The Energy Grid

Science Blogs has a new special blog on sustainable energy called The Energy Grid. It is a short term project, planned to run a few months, where each of the six contributors posts once per week on a subject introduced on Sunday.

I am flattered to have been asked to contribute and you can read my first contribution posted today, here. It is headlined Sustainability will not come without reductions in consumption and here is a free sample:

Our energy system faces security and environmental challenges because we have created a social and economic paradigm based on over-consumption and a non-renewable energy. Energy security is impossible when it comes from fossil fuels that take hundreds of millions of years to form and are running out fast. Over-consumption is by definition unsustainable and what we consume comes out of the natural environment in some form, at some point, so eventually we will hit that wall hard (even harder than we already are).

Without firmly facing these two facts, I fail to see how we can arrive at any kind of long term solution.

Comments are preferred over there but won't be ignored here.