An absolute must-read for any person interested in environmental policy and especially in its energy part.While we are so sure that we'll be able to find a cheap energy source that will be able to sustain our unhealthy energy appetites - it may well be that it will never happen, and we'll have to sustain ourselves on a very modest energy diet. If we don't want that scenario cause massive protests that will wreak cross-continental havoc, we have to think about ways to survive on that diet - and while raising energy-efficient community is not the whole solution, it it definitely a step in the right way. Most of the suggestions of the book are sensible and some of them even achievable, and it definitely affected my views on how I see the current situation and first-priority environmental policy steps. What happened to our promise of alternative energy and a better, greener future for America? Author Ozzie Zehner gives a critical and documented insight into the lies and false hopes that alternative energy goals have presented, especially as a platform for environmental good. Zehner demonstrates that it's not the prohibitive cost and limited technology involved in implementing solar cells, wind turbines and nuclear power (among other energy sources) that have stalled these alternatives from taking hold for decades, rather it's a false enduring promise propped by political and financial backers that these technologies will displace fossil fuels and provide clean sustainable power (both incorrect) that have forced them in our mindsets as the future of energy. The book is a wake-up call to any current and future environmentalists, urging them to cut ties to alternative energy, presenting it as an idea that is infinitely knotted to the current energy dream of creating ever more power while giving no guarantee that it will help cut back the current consumption of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases. If anything these implements will just append to our current energy usage in a system that is hellbent on more and more production. Rather than focusing on gadgetry and technology, Zehner calls for environmentalists to focus time and energy on social aspects of environmental structure, such as curbing unplanned pregnancies and supporting women's rights, stopping advertisements to children, eliminating physical junk mail and creating walkable communities, just to name a few. Enacting changes as mundane and feasible as these will have wide-reaching positive effects on both energy consumption and our idea of community, far more than alternative energy could ever hope to achieve.Though sometimes hokey (in his Nuclear-Military-Industrial Risk Complex chapter, a paragraph starts "After a boom-boom here and a boom-boom there, fears grew that there might everywhere be a boom-boom.") and sometimes idealist, Zehner's skeptical approach to the current system of energy reform is striking and informative. A must-read for anyone interested in the future of energy and environmentalism.
What do You think about Green Illusions (2012)?
Very well-researched and thought-out, albeit with a flair for the dramatic.
—jenrodrigues18
My favourite book on environmentalism. I read for a class at University.
—jesse
INteresting evaluation of the pro & cons of green energy
—apple2k
