Energy

By Winona LaDuke

The U.S. is the wealthiest and most dominant country in the world, yet it can’t keep the lights on in New York City, nor can it provide power in “liberated” Baghdad. Centralized power production based on fossil fuel and nuclear resources has served to centralize political power, to disconnect communities from responsibility and control over energy, and to create a vast wasteful system. We need to recover democracy. And one key element is democratizing power production.

Let’s face it, we are energy junkies. The U.S. is the largest energy market in the world, and we consume one third of the world’s energy resources with five percent of the population. We are undeniably addicted—our economy is based on the burning of dinosaurs and on wasteful production systems. In other words, oil. Ninety-seven percent of the total world oil consumption has been in the past 70 years.

By Clayton Thomas-Muller

Innovative ideas and steps toward a more sustainable global system

By the International Forum on Globalization

There is no longer any reason for this unsustainable [global energy] situation to persist. Considering the social, environmental, and security problems intrinsic to fossil fuel-based economies, it is a wonder that this form of energy production has survived to the present at all.

Volume 2, No. 2: Summer 1991

In February of this year, President Bush’s National Energy Strategy was released to the American public from Washington, DC. The Strategy identifies no specific author or agency responsible for the contents, nor does it take into account the social justice aspect of energy policy planning.