Understanding the Bigger Energy Picture

Since thousands of years, the human race has been developing cultural skills and technological capabilities that support its struggle for survival and lead to dominance over all other species. Since about a century, the exponential growth of knowledge, technology, industry and population (see Fig. 1.1) has reached a scale where man modifies biosphere to an extent, that living conditions on the whole planet earth start to change significantly. Resources that had been abundant are becoming scarce within decades. We have arrived in the Anthropocene [1] where man has a significant impact on the basic living conditions of the biosphere of the whole planet. A continuation of this growth rate will unavoidably reach its natural limits where resources vanish; the biosphere will change more rapidly than the ability of organisms and ecosystems to accommodate, and contaminations will endanger living. When such a condition is reached, it is likely that our human civilization will collapse and human population will diminish rapidly. Historic examples demonstrated that drought, hunger, wars and epidemics were typical endpoints of drastic environmental changes and overpopulation. While historic examples mostly affected only individual towns, islands, countries or indigenous nations, the limits of growth this time affect the whole planet and there is no “new world” to which our civilization can migrate. Recent research has proven that the era of a new biological mass extinction has already started [2] and it can be assumed that finally also our species will be affected.