Summary of the book "Green Illusions" - By Ozzie Zehner

Key concepts in this book:

1. Conventional energy sources, such as fossil fuels and nuclear power, are hazardous to human health and the environment.
2. Biofuels, for example, are an alternative energy source with potentially harmful side effects.
3. Hydropower and solar power are examples of renewable energy sources that aren't perfect.
4. Alternative energy sources may be sustainable, but their production is not.
5. People prefer to believe that new, environmentally friendly technologies will fix our problems.
6. Green marketing offers a rosy picture of renewable energy sources.
7. The essence of the energy dilemma is our unsustainable need for energy, which technological solutions fail to solve.
8. It's simpler to persuade people to consume less if you focus on actual rewards.
9. The government should enact policies that encourage businesses and individuals to reduce their energy consumption.
10. Social measures can also be used to reduce consumption.
11. Living in the city is more environmentally friendly than living in the suburbs.

Who can benefit the most from this book:

• Anyone interested in the truth behind alternative energy sources.
• Anyone who cares about the future of our planet.
• Anyone interested in urban planning.

What am I getting out of it? Learn why the only way to solve the energy crisis is for us to change our habits.

If you are concerned about the environment, you may honestly hope that one day all of the world's energy will be generated by renewable energy sources such as the sun and wind.

This summary may surprise you in this instance.

The hoopla around these alternative energy sources is exaggerated, as they all have significant disadvantages.

Worse, you'll learn why putting our faith in technical solutions is only an excuse for us to continue living extravagant lives: if we truly cared about the environment, we'd reduce our consumption.

• You'll learn why biofuel causes hunger.
• How being lazy and taking some time off work can actually help save the earth.
• And why solar energy is actually hastening global warming in this summary.

1. Conventional energy sources, such as fossil fuels and nuclear power, are hazardous to human health and the environment.

The majority of humanity's energy demands have been fulfilled for over a century by using traditional energy sources such as fossil fuels and uranium. However, there is a catch: the amount of these resources on Earth is finite, while humanity's demand for energy is infinite. As a result, all experts concur that we require other alternatives.

But first, let's take a look at the most common conventional sources in use today.

Coal is by far the worst environmental offender of all conventional energy sources, as it is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

Another clear disadvantage is that coal burning pollutes the air and puts people's health at danger. Filters are useless because they produce a hazardous sludge that contaminates the groundwater. Because coal must be mined before it can be burned, it has a devastating effect on entire landscapes.

Despite its negative effects, coal is used to create half of America's electricity and 80 percent of China's electricity merely because it is cheaper than oil.

Uranium, which is used to generate nuclear energy, is another common conventional energy source. However, because it is so harmful, it isn't any better than coal.

Although nuclear energy mishaps are less common than, say, oil spills, the harm they may cause is vastly larger. Accidents can occur as a result of human error, such as at Chernobyl, or natural calamities, such as the tsunami that caused the Fukushima tragedy. Nuclear power stations are also terrorist targets because of their potential for destruction.

Furthermore, storing the radioactive waste generated by nuclear power is both costly and risky, as engineers have yet to develop a long-term storage system that is both safe and impervious to the waste's radiation.

Aside from the environmental and health hazards, coal and nuclear power aren't particularly cost-effective: one subsidy critic claims that they're only profitable because of state tax subsidies.

2. Biofuels, for example, are an alternative energy source with potentially harmful side effects.

Sustainable energy sources, in contrast to the conventional energy sources covered in the preceding section, are expected to be capable of meeting our current energy needs without depleting a resource that future generations will use to generate energy.

Solar, wind, water, hydrogen, and biofuels are examples of alternative energy technologies that aim to reduce CO2 emissions and thus mitigate global warming. Another goal is to reduce humanity's use and reliance on fossil fuels in order to mitigate their negative impacts.

Alternative energy sources are typically divided into two categories: regrowable and renewable energy sources, sometimes known as regrowables and renewables.

Are they, however, truly sustainable? Let's start with regrowables and then move on to renewables in the next few seconds.

Regrowables appear to be a perfect solution for our dwindling traditional energy sources at first glance. Good, aged firewood is a classic example. When you burn it for heat, additional trees sprout to replace the one you cut down. You'll never run out of trees as long as there are trees.

Biofuels such as biomass, biogases, bioalcohol, and biodiesel are all founded on the idea of converting plant and animal materials into energy and then regrowing it after harvesting. These biofuels currently meet around 5% of the energy demand in the United States.

However, despite its advantages, biofuel production poses a threat to food security and climate change.

Why?

Farmers are foregoing food crops in favor of lucrative biofuels, which, as researchers have warned, would push up global food costs, hurting poor people all over the world.

