What Is Energy and How Is It Related to Wealth Production?

Abstract

Energy is, at best, an abstract entity for most contemporary people. Only rarely does it enter our collective consciousness, generally in those relatively rare times when there are particular shortages or sharp price increases in electricity or gasoline. In fact, as this book demonstrates, energy and its effects are pervasive, relentless, all-encompassing, and responsible for each process and entity in nature and in our own economic life. Energy is also behind many aspects of the basic nature of our psyches and many of the ways that world history has unfolded. Few understand or acknowledge this role because the pervasive impact of energy shown in this book does not usually enter into our collective training and education, and it does not enter into our educational curricula. Why is this so? If energy is as important as we believe then why is that not more generally known and appreciated? The answers are complex. One important reason is that the energy that is used to support ourselves, our families, or our economic activity generally is used at some other location and by other people, or by quiet automatic machines whose fuel tends to be relatively cheap. After all, coal, oil, and gas, our principal sources of energy, are basically messy, smelly, dangerous, and unpleasant materials. The energy from food that we need to fuel ourselves surrounds most of us abundantly and is available readily and relatively cheaply. Society has gone to great lengths to isolate most of us physically and intellectually from the energy sources upon which our food, our comfort, our transportation, and our economy depend. It is convenient to ignore energy because many facts about it are uncomfortable to know.