The more attention I give the subject the more I agree with those that propose a meaningful restructuring of human ecologies - a change in how our communities work. Currently our landscape is the product of a huge centralisation of production, leading to the clustering of living spaces, their subsequent split from agricultural/rural space and the dependance of all this on central infrastructure. All of this was constructed on the assumption of plentiful, cheap energy - it wouldn't be possible without the subsidising of transport we see (not necessarily direct subsidies, though it is in the US where this is the most important, but the huge state initiatives for the expansion of transport infrastructure, providing the capital business wouldn't be able to) and without the cheap large-scale production of electricity. The former is under serious threat and the latter is about to run out.
Renewable energy isn't able to match fossil fuels in the way energy distribution works now - no practical array of windfarms will be able to power the city of London, it would probably have problems with the city of Portsmouth - but it is renewable, meaning exploitable, and it is capable of producting noteworthy amounts of energy. Because the scale of production is smaller, it would require a greater amount of energy plants closer to where the energy is used - it would bear closer resemblances to the way agricultural communities collected around mills than the dotting of power stations across the countryside - closer links to the local needs of production. This production must change as well, since the scale of energy received is smaller: they will likely scale down enormously, meaning that more would be needed, mirroring (more properly, complementing) the distribution of energy plants among now-decentralised communities, they will be more labour intensive and serve the community it is placed in rather than the market as a whole. Speaking in terms of energy usage, the ideal is a countryside with a near-uniform distribtion of light-urban/developed-rural communities, immidiately linked to their power, agricultural and industrial needs. The disadvantages are clear from the description, however the advantages are striking: this is a form of production that is both highly exploitable and renewable. The human labour might be more intensive but this leads to higher craftsmanship and, if I might be so bold, be a major psychological boon to those engaged in it: how desirable is the enormous labour-saving of today when the jobs it leaves us are dehumanising and undesirable and the majority of the population is critically underemployed. There will be greater interaction between the community and the production that serves it, rather than the former being an appendage of the latter as it is today.
In short, it won't as much be an improvement or degrading as much as a change, a meaningful change, and it need not be a catastrophic one if we make commitments towards implementing more sustainable, healthier human ecologies.
