Fewer, Richer, Greener

10Energy: A BTU Is a Unit of Work You Don’t Have to Do

This chapter describes how access to increasingly cheap and plentiful energy became the foundation of modern life, and begins to address prospects for the future. A later chapter, “Ecomodernism” (Chapter 25), speculates about the future of energy in greater detail.

Why do we care so much about energy? About oil and coal and natural gas, nuclear reactors, wind turbines, solar panels? Why do we revere horsepower and tigers in our tank?

Let’s go back in time a few thousand years, to the very beginnings of civilization. There is much work to be done. Fields plowed, sown, and harvested, meals cooked, shelter constructed, water borne from where it’s found to where it’s needed. And all of the energy involved in doing this work comes from human muscle power.

In other words, it comes from food. The food is metabolized to produce energy, which is used to produce more food. It is a recipe for survival—that’s what all animals, plants, and protists do—but not much more.

How do you get ahead? How do you make sure you know where your next meal is coming from? How do you get off the hamster treadmill that I just described?

One way is to harness the muscle power of other people. When someone else does that kind of work for you, instead of for themselves, we typically call them slaves. In fact, when there are only enough calories to survive, they more or less have to be slaves; otherwise you’re expending your own energy to get the money ...