Energy & Equity
by Ivan Illich

In this essay Ivan Illich demonstrates, by means of a detailed analysis of the way people travel, the imbalance which has arisen between industrial development, social justice and personal freedom. He argues that speed is a source and tool of political manipulative power in rich as well as poor countries. The ideology of continual growth which informs both socialist and capitalist systems imposes intolerable social inequalities. The overconsumption of energy not only destroys the physical environment through pollution, but, even more important, causes the disintegration of society itself. Illich's conclusion is to advocate a radical political decision to neutralise the energy crisis by the limiting of traffic. For it is traffic, based on transport, he argues which corrupts and enslaves, and results in a further decline of equity, leisure and autonomy for all. In this provocative and incisively reasoned contribution to the politics of survival, Illich takes one step further the arguments advanced in his 'Tools for Conviviality'.