Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
And I want to stress
enjoy our lives,
because this is not something we typically think about when we
think of energy—but we should, because more energy means more ability to enjoy our lives.
If our standard of value is human life, the ultimate benefit that a commodity like fossil fuel energy can
deliver is to contribute to the pursuit of happiness. If we can only survive in a way that is miserable, why
survive? Happiness is the reward of life. And energy is a great enabler of happiness—including forms of
happiness that we are taught to associate with people who decry large amounts of energy use.
Take traveling to places that excite us. In my life, I have been fortunate enough to travel to many such
places. I've spent fifteen days river-rafting in the Grand Canyon, several hundred days snowboarding or
skiing on faraway mountains, and gone to Italy, France, Israel, Turkey, and other faraway lands. I'm not
setting any travel records here, but no doubt I've used a lot of cheap energy to enjoy what the world has
to offer. On a more local level, I love living in Southern California and being able to get to a lot of places
easily by car (assuming I time the traffic properly). I enjoy martial arts, specifically Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, as
a hobby, and for years I would happily drive an hour after work almost every day to get to my favorite
Jiu-Jitsu school. I was using a lot of cheap energy, and if it hadn't been cheap, I wouldn't have been able
to afford it.
More fossil fuel energy, more ability to pursue happiness.
I keep stressing that more energy means more ability to take the actions necessary to flourish, because
I want it to be in our minds at all times that when we talk about more or less energy, we are talking about
more or less ability, and everything we want in life depends on ability. Thus in every realm that affects our
lives, we should expect to discover that more energy can play an amazingly positive role.
That includes our
environment
, including our climate.
FOSSIL FUEL ENERGY AND OUR ENVIRONMENT
The relationship between energy and environment is usually considered in a negative way; how can we
use the energy that will least “impact the environment”? But we have to be careful; if we're on a human
standard of value, we
need
to have an impact on our environment. Transforming our environment is how
we survive. Every animal survives in a way that affects its environment; we just do it on a greater scale
with far greater ability. We have to be clear: Is human life our standard of value or is “lack of impact” our
standard of value?
If we're on a human standard, we should be concerned in a negative way only about impacts of energy
use that harm our environment
from a human perspective
—such as dumping toxic waste in a nearby river
or filling a city with smog.
But we should also assume that energy gives us more ability to
improve
our environment, to make it
healthier and safer for human beings. I'll explore this in detail in chapters 4-7, but for now I'll just observe
that the natural environment is not naturally a healthy, safe place; that's why human beings historically
had a life expectancy of thirty. Absent human action, our natural environment threatens us with organisms
eager to kill us and natural forces, including natural climate dangers, that can easily overwhelm us.
It is only thanks to cheap, plentiful, reliable energy that we live in an environment where the water we
drink and the food we eat will not make us sick and where we can cope with the often hostile climate of
Mother Nature. Energy is what we need to build sturdy homes, to purify water, to produce huge amounts
