Tegenlicht Meet Up: Energy Blindness according to Nate Hagens

As part of the Arnhem Electricity Week, a Tegenlicht Meet Up centred on the short documentary Energy Blindness according to Nate Hagens, a thinker with serious reservations about the way we use energy and our assumption that green energy is the solution. Following the screening, there will be a panel discussion between the audience and a number of expert speakers.

What if green energy doesn’t work? If the energy transition looks promising on paper but isn’t realistic in practice. Where do we find the answer to our insatiable appetite for energy? Is there even an answer? Not necessarily, according to Nate Hagens. Hagens is director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF), an organisation dedicated to educating and preparing society for the cultural transition ahead. He argues that the way we currently use energy — the recklessness with which we consume it — is simply not sustainable. However you look at it, and however green the energy becomes: we have hit the limits. Hagens envisions a great simplification as a response to the energy question, an idea he explores in his podcast of the same name. Beyond possessions and back to basics to what truly matters in life.

(Martijn Kieft, Netherlands 2023, 22 min, spoken in English, Dutch subtitles)