Energy and Equity

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Encounters & Identities: Religion in Private and Public Spheres

For a number of reasons we are today accustomed to living with an ‘energy crisis’ -- because high prices affect our household budget, because, intermittently, the flow of fuel has been cut off or threatened, by geopolitical events or, increasingly, we are concerned by the environmental damage caused by the use of fossil fuels. In this prescient essay first published in 1974 Illich examines the question of whether or not humans need any more energy than is their natural birthright. Along the way he gives a startling analysis of the marginal disutility of private transport and other energy-dependent "tools" of modernity. After a certain point, that is, more energy gives negative returns. For example, moving around causes loss of time proportional to the amount of energy which is poured into the transport system, so that the speed of the fastest traveller correlates inversely to the equality as well as freedom of the median traveller.

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