Environmental Engineering Reference
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children I know, children of my close friends or family members, and ask myself how what I'm doing will
affect them.
The other day, I was visiting two of my best friends, who have a two-year-old named Seth. I've been
fortunate enough to see him about once a week from the time he was born—and it's rare that seeing him is
not a highlight of my week. If only we adults could pack as much learning and joy into our lives as a happy
two-year-old. Lately, when I visit, I've been teaching him some rudimentary Brazilian jujitsu, because I
love it and think it's a great thing for a kid to learn, and I hope that he'll pursue it later in life.
To anyone who has ever connected with even one child, the thought of knowingly taking actions to hurt
his future is horrifying. We naturally want our children's lives to be as good as, or better than, ours.
When I see Seth, I sometimes ask myself,
What will he be like in the future?
Part of the answer to that question is wonderfully unknowable. What choices will he make? I don't
know, but I am excited to see.
Part of the answer to that question is within his parents' control: How will his parents influence and
educate him, for good or bad? There, I am happy to know that he is in good hands.
But part of the answer to that question is in the control of the rest of us. What choices will
we
make
that define the world that he lives in? Will it be a world with more opportunities and fewer hardships or
more hardships and fewer opportunities? Will it be a world of progress—a world where he has more excit-
ing career options, less chance of getting sick, more financial security, less chance of going to war, more
opportunities to see the world, less suffering, and a cleaner, safer environment? Or will it be a world gone
backward, where some or all of these factors get worse?
Everything I've learned about energy has led me to the conclusion that it will be a world of progress if
we eagerly pursue more energy, especially fossil fuels, but it will be a world gone backward if we pursue
less, out of fear of the environment and climate, which fossil fuels actually make better, not worse.
The basic principle espoused in this topic is that we survive by transforming our environment to meet
our needs. We maximize resources and we minimize risks. Energy use is the ultimate form of transforma-
tion—because it increases our ability to transform our environment to meet every other need, to maximize
every resource and minimize every threat.
There is no limit to the amount of resources we can create or the number of problems we can
solve—except for the amount of time we have, time being our most valuable resource (though it, too, can
beexpanded).Theonlyother“limit” ofsortsisourstarting point—that is,whatexisting resources wehave
to work with and, even more important, what
knowledge
we have about resource creation.
What Seth needs is a world where people have created a lot of resources, which will make it easier for
him and the others of his generation to create new ones, and a lot of knowledge of how to create resources.
I am confident he will get this world, because that's exactly what my generation needed—and got.
Think about your generation. From the perspective of previous generations, you are a future generation.
To the extent our grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents thought about what kind
of world they would leave, they were thinking about us.
What actions of theirs—and generations before them—benefited us most?
One type of action that benefits everyone going forward is the formation of an important new
idea—whether a scientific discovery, such as Newton's three laws of motion, or a technological achieve-
ment, such as Watt's efficient steam engine.
If we look at history, an incredibly disproportionate percentage of valuable ideas have come in the last
several centuries, coinciding with fossil-fueled civilization. Why? Because such a productive civilization
buys us time to think and discover, and then use that knowledge to become more productive, and buy more