Furthermore, biofuel production has the potential to hasten climate change, which would invalidate the entire purpose of biofuels in the first place!

Farmers in Brazil, for example, are so anxious to create biofuels that they are planting them on land that was previously used for sugarcane. They also clear jungles for sugarcane crops to compensate for the shortage in food production. However, food crops such as sugarcane do not absorb sunlight as well as rainforests, accelerating climate change.

3. Hydropower and solar power are examples of renewable energy sources that aren't perfect.

The other group of alternative energy sources is known as renewables, or near-infinite sources, such as solar and water power, which we'll look at in more detail in the next blink.

Solar energy is especially troublesome since it is created by solar cells, which release a large amount of highly harmful greenhouse gases during the production process.

How strong is it?

Take, for example, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), which is 17,000 times more toxic than CO2 and whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing at an alarming pace of 11% each year.

Hydropower, on the other hand, is a highly sustainable kind of energy generation. It is produced by damming rivers and then allowing water to pass through to power turbines. Once the dam and power plant are finished, they will generate energy well into the future thanks to the earth's natural water cycle.

Hydropower plants now account for about 15% of global electricity generation.

Unfortunately, hydropower isn't without flaws, as it has the potential to spark international strife.

Because rivers cut across borders, this is the case. The Congo, Nile, Rhine, and Niger rivers each run through ten countries. When one country constructs a dam to create electricity, countries downstream may experience a water deficit, resulting in drought and maybe starvation. As evidenced by the current issues between Pakistan and India, as well as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, this can lead to conflict.

4. Alternative energy sources may be sustainable, but their production is not.

The biggest stumbling block with alternative energy sources is that, while they may be renewable or regenerable, the equipment and procedures required to generate electricity from them are not. Consider the following two scenarios:

Because it is fueled by a hydrogen fuel cell that emits only pure water, the hydrogen-powered car appears to be the ideal green means of transportation.

However, the energy required to produce hydrogen for the fuel cell is always more than the energy provided by the cell. This is due to the fact that hydrogen gas must be transformed into a liquid state using high pressure and refrigeration, which necessitates large amounts of energy that are often generated by conventional techniques. Other conversion methods appear less feasible: in 1994, researchers in California created a solar-powered hydrogen production facility, but it took 10 hours to produce one kilogram of hydrogen, which is equivalent to a gallon of gasoline.

Wind energy suffers from the same drawbacks. While wind is a renewable resource in and of itself, the turbines that convert it into energy aren't. We can use lifecycle calculations to look at how they harm the environment throughout their lives – that is, during production, transportation, maintenance, and disposal – and the results suggest that wind turbines demand a lot of conventionally produced energy.

We can also look at wind power stations' carbon footprints, or how much CO2 they produce in total. Though you would think that because the turbines don't emit CO2, their carbon impact is smaller than that of conventional sources, you'd be wrong: Because CO2 emissions from turbine manufacturing are so significant, wind power's advantages over traditional energy sources are frequently overshadowed.

Two-thirds of the wind turbines constructed in Manchester, according to a British research, will result in a net increase in carbon. The only way to avoid this is to locate the turbines in high-wind areas, yet the vast majority of them are currently in operation to supply only 1% of world energy demand.

5. People prefer to believe that new, environmentally friendly technologies will fix our problems.

Given all of these negative consequences, the enthusiasm surrounding alternative energy sources appears, to say the least, overdone. So, why do people tend to overlook all of the disadvantages of alternative energy sources?

Our inner motivations hold the key to the solution.

To begin with, the prospect of being able to continue our existing lavish lifestyle by utilizing new clean-energy generation technology is appealing. Because, after all, why should we limit our excessive consumption if scientists and engineers can handle the problem for us?

This is known as a green conscience, and it helps us to live our lives without worrying about the future of our planet.

Actualizing the drawbacks of alternate energy sources would require us to acknowledge that we need to utilize less energy, which most people find unappealing. It makes me think of things like taking cold showers, reading in the dark, sweating in a hot bus, and so on.

Second, many individuals are convinced that technology progress will solve all of our issues. Since 1970, environmentalists in Europe and the United States have been influenced by the belief that technical advancement and innovation will lead to ecological modernization, resulting in benefits for both the environment and the economy.

However, some studies suggest that this is only an illusion, and that believing it leads us to believe that we may have unlimited energy with no negative influence on the environment. The hoopla around breakthroughs like the hydrogen automobile and nuclear power, according to one Swedish researcher, is founded on the same hope. They effectively depict humanity's age-old goal of building a perpetual mobile — a fictional contraption that does not require any energy to operate. However, such machines are a practical impossibility, and chasing the goal with hydrogen fuel cells and uranium can be extremely hazardous.

