Cultural energy system
Chapter 2 - Society
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Welcome to the Cultural energy system page
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Economics is how humanity manages to convert its energy surplus into dopamine
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Before the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago, every calorie was necessary for the survival of the human species. Paradoxically, the initial yield of farming was smaller in calorie terms than hunting, but the difference was that grains could be stored for 'later in the season'. This simple fact created 'resources' that could be traced back to one family or individual.
As you may be aware, dopamine is not the reward for obtaining 'something' but for desiring 'something'. When that 'something' becomes physically present in society, it becomes the seed for exchange (trade) and economy. This biological basis of human behaviour has played a crucial role in the evolution of our economic systems.
So many years later, we are still living in the same process. Time and, recently, the Industrial Revolution has industrialised and monopolised resources. From this perspective, we still make millions of products with oil energy that respond to the consumer's demand for 'happiness'.
| Content source |
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| Nate Hagens |
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Core ideas
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Energy & evolution
| Contribution to the Energetics of Evolution - Alfred J. Lotka - PNAS - 1922 |
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| It has been pointed out by Boltzmann' that the fundamental object of contention in the life-struggle, in the evolution of the organic world, is available energy. In accord with this observation is the principle that,in the struiggle for existence, the advantage must go to those organisms whose energy-capturing devices are most efficient in directing available energy into channels favorable to the preservation of the species. |
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.8.6.147 |
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Primate metabaolism
| Primate energy expenditure and life history - Herman Pontzer - PNAS - 2024 |
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| Measurements of daily energy expenditure indicate that primates, including humans, expend only half of the calories expected for mammals of similar body size. As energy expenditure is central to organismal biology, these results hold important implications for life history, evolutionary biology, and foraging ecology for primates and other mammals. Specifically, we show that primates’ remarkably low metabolic rates account for their distinctively slow rates of growth, reproduction, and aging. |
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1316940111 |
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Human metabolism
| Metabolic scaling, energy allocation tradeoffs, and the evolution of humans’ unique metabolism - Andrew K. Yegian - PNAS - 2024 |
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| ... metabolic quotients to several human populations reveal that humans evolved exceptionally high metabolic rates that, unlike other mammals including nonhuman primates, do not trade off energy allocation to maintenance versus physical activity. Humans’ uniquely high metabolic rates helped fuel the evolution of our species’ large brains, high reproductive rates, and extended longevity.
All organisms use limited energy to grow, survive, and reproduce, necessitating energy allocation tradeoffs, but there is debate over how selection impacted metabolic budgets and tradeoffs in primates, including humans. ... data from several small-scale societies show that humans evolved exceptionally high resting, activity, and total metabolic rates apparently by overcoming tradeoffs between resting and active energy expenditures that constrain other primates. Enhanced metabolic rates help humans fuel expanded brains, faster reproductive rates, extended longevity, and high percentage of body fat. |
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409674121 |
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Energy surplus
The concept of energy surplus is vital to understanding the evolution of both biological and human systems.
Energy surplus, in particular, is seen as the key factor driving societal evolution. Human history is primarily concerned with exploiting energy sources and developing technologies. The amount, quality, and delivery rate of surplus energy contribute to a society's net energy, influencing its ability to engage in activities beyond basic survival.
Human civilisation, with its cities, technologies, and even wars, wouldn't exist without significant surplus energy. The relationship between biological evolution and energy surplus is profound, as organisms face strong selective pressure to maximise their energy gains. Like other species, human populations must generate sufficient net energy for survival, reproduction, and adaptation.
This search for efficiency extends beyond the biological realm, impacting industrial processes and economic decisions. While diverse energy lifestyles exist in nature, each must ensure a sufficient energy profit to cover both metabolic needs and costs akin to depreciation and research & development. Most extinct species likely perished because their energy-harnessing technology couldn't adapt to changing environmental conditions.
For most of human history, hunting and gathering provided this energy. The development of agriculture marked a significant shift in human energy capture, redirecting photosynthetic energy from diverse ecosystems to a few select crops and livestock. While this increased food production, it didn't necessarily improve human nutrition; instead, it primarily fuelled population growth and societal development. The rise of cities, complex social structures, and even warfare became possible due to the surplus energy agriculture provided.
