The Crash Course - Chris Martenson [97]
Why Technology Can’t Fix This
Technology can help us exploit what energy we do have more cleanly, cheaply, and more efficiently, but it cannot create energy. And when we transform energy, we lose energy to the universe along the way in the form of diffuse heat. Therefore, it’s appropriate to view the fossil fuel store of the earth as if it were a gigantic pile of food that can only be eaten once. When we eat this bounty of the earth—our inheritance—it’s gone, never to be seen again. And technology holds little sway over economic and sociological impediments to rapid energy transitions.
Because economic order, complexity, and growth all require energy, and because our original allotment of energy cannot be increased by technology, technology alone cannot “fix” the predicament of needing more energy than we have. Technology has an enormous role to play in helping us to use our energy more wisely and with greater efficiency and utility, but these efforts will only slow the eventual day when our giant pile of free food is gone. At that point in time, we revert to eating what we can grow ourselves—an apt metaphor because we’ll be living within the energy budget supplied, once again, by the sun.
Between here and there, it’s up to us to decide what to do with this once-in-a-species energy bonanza. Shall we increase our prosperity by creating enduring works of architecture and lavishly funding our best and brightest minds to stretch the limits of what’s possible? Or shall we use energy’s one trip down the frictionless slide merely to promote the most rapid economic growth and consumption that we can? Both are choices that we could make, and in either case, nature doesn’t care; energy will be converted from concentrated forms into diffuse heat, remorselessly and relentlessly, whether we wish that to be the outcome or not. Nature will carry on whether we use up our energy stores wisely or shamefully, quickly or slowly, without any concern for how much or how little useful work we extract along the way.
Technology can provide a lot of things, but it cannot violate the laws of the universe. They are immutable and working just as they always have. And that is why technology can’t fix this—nothing is broken.
PART V
Environment
CHAPTER 19
Minerals
Gone with the Wind
These next few chapters won’t be a recitation of the various environmental stresses and issues that currently plague the world. There are many incredibly detailed sources chronicling the depletion and mismanagement of the earth’s resources, perhaps none better than Lester Brown’s Plan B series (currently in version 4.0) from the World Watch Institute, from which these next few chapters will draw heavily.
Instead, we’re going to tell a story around our dependence on and use of those resources, coupled with the energy story, to make the case that seismic shifts are in store for the economy. This isn’t to diminish the importance of environmental issues, or to intentionally or unintentionally subjugate them to money and the economy. Rather, the main point to which I adhere is this: The most immediate “environment” impact we will feel in our own lives will be transmitted to us via the economy. It responds more quickly and provides immediate feedback. More important, if the economy suffers and stumbles, or even collapses, then the environment will only suffer more. In that case, we will lack the resources to protect and preserve it, as we will be worrying about survival, which inevitably trumps all other considerations.
Quantity and Quality (Again)
The story of energy basically boils down to two “Qs,” quantity and quality. We noted that for oil, global discoveries peaked in 1964,