Humanity has binged on growth over the last 150 years thanks mainly to the massive energy subsidy from oil, natural gas and coal. We love growth so much we want it to go on forever.
Category - Sustainability
Mark
Food supply wastes energy
Agriculture came about because it generated an energy surplus that allowed humans to do many other things than forage for food, but today agriculture is a huge energy sink.
Sustainability is more popular than the Kardashians, but not entirely
Sounds impossible, but there is more sustainability content on the web than Kardashian content. A hopeful outcome until we look at interest.
Resilience of people, communities, and ecosystems are not the same thing
Finding and keeping enough food is every organism’s bane. The endless foraging means risking being foraged or failing to find enough food. Success is longevity and the ultimate aim of making more.
Political correctness means we miss the real driver of unsustainability
Humans use more energy today, roughly 173,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) than at any other time in history. This is an unfathomable number so let’s bring it back to a more human scale.
Is the energy transition easy?
Few people alive today can remember when society ran on horsepower—power equal to 550 foot-pounds per second that an imaginary horse could muster. Such meagre power barely touches the sides today.
Meeting human needs is basic thermodynamics
Humans are needy. Our egos would not have life any other way because, without need, we risk starving our bodies of fuel and the failure of our chemical engine.
Jevon’s paradox makes sustainability even harder
Efficiency gains should lower resource consumption but rarely does this happen, especially with energy. What can we learn from a Victorian gentleman who figured this out?
$4 trillion of new infrastructure every year
More than $4 trillion of new infrastructure is needed worldwide each year. Pause on that number for a moment, then explore below.
Is development sustainable?
Sustainable development has been around for 35 years, and the UN has a whole set of poverty alleviation goals built around it. So why the question mark in the title of this post?
