Cosmic Scale
All life needs energy. Prior to 1 billion years ago when the first predators began eating photosynthesizers, all life relied upon the sun for all of it's energy: heat and food. With predation, herbivores began feeding on photosynthesizers and eventually carnivores began eating herbivores and ultimately humans began eating fossil fuels.
Human Scale
Humans have discovered a myriad of other energy sources: fire, water wheels, wind mills, slavery, animal husbandry and at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution – fossil fuels. Since the industrial revolution, we have had a powerful addiction to this fossilized solar energy that is relatively cheap and transportable if you don't account for it's toxic wastestream. Abundant, inexpensive fossil fuels has given modern man unlimited power without the need for human slavery. Paul Hawken estimates our slave quota in fossil fuel terms at 108. (Holmgren states in Principles and Pathways that many authors calculate on the order of 100 slaves per western consumer of fossil fuels = 22 billion slaves globally.)
Download supplemental article on Greenhouse Gases
William McDonough
"I love nuclear power. I love clean nuclear power. I am especially fond of fusion. I think we should spend trillions of dollars immediately on fusion capture. And thank God, literally, we already have our reactor, the sun, exactly where we need it 93 million miles away."
RETHINK ENERGY "Our land is rich so we don't have to be." -- Italian Proverb
Let us rethink our concept of energy to that which gives/enhances life. David Holmgren states in Principles & Pathways "Permaculture strategies for catching and storing energy in landscape can be grouped under four broad headings: water, living soil, trees and seeds." Escaping the mentality of electricity and fossil fuels, I invite you to consider how you energize your life: prana, chi, food, nature. Let us examine the health of our bodies, our ecosystem and our spirit and what forms of energy yield the greatest return on quality of life. We must prioritize the potential energy of natural capital inherent in forests and seeds as having value far greater than fossil fuels and dollars.
Renewable vs. Non-Renewable
The first word on RENEWABLE energy usage is respectful conservation. We must move away from our extractive consumeristic mindset of both materials and energy. Simplify, simplify, simplify.
David Holmgren writes "The best use for non-renewable resources and technology should be to establish a system, rather than to maintain or harvest it." (Holmgren, Principles & Pathways) Examples could include
• Using earth moving technology such as bulldozers to build swales and dams to catch and store water.
• Deep ripping depleted soils/hardpans (followed by well designed soil improvement)
• Create appropriate technologies like glass to create passive solar houses that catch and insulate more heat. .
• Planting trees
• Raising children
Let's draw a distinction between conventional definitions regarding renewable and non - renewable energy. Staggeringly, non-renewable sources produce 93% of the energy that we use. This is primarily fossil fuels and nuclear. And to add insult to injury the lion's share of the 7% of the renewable comes from macrohydro which has devastating impacts on local ecosystem by changing water temperatures, limiting water flow, inhibiting seasonal flooding and emitting CO2 and methane. The next most productive renewable are biofuels, which conventionally today (corn and soy) have an output rate of 1 - 4 units of energy out for each unit of fossil fuels going in. (Fuel, the movie, claims 1:1 on corn ethanol and 1:3 on soy biodiesel)
Ironically, the reason not to use both fossil fuels and nuclear are not that they are going to run out (non-renewable) but rather that they are polluting the earth. The toxic load aspect is significantly more critical than the non-renewability.
Good husbandry suggests that we save some easily combustible fuels for future generations rather than burn through them seemingly as fast as we can while toxifying our environment.
The high tech solutions of our sci-fi culture of solar cells lining skyscrapers or the bloom box virtually creating energy out of thin air loom in our cultural subconscious. I would insist that there are already adequate technologies of solar, wind and biofuels to lead us into the next millennium if we apply good design and adequate regulation and conservation.
Types of Solar Energy
Photosynthesis -- most basic life energy (solar) on the planet for 4 billion years
Solar Oven -- Cook food by concentrating sun with reflective surfaces and glass.
Solar Hot Water Heater -- as simple as a sun shower or coiled hose to complicated tubes that heat fluids to warm water flowing through a tube.
Solar Thermal - a parabolic mirror that concentrates solar energy on flowing a fluid -- only used on power plant scale to create electricity.
Photovoltaic system -- perhaps the best known solar energy-- used to produce electricity on power plant scale and homescale.
Do We NEED to Change
• Good husbandry suggests that we manage our addiction to combusting fossil fuels and leave some cheap transportable energy for future generations.
• The toxic wastestream polluting our air and changing our climate demands we manage this addiction.
• Cheap energy is destroying our food system with disastrous effects on climate and health (soil and human). --10 calories of energy in for each calorie feeding us.
• Deforestation and annual tillage means less carbon is being sequestered by plants (while we are combusting CO2 as we burn fossil fuels)