Also in Renewable Energy

Who Owns the Sun?

People, Politics, and the Struggle for a Solar Economy

by Daniel M. Berman, John T. O'Connor

Excerpt

From Ralph Nader's foreword:

This well-documented, passionate book by Berman and O'Connor...

From the Gulf War to the greenhouse effect and the political power of the energy companies over Washington and the state capitals; from nuclear power's radioactive waste pileups to routine oil spills; from expensive taxpayer subsidies for nuclear and fossil fuels to the lulling effect of temporary fossil-fuel surpluses; from the harmony ideology of certain major environmental groups toward fuel and electric companies, and the abandonment of civic movement for renewable-energy self-sufficiency (in deference to the supremacy of the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear moguls) to the abdication of the media's reporting on energy matters and the similar indifference of industry-indentured elected officials to what is civically right (in contrast to their obeisance to the corporate might), and the induced complacency of the public when the gas lines disappeared, Who Owns the Sun? lets the sunshine in. With the accelerating appetite for conventional fuel spurred by the rising Asian economies, trends will become more pronounced in the direction of environmental and community tragedies.

...

Who Owns the Sun? stirs the sense of important lost opportunities and makes us indignant enough to recover and propel many initiatives for a solar world.

Ralph Nader
Washington, D.C.
August, 1996