Humans further augmented their control over energy through technology, initially relying on animate power and wood. Wood, a renewable but finite resource, has played a crucial role in human history, with deforestation and its consequences impacting numerous civilisations. Societies develop increasingly complex infrastructure that eventually surpasses the available energy, leading to collapse.
| Content source |
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| D. Murphy - What is the minimum EROI that a sustainable society must have - Energies - 2009 |
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Energy & culture
Energy is and always will be the currency of life. The effectiveness of energy capture is central to biological systems. Any movement, activity or event in nature requires energy. Organisms utilise foraging strategies that optimise energy intake versus energy expenditure adjusted for time and risk. In this way, biological organisms are investors, too. A larger energy surplus gives an organism a competitive advantage for growth, reproduction, defence, competition, maintenance and repair. As such, the ‘net energy’ after energy costs have been subtracted is the enabler and driver of natural – and human – systems.
Human-evolved behaviour, money, energy, economy, and the environment fit together. Humans strive for the same emotional state as our successful ancestors. In a resource-rich environment, we coordinate in groups, corporations, and nations to maximise financial surplus tethered to energy and carbon. At global scales, the emergent result of this combination is a mindless, energy-hungry, CO2-emitting superorganism.
Our brains and behaviours are products of what worked in our past. We don’t consciously go through life maximising biological fitness but instead act as ‘adaptation executors’ seeking to replicate the daily emotional states of our successful ancestors. Humans can process information, cooperate, and discover things, bringing us to the state of organisation and wealth we experience today. Humans are strongly ‘groupish’, and before agriculture were aggressively egalitarian: the historic tribes that could act as a cohesive unit facing a common threat outcompeted tribes without such social cohesion. Because of this, today, we easily and quickly form in-groups and out-groups and behave favourably and antagonistically towards them. We are also primed to cooperate with our in-group whether that is a small business, large corporation, or even a nation-state - to obtain monetary (or, in earlier times, physical) surplus. Me over Us, Us over Them.
| Content source |
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| N.J. Hagens - Economics for the future – Beyond the superorganism - Ecological Economics - 2020 |
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Creating cultures
Historically, status was linked to providing resources for the clan, leadership, respect, storytelling, ethics, sharing, and community. In modern culture, we compete for status with resource-intensive goods (cars, homes, vacations, gadgets), using money as an intermediary driver. Once basic needs are satisfied, we are primed to respond to the comparison of "better versus worse" more than we do to "a little" versus "a lot."
As humans, we are extremely social. Phenotypically, we are primates, but behaviorally, we're more akin to social insects. Our ultrasociality allows us to function at much larger scales than as individuals. Cultural evolution occurs far more rapidly at the largest scales than genetic evolution. Via the cultural evolution that began with agriculture, humans have evolved into a globally interconnected civilisation, 'outcompeting' other human economic models to become a defacto 'superorganism'. Human behaviour is constrained and modified by 'downward causation' from society's higher level of organisation. (Gödel)
Access to energy profoundly influenced humanity's economic and political history. The mastery of fire, the transition from hunting and gathering to farming, and the later reliance on fossil fuels significantly increased our per capita energy use. These developments reshaped our brains and digestive systems and enabled humans to spread across the globe. The modern technological society we know today directly results from these energy revolutions.
However, utilising any resource requires effort and energy - to locate, extract, and transform it into usable forms. This principle applies to energy itself: producing energy demands energy. The efficiency of this process, or the amount of energy required to harness and use energy in various forms, could be a critical factor in determining how we navigate the transition to a more sustainable future. Understanding and optimising these dynamics will likely be essential for managing this shift effectively.
Our understanding of energy has consistently lagged behind its rapidly growing consumption. The foundational laws of thermodynamics, formalised in the late 1800s, emerged a century after the mass production of Watt's steam engine - arguably one of the most transformative inventions in history. Similarly, it is only now, after global energy consumption has skyrocketed from 80 exajoules (unit of energy equal to 1018 joules) in 1940 to over 550 exajoules, that we are beginning to grasp its profound impact. This massive energy surge acts as an exponential forcing mechanism, driving the Earth-system declines characteristic of the Great Acceleration.
Despite scientific research's clear warnings, policymakers have repeatedly ignored crucial insights into energy dynamics in nature and society. More recent comprehensive analyses have also failed to spur significant action. The disconnect between the brutal accuracy of thermodynamic science and decision-makers' inaction underscores the urgent need to align energy policy with the realities of our current circumstances.
