Book review: Energy and Power – Our Perilous Obsessions / Ynni a Phŵer – Ein chwantau peryglus

Leanne Wood

We all know, even if some are in denial, that our climate, weather, nature are changing.

We are experiencing more extreme weather events and although countries have got together and pledged action to cut fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions, woefully little is happening fast enough.

We are well on the way to passing major tipping points and to global chaos.

In his book, Gareth Wyn Jones explains why.

Energy

He shows how economic and population growth as well as societal change are linked to energy. The world’s population exploded following the energy-driven industrial revolutions.

He demonstrates how governments and elites – especially the new tech elites, need and crave ever more energy. They are obsessed with energy because energy means power and money.

However, using more and more energy fostering more and faster economic growth brings about its own problems. Big ones. In this book, the author is issuing us with a warning: we must cut our energy use – all energy use, fossil fuel or otherwise – or we face not just climate breakdown but also societal breakdown.

Drawing on a range of scientific disciplines and evidence, and through various papers, articles, essays and a lecture, Gareth describes how excess power and energy can be toxic.

He argues that the source of many of our underlying societal problems, in addition to climate change, is our relationship with energy, irrespective of the source of that energy. “We won’t solve some of our fundamental issues if we continue to the path of seeking to exploit more and more energy”.

Free energy transformations enable work to be accomplished and power to be generated. Energy is conserved, but when transformations occur, some energy is lost into forms unable to work.

This “lost” component is entropy. More entropy creates more disorder, more complexity, and a faster rate of change, all of which requires regulation. As with AI and social media, when regulation can’t keep up with the pace of change, we have a problem.

Hope

It’s not all doom and gloom. There is hope for an alternative. For that, the last word goes to Gareth Wyn Jones.

He urges us to ask ourselves: “Can we not live well on less energy? A dream of not how I can acquire more and more but how I can live better on less energy.”

“This vision leads logically to an emphasis on the local community to counteract the centripetal force of big business and large conurbations.

The vision emphasises personal responsibility and freedom as well as cooperation at the community as well as global level. It’s community-based renewable energy projects such as Ynni Ogwen …”

As Co-Executive Director of Community Energy Wales, how can I disagree with that?

This review is taken from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Books Council of Wales.