6. Green marketing offers a rosy picture of renewable energy sources.

Have you ever felt like practically every politician, media outlet, and industry promotes alternative energy sources as the solution to all of our problems?

If that's the case, you'd be correct: green marketing is all over the news. But why is it the case?

For starters, policymakers recognize new energy technologies' potential economic benefits. They hope that the alternative energy business would boost the economy and create more jobs.

Even more concerning, today's media appear to be adamantly in favor of alternative energy solutions without having done their homework. Instead of conducting genuine investigative journalism, they rely on material provided by alternative energy corporations and public relations firms.

Because media sources can't afford to employ as many journalists on staff as they'd want, source journalism has become popular. Due to financial constraints, two-thirds of online journalists believe they must focus on delivering rather than arguing information.

As a result, journalists do not delve deeply enough into the drawbacks of alternate energy sources.

Furthermore, journalists' endeavor to be objective creates its own conundrum. While it may appear that they are upholding their objectivity by confining the energy debate to a fight between alternative and conventional energy sources, they are completely ignoring simpler, non-technical alternatives such as car-sharing, biking to work, and other energy-saving initiatives.

Any dispute will always include more than two sides.

Multinational corporations that favor alternative energy options also put pressure on journalists. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 68 percent of journalists who work for local newspapers believe that business pressure has influenced their writing. This isn't to say that firms tell journalists what to write; rather, they have a more subtle impact. One example is that, in most cases, businesses have funded the studies that journalists utilize as sources of information.

7. The essence of the energy dilemma is our unsustainable need for energy, which technological solutions fail to solve.

Alternative energy sources, in addition to all of the negative side effects discussed in the preceding blinks, have one more critical flaw: they don't address the true basis of the energy dilemma, namely, our enormous need for energy. Instead, they only propose technological solutions or methods for generating more energy or improving energy efficiency. To put it another way, they're designed to treat the symptoms rather than the disease itself.

Even something as seemingly innocent as increasing energy efficiency can have severe consequences, as it can lead to increased, rather than lower, energy consumption.

The Jevons Paradox, named after economist William Stanley Jevons, is to blame for this behavior. In 1865, he looked into how James Watt's creation of a more efficient steam engine affected the country's coal use. He discovered that, while the invention initially improved overall energy efficiency by reducing coal consumption, in the long run, it helped make steam engines more inexpensive and popular, resulting in an increase in coal consumption.

Raising the efficiency of modern equipment and machinery, on the other hand, will lower the cost of energy, increasing demand for it and returning us to where we started: high energy consumption and insufficient energy supply.

In light of this, why do we still prefer solutions that address energy production over those that focus energy reduction?

Because for a long time, our economy has been driven by a mindset known as productivism, which places a premium on items produced and the people who make them. As a result, productivism discourages us from looking for energy-saving options like establishing walkable neighbourhoods or bicycling to work. Such approaches do not generate goods in the same way that new wind turbine manufacturing, for example, do. Energy-saving ideas are rarely copyrighted and marketed, and hence have little economic value.

8. It's simpler to persuade people to consume less if you focus on actual rewards.

It's become evident that the energy issue is caused by our excessive energy consumption, not by a shortage of energy. This means that by resolving to spend less, everyone can contribute to the resolution of the situation.

But how can we make the move from our current consumerist, productivist lifestyle to something more modest?

The most significant impediment is that most people are either unaware of or unconcerned about how their current actions affect the future. Teen smoking is an example: despite knowing that smoking causes cancer, teens continue to smoke because the bad effects aren't noticed right away. Climate change is the same way: it isn't a pressing issue, therefore people aren't sure what the long-term consequences will be.

To counteract this trend, efforts to influence people's behavior should focus on more immediate and tangible negative consequences.

One anti-smoking campaign, for example, focused on how having smoker's breath can ruin a date. This immediate disadvantage was significantly more compelling than the prospect of cancer in the future.

Similarly, motivating people to reduce their energy use will be easier if actual benefits, such as time or money savings, are provided. And this is seen by the fact that Europeans, on average, consume less than Americans while simultaneously being happy.

Americans are caught in a work-spend cycle, in which they consume more but also have to work more to get more money. In the last two decades, for example, their vacation time has reduced by an average of 28%.

Consider the amount of sweets, snacks, and soft drinks consumed by Americans. Despite the fact that they have no nutritional value, they use a third of the energy consumed by the US food sector. So, if you opt to cut back on your intake, you'll be healthier while also saving energy.

