Ecological Footprint
Today I was thinking about how much human beings depend on energy that is not produced directly by our own bodies... meaning that we are extremely dependant on energy that is stored in natural resources of various sorts.
I've had discussions with people about our use of fossil fuel, sustainable energy and the recent breakthrough in fusion energy and am reflecting on how ALL of them require the use of resources other than our own bodies.
If the human body was our only source of energy production, then the food that fuels it would be the only external resource needed to create that energy. However, even the most productive human being is still quite limited in how much energy they can individually produce... and while working in groups does allow us to accomplish more than we can as individuals, the individual energy input-to-output ratio is likely not that much different for groups because there is a management overhead for group work that reduces the net benefit.
As a practical demonstration of how much an individual person can produce, try powering an electrical device by pedalling a bike connected to a generator... the amount of energy that can be "harvested" from this kind of human work is surprisingly small... not enough to consistently power a simple electrical device.
"The average human, at rest, produces around 100 watts of power. Over periods of a few minutes, humans can comfortably sustain 300-400 watts; and in the case of very short bursts of energy, such as sprinting, some humans can output over 2,000 watts."
A typical house consumes from 5000-7000 watts of energy.
"How many watts does it take to power basic items in an average size house? In a typical home, essential items will average 5000 - 7500 watts of power to run."
If the energy for the house was produced only by the direct work of the people living in it, this would require about 14 people working 24 hours a day (or 42 people working 8 hours a day)... and that doesn't account for the energy it cost to build the house or the fact that it is unreasonable for an average person to be able to produce this workload without developing health issues.
Our lifestyles clearly require way more energy than our bodies can naturally produce. In my view, the topic of sustainable energy doesn't really address this. The definition of sustainable energy seems to imply that it's not only possible for humans to not operate at an energy deficit, but that it's actually possible to create a net energy gain. Speaking from the point of view of simple physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the reality is that we literally cannot do this because it breaks the laws of physics. Physics states that we can only transfer energy, not destroy or create it. This means that no matter what we do, energy is never lost or gained... and therefore the best we can hope to do is understand what is happening to it and learn how to benefit from that.
"Energy is sustainable if it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
"The ecological footprint is a method promoted by the Global Footprint Network to measure human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people or an economy. It tracks this demand through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biologically productive area people use for their consumption to the biologically productive area available within a region or the world (biocapacity, the productive area that can regenerate what people demand from nature). In short, it is a measure of human impact on the environment."
The conclusion I come to from all this is that I must accept that I am part of the system described above, and therefore am subject to the same laws of physics it is dictated by... meaning that energy flows through me the way it is designed to by nature of reality. For me to have anxiety about whether I as an individual am processing that energy productively is potentially only a psychological process of discovery and self-awareness in order to understand and accept reality rather than a call to change the nature of it.
REFERENCES
Ecological footprint - Wikipedia
Ecological Footprint - Global Footprint Network
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