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Choosing your energy sources, choosing your future

Yves Martin
Expert

How can we consume less energy without sacrificing quality of life?

The answer is that we can if we accept the idea that quality of life is possible outside of our current habits.
Do we really undermine our “quality of life” or harm our health when we save a third on our heating bills by setting the thermostat to 18° C and wearing a sweater, instead of leaving it at 23° C so that we can stay in shirtsleeves?
Every day we create more and more urban sprawl at the edge of our cities, by building neighborhoods that are impossible to live in without an automobile and making our downtown areas unlivable due to traffic congestion. Does this reflect a strong, intrinsic preference for detached single-family housing and the automobile, or the automobile's destruction of the pleasures of old-style city living, which was cheaper overall and required 3 to 5 times less fuel?