"For at least three decades, governments have been exhorting their citizens to use less energy. This is simply erroneous. We do not need to reduce the use of energy; we can use as much energy as we wish. We need to reduce the use of fuel, a very different and much narrower problem."

This revolutionary statement comes well into a remarkable new book, Keeping the Lights On, by my old friend Walt Patterson. Walt was born in Canada, trained as a nuclear physicist, moved to England 40 or more years ago, worked for Friends of the Earth in London, mostly campaigning to block the construction of more nuclear power plants. For the last three decades, he's been an independent energy analyst and author, having written a dozen books and hundreds of articles and papers. His Nuclear Power, published by Penguin, is by far the best layperson's introduction to that complicated subject, which is rising like the phoenix into the public discourse.

The new book is chock full of surprises. For example, he lays a large share of the blame for our present predicament at the feet of Thomas Edison, not for the light bulb, but for measuring the flow of electricity with a meter. This led to inefficiency and the commodification of electricity. But electricity is not a commodity, it is not a fuel like oil or gas. It's a process. The distinction may seem arcane but it's anything but.

The basis for the statement quoted above is something nearly everyone learns in school and then promptly forgets. There is a fixed amount of energy in the world in myriad forms: oil, coal, gas, also trees, crops, buildings, nearly everything. You cannot produce energy; you cannot conserve energy. When you burn gas in your car, you are not consuming energy, you're transforming it into motion and heat and contributing to global warming; the overall amount of energy remains the same.

Walt's main subject here is the future of electricity. He urges small, disbursed generation systems close to where the juice is needed depending mostly on non-fuel generation, including solar and wind and others too numerous to mention here.

I strongly urge you to take a look. The "Style Guide" at the end is worth the price of admission all by itself.

Tom Turner, Senior Editor
yourturn@earthjustice.org