Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Coal in truth stands not beside but entirely above all other commodities. It is the material energy of
the country—the universal aid—the factor in everything we do . . . new applications of coal are of an
unlimited character. In the command of force, molecular and mechanical, we have the key to all the
infinite varieties of change in place or kind of which nature is capable. No chemical or mechanical op-
eration, perhaps, is quite impossible to us, and invention consists in discovering those which are useful
and commercially practicable. . . . 17
Jevons was worried that we were running out of coal (a concern we'll discuss later in this chapter).
Notice how emotional he is about it:
With coal almost any feat is possible or easy; without it we are thrown back into the laborious poverty
of early times. 18
A letter in response to Jevons is even more vivid about what the loss of coal energy would have meant:
Coal is everything to us. Without coal, our factories will become idle, our foundries and workshops be
still as the grave; the locomotive will rust in the shed, and the rail be buried in the weeds. Our streets
will be dark, our houses uninhabitable. Our rivers will forget the paddlewheel, and we shall again be
separated by days from France, by months from the United States. The post will lengthen its periods
and protract its dates. A thousand special arts and manufacturers, one by one, then in a crowd, will fly
the empty soil, as boon companions are said to disappear when the cask is dry. 19
And here's how it ends: “We shall miss our grand dependence, as a man misses his companion, his for-
tune, or a limb, every hour and at every turn reminded of the irreparable loss.” 20
One thing to note: This was at a time in history when, because of early-stage technology, coal pollution
in England was far, far worse than, say, even China experiences today—and yet these commentators don't
even mention it; that's how valuable they saw energy as being to their very ability to survive. Nothing was
more important. As we'll see looking at modern fossil fuel technology, we have progressed incredibly in
pollution-reduction technology, but it's worth remembering that to the people who experience the need for
energy most directly, it's worth pretty much any price, in the same way that you'll put up with a lot of side
effects to take a lifesaving drug. And lifesaving drugs, like everything else we value, depend on access to
cheap, plentiful, reliable energy—to produce, to transport, to package, to refrigerate.
When we talk about different sources of energy, we are talking about different technologies that are bet-
ter or worse at producing energy with the resources we have. If we choose the most capable technologies,
we get more energy. If we choose less capable ones, we get less. It's that simple. When someone says,
“Let's use solar,” he is, usually unwittingly, saying, “Let's have less energy with which to improve our
lives.” There is no limit to the amount of energy we can use to improve our lives. And in a world where
we produce only one fourth as much energy as would be necessary for everyone to live like Americans,
every machine calorie counts.
One realm in which energy is particularly life or death is in agriculture. The fossil fuel industry has re-
volutionized acriculture to the benefit of billions—and gotten no credit.
 
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