9. The government should enact policies that encourage businesses and individuals to reduce their energy consumption.

In addition to persuading people to change their purchasing habits, the US government can take other measures to save energy across the board. These interventions must be focused at reducing energy usage while boosting well-being, and they must not be prohibitively expensive to be effective.

To begin with, taxation should be shifted away from income and toward consumption. Until now, the costs of things have not adequately represented the negative consequences of the energy used to manufacture them, and this must change.

Cost penalties have been implemented in California for products that use a lot of energy. The impact of this action is clear: national average per-capita energy usage has increased in the last decade, but California's has remained steady. Despite its energy conservatism, California ranks among the top ten happiest states in the country.

Second, the government should begin to encourage the use of smart packaging.

Packaging material makes up almost a third of all trash in the United States. Consider how much energy is expended in the production, recycling, and disposal of all of this waste. To address this, the United States should follow Europe's lead and make marketers responsible for the expense of recycling and disposing of their packaging.

Another compelling reason for corporations to reconsider their packaging is that each year, over 300,000 Americans visit emergency rooms after injuring themselves while unpacking a product.

Finally, as governments in Europe do, the government should enable and enforce legally enforceable "No junk mail please" stickers on people's mailboxes. This would significantly reduce the amount of energy required to generate all of that undesirable junk mail. According to one expert, all of America's junk mail has a carbon footprint equal to eleven coal-fired power plants.

10. Social measures can also be used to reduce consumption.

The expansion of the population is one of the most evident factors on global energy needs: more people require more energy.

As a result, many environmentalists support programs that limit birth rates. However, as supporters for women's rights point out, this approach effectively sees women as nothing more than wombs, disregarding their ability to control their reproductive behavior.

Thankfully, emerging environmentalist initiatives try to bridge this gap by empowering women rather than imposing technocratic birth-rate regulations. The more governments focus on educating and empowering women, the lower the average birth rates, according to research. Environmentalists and proponents of women's rights can work together using this strategy.

Another social measure we could take to reduce energy consumption is to protect children from advertising, as ubiquitous child-directed advertisements are raising a generation of consumerist children.

However, this is no easy task for parents: consider how you would keep your children from seeing advertisements. Consider trying to explain to your children the importance of being sceptical of materialism.

The US Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission attempted to restrict child-targeted advertising in 1970, but business lobbyists were able to persuade Congress to oppose the move.

Compare this to Sweden, where all advertising directed towards children under the age of twelve was outlawed twenty years ago. According to a recent study, this has reduced children's proclivity for consumerism: in their letters to Santa, Swedish children ask for fewer Christmas items than children in nations without similar limits.

11. Living in the city is more environmentally friendly than living in the suburbs.

When one thinks about living a green lifestyle, the image of a residence in the countryside or suburbs frequently comes to mind. However, this is only true if you live an autarkic lifestyle, which means you don't rely on transportation.

Living in the suburbs usually comes with one significant environmental drawback: having to travel large distances by car to go somewhere. Over the last 30 years, as America has become more suburbanized, the amount of time average Americans spend in their cars has doubled to 45 hours per month.

Taking this into account, city living is actually more environmentally beneficial, as cities are more walkable and provide public transportation.

New York City, for example, is the most densely populated city in North America, but it also has the lowest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions, owing to the fact that residents walk and take public transportation more than in other North American cities.

Cities are also more bicycle-friendly than rural areas. The majority of Americans have yet to adopt this trend: they ride their bikes for fewer than 1% of their journeys, compared to nearly 10% for Germans and nearly 25% for the Dutch. Some may argue that this is due to longer distances in the United States, however 90 percent of trips taken by Americans in cars are between one and two miles long.

There would be less demand for parking places and garages in cities if more people were convinced to use bikes and public transportation instead of driving their own automobiles. The newly available space could be used for parks or other green spaces. This would not only benefit the environment but also provide people with a more environmentally friendly living environment.

Future environmentalists will face a major challenge in transforming cities into more livable, environmentally friendly places, as this is the only way to persuade people to prefer the city to the suburbs. Widening sidewalks, planting trees, designating safe bicycle routes, and building several new parks and pedestrian zones are all terrific places to start.

The book's main message is that if we want to rescue the planet and solve the energy crisis, we can't wait for technological breakthroughs that will allow us to continue our excessive energy use. Instead, we need to urge people to consume less.

Advice that can be implemented:

Bicycle to work.

Have you considered riding your bike to work rather than driving? If you have a long morning commute, you may find that biking is just as fast as or faster than driving. You'll also save time by exercising during your commute. You'll be energized for the rest of the day after a shower at the office.