Everything that living organisms do requires energy. Almost all our energy comes from the sun. Solar energy is converted into usable forms by autotrophs, plants that can take water, sunlight and carbon dioxide and convert them into sugars and water, through the process of photosynthesis. The chemical energy is converted into usable forms through the process of respiration. We all depend on the autotrophs, or primary producers, directly or indirectly. Even fossil fuels, if you’ll remember, represent dead plant and animal material from ancient ecosystems. Humans are a part of nature, even if it seems that industrial societies have tried their best to avoid this reality, to insulate themselves from nature and ‘control’ it or engineer it to suit their socioeconomic needs, or in many cases, wants.

It’s important to understand where most all energy comes from, and how it is converted into usable forms. The food chain or food web concept helps here (and how does it relate to the concept of thermodynamics?). Energy transformations can lead to ‘losses’ in the system–heat or waste that is not in a ‘usable’ form. The energy that is concentrated, for example in a cheetah, or some other predator, may be highly organized, but the energy required to keep those animals alive is of a great quantity.

Which is a more efficient energy converter–a vegetarian or a meat eater (I’m thinking about humans here), and why?

Discussion of humans’ use of energy is critical because, our capacity to transform the landscape, the atmosphere, our waterways, etc., has increased profoundly since the advent of the fossil fuel era. As the forms of energy become more concentrated, consumption levels in the industrial world have increased. It’s easy to imagine how energy might flow through an African Savanna, or a marsh, or even a temperate forest ecosystem. Imagine trying to pinpoint energy flows through Manhattan . . . it would be an exceedingly complicated and massive undertaking.

And we’re back to economic growth. It sure seems as if economic growth can occur at a much faster pace with more concentrated forms of energy. There wouldn’t be much of a global economic system if societies were all still dependent on fuelwood as their main source of energy.

There are two important qualities of energy sources to keep in mind–one Odum refers to as ‘quality.’ Think of the concentration of a specific form of energy. Grass burns quickly, wood less so, charcoal less so, coal and oil less quickly yet. Very concentrated energy forms have generally been ‘cooking’ (under the earth’s surface, subjected to intense pressure and heat) for a very long time (versus grass, firewood, etc.). Which brings us to a second trait–renewability. Petroleum, coal, minerals in general, are not renewable forms of energy or resources. In other words, human societies can’t use them at a rate slow enough to allow them to replenish themselves and thus never exhaust supply.

But in the overall scheme of things, many societies still are dependent on fuelwood (pic below is from my masters fieldwork in Mali, those are women’s stacks of fuelwood to get them through the rainy season, when there’s little time for gathering fuel). There is a stark

difference in the forms of energy societies use, and this makes a huge difference in their consumption levels. Societies that depend on human or animal power consume much less energy and resources than societies whose economies are based on fossil fuels (which are coal, oil and natural gas). When trying to understand differences between societies, looking at their main sources of energy is a good start.

Lovins and the energy problem

What is the energy problem and who gets to ‘frame’ it? What we hear from politicians very often is that it is a supply problem–we need more access to coal, oil and natural gas, because they are the foundations of our economic strength and growth. This requires more exploration, drilling and such, and public lands are a good place to do this. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (below) is someplace we’re pretty sure has oil reserves (image underneath is the TransAlaska pipeline and Dalton Highway). Republican presidents–emphasizing the economy–generally want to open the North Slope to more drilling, Democrats–stressing the disappearance of wilderness–usually are hesitant to do so.

Amory Lovins, a physicist and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, who has been at the forefront of energy debates for more than three decades, believes that the way the problem is ‘framed’ makes a big difference. As has been said (too often, really), when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail. We often look to new sources of energy to solve our current dilemma. Lovins prefers to look at the supply problem and the role of conservation in increasing supply. Energy conserved is energy available for other uses, after all. He points out that after 1979 we cut oil use 15%, while economy grew 16%. This was after the energy crisis of the 1970s, when for a time gasoline was rationed and people couldn’t fill up their tanks anytime they wanted to (insert gasp here). Why the sudden increase in conservation? Likely, Detroit got the message after Japanese automakers had been making more fuel efficient cars for a decade. Of course, it didn’t last long–as soon as oil prices went back down, interest in and demand for fuel efficiency waned.

According to Lovins, we should look at the costs of conservation versus the costs of new energy production. Which is more expensive? Lovins says that:

1. Efficiency is cheaper than new supplies (would we rather build new power plants, or conserve on existing energy? Which costs more?)
2. Getting efficiency and supply can get you both, as a strategy. The problem is, consumers will only buy the cheapest, and efficiency happens to be less expensive than new supplies.
3. Efficiency is gained faster than new supply. We can ‘increase supply’ much more quickly through conservation gains than through new production.

So . . . why don’t we? ‘Soft‘ energy paths have less costs to individuals and to societies than hard paths that generally rely on rather centralized sociotechnical systems, often controlled by large corporations. This usually implies fossil fuels, and environmental consequences of a large scale. Of course, even a technology such as photovoltaic cells (solar power) could be controlled centrally by a large corporation. However, it has the potential to be very decentralized also, whereas nuclear or coal-fired power production does not.

Why don’t we? Something to think about. California’s energy market represented a fairly recent historical example of energy politics in action. What happened there is important, and had to do with energy trading companies (mainly Enron) manipulating the energy markets to control prices and gouge consumers and the state. There was a consolidation of energy markets, and deregulation–energy trading companies could purchase energy, much like the phone companies all ‘compete’ for your local or long-distance service. This led to a reduction in available supply (artificial though it was, and designed to drive up the price). The supply-side approach and the laissez-faire or ‘let-alone’ policy of the Bush/Cheney White House contributed to the recall of a Governor (Gray Davis) and the beginning of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political career, as journalist Greg Palast and others have noted.

So, according to Amory Lovins, demand-side policies that encourage conservation not only make more ecological sense, they make more economic sense. It must be powerful stuff, then, that allows the supply-side policies to prevail in policy debates. Lovins says we have three choices with respect to the domestic oil economy: We can either (1) subsidize domestic production, (2) buy cheaper foreign oil, or (3) substitute new sources with conservation efforts. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who headed the energy policy team that met primarily with industry executives to write policy, referred to conservation as more the stuff of ‘personal virtue,’ not a foundation for sound energy policy, even though it is estimated than an increase of one mile per gallon in fuel efficiency from American automakers would save as much petroleum as likely exists under the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. There’s no pretense any more–the fossil fuel industries invested heavily in Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, and he has promised to increase production of fossil fuels. 

Keep in mind–we’ve been discussing energy-related issues since the beginning of the course, and discussions of the laws of thermodynamics and other issues can be found in some of the other online lecture material links.