Our Decadent Energy System Needs Renewal
What’s more self-indulgent than treating the environment like landfill?
Who cares about tomorrow?
Photographer: Richard Baker/Corbis Historical/Getty Images
Like many of you, I’m sure, I read Ross Douthat’s essay on “The Age of Decadence” in Sunday’s New York Times while sprawled on a chaise, picking at my smashed avo and laudanum. Stirring from the languor, I wondered: How does energy fit with this thesis?
Our energy system is decadent at a fundamental level. Roughly four fifths of what is called primary energy consumption comes from burning fossil fuels, and thermodynamics ensure the majority of that kind of “consumption” is actually just waste heat (see this). We absorb the pump price of buying four gallons of gasoline for the useful energy of one because that one remains incredibly energy-dense and convenient.