The Archdruid pens another winner

[GliderGuider]

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/">Business as Usual

The huge distortions imposed on the modern industrial nations by the flood of cheap abundant energy that washed over them in the 20th century can be measured readily enough by a simple statistic. In America today, our current energy use works out to around 1000 megajoules per capita, or the rough equivalent of 100 human laborers working 24-hour days for each man, woman, and child in the country. The total direct cost for all this energy came to around $500 billion a year in 2005, the last year for which I was able to find statistics, or about $1667 per person per year.

Now consider how much it would cost to hire human laborers to perform the same amount of work. At the current federal minimum wage of $5.75 an hour, hiring 100 workers in three shifts to provide the equivalent amount of energy would cost each American $512,811 a year, or about 308 times as much as the energy costs – and this doesn’t count payroll taxes, health insurance, paid vacations and the like. Mind you, it would also require the US to find food, housing, and basic services for an additional workforce of 30 billion people, but we can let the metaphor go before tackling issues on that scale.

All this has a pressing relevance to the present situation, because we’re running out of the energy resources that make it possible for every man, woman and child in America to dispose of the equivalent of $512,811 in labor every year. It’s as though the 30 billion invisible guest workers whose sweat powers the American economy are quitting their jobs one by one, and moving back home to the Paleozoic.When the process completes itself, and the long curve of depletion finally sinks low enough that it’s no longer economically worthwhile to extract the remaining dregs of fossil fuel from the ground, the amount of labor each of us will have at our disposal will be much, much less than it is today.

With any luck, it’ll be more than 1/308th as much – we know more about collecting and using energy than the Romans or the Chinese did, and may well be able to get enough renewable energy sources up and running in time to matter. Still, it’s mere wishful thinking to assume that the universe is obliged to give us another vast windfall of cheap abundant energy to replace the one we’ve wasted so enthusiastically over the last few centuries, and none of the proposed replacements for fossil fuels seem likely to live up to their billing. On a finite planet subject to the laws of thermodynamics, claims that the trajectory of industrialism must inevitably continue into the future are statements of faith, not of fact.

Here, have a solar panel. Whatthehell, take a dozen. There, now you have one slave. This is why I have absolutely no faith in the brave, bright, shining picture of our post-carbon future painted by the brave, bright, shining but innumerate environmentalists of the world.

On edit: Other sources put the number of "energy slaves" at the disposal of the average American at over 700, with the 300 figure being just the "oil slaves". It doesn't change the point of Greer's article, but rather reinforces it.

[juno jones]

1. Back in the days of the Carter administration

I was in a high school debate class. Didn't do too hot, I'm a hella researcher when my hearts in it but I'm no speaker (borderline Asperger's) and my partner was a complete apathetic stoner... anyhoo, our topic was conventional energy sources vs. alternative energy sources. This is a very good example of the kind of information I was turning up all the time, coupled with the warning that we had 25-30 years before our consumption came to a head (what is now called 'peak oil'). My parents wondered why I was clinically depressed and suicidal during those years. Nowadays, I have no doubt as to why I was depresssed, and in fact feel vindicated in a very sick way.

From what I saw then, biomass methane derived from garbage, animal feces and quick-growing plant matter is one of the best, yet least talked about alternatives.

No matter what we do, we must reconcile ourselves with having less. This is possible tho, with true city planning, mass transit, more communal sharing of resources, etc.