ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the policies which lie behind present levels of consumption and also examines the way that the global environmental problem is framed. The ‘problem’ of global sustainability is framed by the existing relations of power which govern global economic interdependence. The way that obligations to the global environment are perceived depends on the way that these obligations are viewed from different regions, from a quite different economic perspective. The developing countries of the South are often unwilling to make energy conservation a priority. Subsidies to commercial energy are often huge in developing countries. At the same time the energy technologies they come to depend upon, in the course of their development, are dirty and inefficient. The Balbina complex supplies energy to the fast-growing city of Manaus, capital city of the state of Amazonas, which lies 150 kilometres to the south-east.
