The Dominant Animal: Chapter 14, Energy and its Ecological Costs
an on line guide
Garret Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons
Weeks
Fourteen
"Energy...is essential to human enterprise at every level....The mobilization of abundant energy....is what made us the dominant animal on earth."
Ecological problems can be solved by imagination & systemic thinking.
Overview
So without energy our civilizations are lost because we have no
sources by which to feed, clothe, and shelter our inhabitants at the density and to the level of consumption to which they have become accustomed.
1. The uses of energy { 292
2.
Efficiency as an energy source { 295
a.
Lovin’s soft energy path
b.
Holdren’s Optimistic Scenario
3.
Alternative energy sources – Renewable fuels {
207
4.
Fossil Fuel Alternatives { 305
5.
Nuclear Power { 306
6.
Toward the Future { 308
"The energy problem brings together many crucial issues in the human predicament."
p. 308.
"The slowness of change in the social arena of culture has retarded recognition of this circumstance and its consequences."
pp. 308-309.
The consequences
"are readily seen in the dominant species running out of environment (...incipient rapid climate change) and in global political instability, which is especially dramatic in the form of wars over petroleum."
p. 309.
