ABSTRACT
The most highly consuming industrial nations use far more energy and electricity per capita than they need to maintain their comfortable lifestyles. They have major social institutions – corporations, government agencies, and professional organizations – that exist to feed and expand our appetite for fuels and electricity. These bring abundant benefits at relatively low monetary cost, spurring consumer demand, but our increasing consumption of fuels, whether finite or renewable, will inevitably worsen an array of problems. Technology can make more energy available and improve the efficiency with which we use it. But unless we modify the corporations, government agencies, and professional organizations that drive increasing energy/electricity use, and the patterns of business and consumer behavior that evolved to use “cheap” and abundant energy, those problems will intensify.
