back our energy consumption. We must slap restrictions on the size of cars and their use, jack up taxes on vehicles and fuel, and divert public investment to mass transport. Commuting to work in your air-conditioned private car will be a thing of the past. We will also have to tax air travel heavily – jets are a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions – and possibly ration air travel, x kilometers per person per year. We must ban the construction of giant shopping centers that are air-conditioned in the summer and heated in winter, and return to small stores, which are not energy-greedy. House sizes, too, must be limited in the name of energy conservation, and we must stop eating industrialized food, whose production and transport requires vast amounts of energy.

Some claim that humanity had a couple of good centuries and now, civilization will reel back to the Dark Ages. Google “peak oil” and you will find any number of apocalyptic web sites. I am no prophet, and I do not know whether the dark forecasts will come true. But one thing is clear as day. Unlike the past, this time, governments have done nothing about the spiraling price of oil. Nothing has been done to reduce consumption.

Haaretz