The Conundrum by David Owen

The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions Can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse

The Conundrum is a mind-changing manifesto from The New Yorker writer David Owen about the environment, efficiency and the real path to sustainability.

Hybrid cars, fast trains, compact florescent light bulbs, solar panels, carbon offsets: Everything you've been told about living green is wrong. The quest for a breakthrough battery or a 100 mpg car are dangerous fantasies. We are consumers, and we like to consume green and efficiently. But David Owen argues that our best intentions are still at cross purposes to our true goal -- living sustainably and caring for our environment and the future of the planet. Efficiency, once considered the holy grail of our environmental problems, turns out to be part of the problem. Efforts to improve efficiency and increase sustainable development only exacerbate the problems they are meant to solve, more than negating the environmental gains. We have little trouble turning increases in efficiency into increases in consumption.

David Owen's The Conundrum is an elegant nonfiction narrative filled with fascinating information and anecdotes takes you through the history of energy and the quest for efficiency. This is a book about the environment that will change how you look at the world. We should not be waiting for some geniuses to invent our way out of the energy and economic crisis we're in. We already have the technology and knowledge we need to live sustainably. But will we do it?

That is the conundrum.

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Science & Technology

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[alikat001]

David Owen, I hate you, I hate you, I love you I love you... damn, I don't wanna think about this... that's my conundrum.

[climbingkid7]

Got my copy yesterday - but Question: Does anyone know what music was used in the video? Would sure like to listen to it while I read the book....

[gregreman]

Doesn't mention nuclear power, which could, if done right produce enough power, because it is 'scary'. Unlike collapse of industrial society, which would be truly terrifying.

[r3ality1]

@Rioter3 It's an ad for the book.

[Rioter3]

Notwithstanding the simplistic treatment of the so-called "rebound effect" as applied to energy, what is the point of this?

[dannykeat]

@Gabagabe1 I'd rather go on a diet than eat myself to death.

[chizb79]

@burlearth I agree, and besides all renewables depend on oil on building and maintenance. Looks to me like peak oil is going to put a stop to the conundrum.

[burlearth]

No amount of wind farms, solar panels or whatnot energy alternatives now extant can make up for what we consume and require from oil.

[Gabagabe1]

Yes, in a nutshell: Innovation ultimately means more energy being used.

What's more, I take my dislike of the "green" movement one step further. Our human centric notion of a prelapsarian paradise is not relevant to mother nature. Mother nature is resilient, even more than humans. It took us about 5 billion years to show up, if we get wiped out from our own doing, and it takes millions of years to restore earth to our false notion, so be it. There is not time for nature.