We will always need more electricity
And we should take it from just about everywhere.
One of the foundational scientific concepts I learned decades ago was the Kardashev scale which collects theoretical civilizations into classifications that…
Uses all available energy on the planet
Uses all available energy in the solar system
Uses all the energy of a galaxy
Earth, obviously, is not even on this scale. Yet. But here’s a project of how we’re doing
Attribution: Brianpeiris, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
I actually have a quibble with this graph because you might think that, based on this graph, we’re approaching two-thirds of the energy available on our plant but that’s not really what it’s saying. It’s deep nerd territory so not really relevant beyond a single important everyone should understand.
Civilization grows through harnessing energy and converting it.
Frequently you’ll hear it called “consumption” but it’s really not - remember the First law of thermodynamics - you can’t make it or destroy, you can only change it. Datacenter X “consumes” this much energy. A solar panel “costs” Y energy to make. HVAC in South Carolina “uses” an average of Z energy. These are actually just changing states. You put energy into a system and out comes something else.
Let’s pretend my power comes from a coal plant (I think it’s actually Nuke but I’m not positive). So here’s a simplistic conversion without math because fuck that.
300 million years ago there was some green shit in a swamp. Over those 100 million years it then got converted into peat, then lignite, then bituminous coal, and eventually anthracite. A guy (or a machine) came by and dug it out of the ground, sent it to a power plant where it was burned to heat water that turned a turbine which created electricity which travelled over transmission lines to my house where I ran a machine that compressed some fluids with electricity to suck hot air out of my house and shuffle it outside.
Super simple stuff, right?
Now consider this. The guy that dug it out used a light source of electricity to see what he was doing. All the rest of his equipment took power to make as well. The power plant was built with an incredible amount of carbon to make steel. Drawing copper wire takes electricity itself. Not to mention all the stuff that went into my HVAC unit. All of it took energy so that I could then be comfortable while I use energy to do computer shit with more energy.
There is no more important or vital thing in human existence than energy. It feeds us, it comforts us, it connects us, it lifts us out of the mud. If I could wish for one thing for humanity it would be more energy.
There’s two ways to grow civilization: we get more energy or we get better at using what we have.
A couple more examples, ‘cause this is fun. We used fire (energy) to cook food to increased our efficiency at converting food to energy. We planted crops to conserve our energy and not going hunting and gathering. We invented the tools like the wheel so it was less work to move shit around or chop shit up.
My point is this: if your goal for humanity is to grow civilization then you want to maximize energy. Actually, if you are dealing at a humanity scale you want to maximize the amount of energy per human. Interestingly enough that metric hasn’t changed very much at a worldwide level. While some countries, like China, are exploding in energy usage other countries like the US are staying pretty flat. From Our World in Data - notice the “World” line at the bottom:
We’re getting better at using what we have while increasing the amount of energy available around the world. And thus civilization grows and humanity improves. There is no better time to be born into the world than today…which I now realize is a piece I need to convert over to Substack to really support that assertion. A classic bootstrapping problem where I want to reference what I’ve written before but if I spend time migrating it here then I’m not writing new content. Lame. Moving on.
I think it is a moral imperative to increase the amount of energy humanity has and for humanity get better at using what it has. Any reduction in energy can easily be framed as immoral. Bill Gates deals with this in his climate change book. So does Alex Epstein in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. Millions of people die in the next year if we snap our fingers and turn off fossil fuel consumption. And every time we slow down fossil fuel consumption we’re letting people die also.
It’s Gordian’s knot.
Substack actually generated that image for me. That’s pretty fucking cool. But beside the point I guess…
The thing with Gordian’s knot is you don’t solve it without cutting through it. And now we’ve finally arrived at my point. I advocate for nuclear power specifically because it is the sword for the knot. So when I read this fantastic piece talking about fission and fusion this was where my mind went: Yes! Let’s fucking go!
Yes…I did just write 1,000 words with multiple links all to land on “read this link at the bottom.” Deal with it.
Squirt Says…
A Dyson sphere around the sun would power humanity for 10 billion year in 5 days so I think the solution to not having enough power are Dyson spheres. I think to solve the gordian knot in this problem is to slowly transition to another power source. I guess with enough energy we could maybe go back in time and get energy there too and get so much energy you brain doesn’t have enough neurons to think about how large it is. Which we would probably use to save humanity at the cold death of the universe.
Dad Responds…
Perfect, no notes, you are absolutely my kid.