I recently had a conversation wherein I told a friend that I wasn’t interested in putting solar panels on my house. I think he was surprised, given that we had been having a discussion about ways that I reduce my home power usage. Sure, installing solar cells would further reduce my monthly electricity bill, but that’s not the goal of the game for me. Reducing energy consumption, ultimately, is about extending the period of time on which we depend on non-sustainable energy sources. I’m not particularly interested in that strategy, since it ultimately is destined to fail. Non-sustainable, by definition, means that eventually it runs out.

I don’t mean to suggest that I expect non-sustainable energy to fail within my lifetime, or, really, at any time in particular. It’s a given that it’ll run out, but the people who think they know when, and what will happen between now and then, are just guessing. What this means is that my actions align with my desires for the far-future in a necessarily vague sort of way. My individual actions will probably not significantly affect the course of humanity’s relationship with energy, nor am I likely to be precognitive enough to anticipate how I will relate to energy in the future, so all I can do is imagine how things might go and do what feels good today.

Putting solar panels on my roof doesn’t feel good today. Solar panels and batteries are, undeniably, The Future, and I am skeptical of the premise that the future will be delivered to us on the platter of ever-advancing technology. Derrick Jensen sums up my thoughts on technological “progress” towards the future in his essay High on Progress:

[W]e seem unquestioningly to presume that tomorrow’s progress will bring more good things to life, and will simultaneously solve the problems created by yesterday’s and today’s progress (without then creating yet more problems, as “progress” always seems to do).

Suggesting solar cells and batteries in order to address the problems caused by fossil fuel usage seems like a perfect example of that idea, and resisting that idea on principle seems more important than any good that might be wrought by the use of solar cells.

The problems caused by fossil fuel usage are fundamental to any non-sustainable energy source. Substituting another un-sustainable energy source for fossil fuels is unlikely to do much except postpone the ultimate reversion to sustainable sources. To those who associate “sustainable” with the Toyota Prius, a wind farm off the coast, and cold fusion reactors, “reversion” may seem like a funny word to combine with “sustainable.” They see sustainability in the future. But truly sustainable energy systems are still all around us, and always have been. A pasture is a perfectly sustainable solar cell. It will go on for millennia, growing grass and other plants for animals (perfectly sustainable “batteries”) to eat. Meanwhile, technology keeps “advancing.”

It’s not that I don’t understand technology’s allure. I’m a modern human, just like you are. I like driving a car, mowing my lawn, playing Xbox, and blogging on the Internet. I used to fret a lot about my own hypocrisy until it was pointed out to me that it’s not that I’m failing to live up to my own values, but that I have multiple values in play. I want to live sustainably, yes, but I also want to have a relationship with a community of friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors. I don’t want to spend my life in prison, have my home taken by the IRS, or starve myself to malnourishment. These are important priorities too, and the issue of sustainable living doesn’t trump them.

So I have a car, but I’m glad that I work out of the home so I don’t have to drive it very often. I have a mower, but I’m thinking about getting a sheep instead. I shop at the grocery store, but I have a garden that helps remind me where all that food in the grocery store really comes from. I have electricity to my home, but I use fans and careful opening and closing of windows instead of central air to regulate the house’s temperature. The balance of these priorities is less about how much energy I do or don’t use, and more about how dependent I am on external inputs for sustenance. From that perspective, solar cells are just another, extraordinarily technologically complex, external input.

Of course, I haven’t missed that those power lines leading up to my house represent one huge external input. The difference is this: if, one day, those power lines go dead, and the world has changed such that we no longer have electricity, I am ready to pick up my hand tools and go to work without it. That’s not to say that I am 100% ready, because to live that way today would mean giving up some of those other priorities that I also value, but I’m practicing. And from that perspective, putting solar cells on my roof is a waste of resources. I’d be better off buying more hand tools. Or a sheep.