We Can’t Even Move During Winter Without Fossil Fuels

Heating your home is a life support issue during any Canadian winter, but our dependency on fossil fuels goes beyond just keeping warm. What would happen to your world without diesel-burning snow plows keeping the roads open? How would you get to work? How would you buy food? 100 years use of fossil fuels has brought with it our own profound dependency  – a dependency that’s so pervasive it goes way beyond any of our current attempts to break the fossil fuel habit. Sure, we’re making a small start with more efficient homes and photovoltaic electricity and more frugal vehicles. I’m all for this, but let’s not fool ourselves. The kind of changes required to create a sustainable and fossil fuel-free society goes way beyond any action plans we have now. It probably goes beyond anything most people would consider reasonable, too. What would more effective strategies look like? I have some ideas that I’ll be sharing over the next few months, but one things for sure. Any truly secure energy future would definitely not involve a fuel source that comes primarily from the most chronically unstable part of the globe.