Energy Slaves

It is no secret that we, on earth, use a lot of energy. In fact, we use way too much energy. In terms of energy demand, rich, western societies are no different from poor developing societies. All societies we live in rely on the flow of large amounts of inexpensive high-quality energy, to raise their complexity, or even just sustain, since most of what we do requires energy. Still, it seems as if we aren’t grasping just how much energy we are using. According to Homer-Dixon [2], we spend a large amount of energy in non-obvious ways and places, but most of the time we don’t think about these unseen, yet essential activities. This act of not recognizing and acknowledging energy and all its uses and consequences is one of the factors which stand in the way, for us to adapt and change our habits.

The author, Nikiforuk, [3] points out that we as humans let energy work for us, through so-called energy slaves. Due to the industrial revolution, the former human slaves have been replaced by energy slaves, working all day to supply us with the energy needed for everyday tasks. If we would translate those virtual energy slaves as they are being used right now, back to human slaves, the amount is in no relation to what it used to be before the discovery of oil and other fossil fuels.

In the social experiment by the BBC Show Bang Goes the Theory [1] it is clearly visualized how many energy slaves we all possess. It is almost unimaginable how much human power simple devices such as hairdryers but also more complex ones like washing machines need, to be powered. What this experiment also highlights so clearly, is that we don’t just use these devices once a day for a couple of minutes, but rather make use of them for hours at a time. A Canadian energy analyst calculated that with the confinements of a normal workweek, it would take one person 8.6 years riding a bicycle to generate energy to produce the energy provided by one barrel of oil [3]. He also explains that the average Canadian citizen consumes around 24.7 barrels of oils a year, meaning that every citizen would need to make use of 204 working slaves. Back in the day, cheap slave labour discouraged energy innovations and now cheap fossil fuels have discouraged energy innovations. However, we are drilling deeper and going farther abroad than ever to find these cheap resources and thereby steadily spending increasing amounts of energy to get that energy. Without new technologies or discoveries in the renewable-energy area, this decline in cheap energy supply through fossil fuels will continue [2].

Do these arguments indicate, that we can assume slavery makes a society lazy? The truth is, that we don’t have the technologies that are on standby to replace fossils with solar or other energy sources for all the energy that we are currently using. And the world population is constantly growing, already having grown 5.4 times since 1850, leading to more energy consumption [3]. As mentioned by Homer-Dixon [2] in any complex society, the ones who aren’t farmers can be compared to freeloaders, living of those who grow the sources of energy that keep all of us, as a collective, running. A remaining question could be: Are we using too much energy, or too much of the wrong, unsustainable energy? Either way, the harsh reality is, that we have not found any sustainable solutions to our energy consumption, so we will have to work on reducing our demand for energy and stop thinking about the dreamy what-if scenarios, in which a magical renewable energy source will be found.

References

[1].BBC. (2016, April 6). Human Power Station Bang Goes The Theory TV Show 1 hour [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPxuuB_ZBuk

[2].Homer-Dixon, T. (2006). The upside of down (p. Chapter 2). Island Press. [3].Nikiforuk, A. (2011). You and Your Slaves | The Tyee. The Tyee. Retrieved 29

November 2021, from https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/05/05/EnergySlaves/.