“Today, it has become inevitable to speak of an energy crisis that threatens us. » This sermon, which seems contemporary as the question of energy issues animates the year 2022, nevertheless opens the text Energy and Equity (Seuil), published by Ivan Illich, in 1973. That year was marked by a series of political uncertainties causing a rise in oil prices, which notably saw the United States and the Netherlands undergo an embargo of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. With his book, the philosopher offers an original reflection, where the bicycle is presented as a response to the social and ecological impasse of the overconsumption of energy.
Energy and Equity questions the technical and production system, emphasizing the monopoly that motorized transport is establishing within the transport system. The traffic industry establishes a monopoly which the author describes as ” radical “, because, according to him, by increasing the distance and speed of movement, it involves “a need that only she can satisfy”.
The fathers of nascent political ecology, of which Ivan Illich is one of the representatives, address new questions about modern mobility, causing, among other things, a reversal of the image of the bicycle. During the 1970s, the bicycle began a new symbolic revolution after having been the object of the bourgeois classes in the 19th century.e century, then the vehicle of the working classes from the interwar period thanks to its standardization and the reduction in its purchase cost. While its use is disappearing in most Western cities, the bicycle is becoming synonymous with environmental protection and energy saving compared to motorized modes, the nuisances of which we are becoming aware of.
Anecdotal events
The appearance of ecological issues, combined with a context marked by a geopolitical crisis around energy, is producing new expectations. In the Netherlands, the question of energy autonomy is erupting at a time when the country is marked both by an awareness of infant mortality on the roads and by the destruction of its historic town centers caused by the creation urban highways. The bicycle is then a solution to a triple objective of energy independence, reduction of road fatalities and preservation of urban heritage. The meeting of these different problems makes it possible to restore the image of the little queen, the practice of which had declined since the post-war reconstruction.
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