We think in words and images disconnected from physical reality. This imagined reality commonly seems more real than science, logic and common sense. Evolution selects for fitness, not truth. We typically only value truth if it rewards us in the short term. Rationality is the exception, not the rule.
Ecological economics acknowledges that real economies depend entirely on energy, but orthodox economic theory remains blind to this reality.
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| Content sources |
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| R. Sapolsky - Behave - Penguin Press -2017 |
| N.J. Hagens - Economics for the future – Beyond the superorganism - Ecological Economics - 2020 |
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Deep dive
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Myths about the current transition fase
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We are currently in a transition fase, which is different from a transformation fase.
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| Christopher Marquis - In Defense of Degrowth - HBR - 2024 |
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| Myth 1: We are in the midst of an energy transitionA wholesale transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources is arguably a fantasy. First, human history has seen only one true energy transition: the shift from wood to coal. Whenever new energy sources were developed after that — oil, gas, nuclear, and more recently, wind and solar — the “transition” was characterized not by the replacement of one source by another, but by the addition of new sources to the mix, which expanded the overall energy supply. While the dramatic increase of renewable energy represents a positive step toward sustainability, so far, we are mainly augmenting existing energy sources, leading to a net increase in energy consumption.
Myth 2: Energy efficiency will solve climate change As history shows, increased efficiency frequently leads to increased overall emissions. When the steam engine brought the industrial revolution to Britain in the 1800s, many were concerned about the sustainability of England’s coal supplies. Some thought the solution was to develop more efficient engines. But as the economist William Stanley Jevons argued in his 1865 book The Coal Question, the “rebound effect” of those more efficient engines would actually be an increase in coal consumption. Myth 3: Innovation will save us It’s human nature to hope for an all-in-one solution to our economic and environmental problems. Green growth proponents believe that technological innovations like green hydrogen, carbon capture, and geoengineering will allow for growth while also reducing emissions and climatic effects. The reality is that, so far, such technologies overpromise and underdeliver. |
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Carbon emissions
| Global Carbon Project |
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| The critical annual update revealing the latest trends in global carbon emissions |
| https://globalcarbonbudget.org/ |
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| EIA |
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| https://www.eia.gov/ |
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Fossil energy outlook
Today, in 2025, crude oil will be the largest energy source in use, containing roughly 39 per cent of fossil energy. Coal accounts for 33 per cent of fossil energy use, and natural gas for 28 per cent. A substance's longevity depends on its usage rate, which modifies depending on the efficiency of the consumption equipment and its reserves, a category that includes transformation and loss. The total sum includes resources from proved probable and possible reserves. Venezuela holds the highest concentration of the world's oil reserves at 18 per cent, followed by Saudi Arabia (16 per cent) and Canada (10 per cent). Estimations vary slightly, but it is predicted that - if demand forecasts hold - we will run out of oil from known reserves in about 47 years.
Natural gas is also a depleting source, and as of 2020, about 7,257 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves were available worldwide. How long will this last? Predictions vary and largely depend on consumption rates, but experts estimate that it will be between 90 and 120 years before we run out of natural gas. Russia, the US, and Iran are among the top producers of natural gas as of 2023.
Coal, the first fossil fuel ever used, is easy to mine and use. The World Coal Association estimates that there are roughly 1.1 trillion tonnes of coal around the world, with the largest reserves found in the US, Russia, China, Australia, and India. According to recent estimates, we have enough coal for about 132 years.
| Fossil energy reserves |
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| Does the world have enough oil to meet our future needs? |
| https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=38&t=6 |
| IEA - Fossil Fuels |
| https://www.iea.org/energy-system/fossil-fuels |
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Cost of fossil fuels
Consuming fossil fuels imposes enormous environmental costs—mostly from local air pollution and damage from global warming. The vast majority of subsidies are implicit, as environmental costs are often not reflected in prices for fossil fuels, especially for coal and diesel. Our analysis shows that consumers did not pay for over $5 trillion of environmental costs in 2022. This number would be almost double if damage to the climate was valued at levels found in a recent study published in the scientific journal Nature instead of our baseline assumption that global warming costs are equal to the emissions price needed to meet Paris Agreement temperature goals.
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Total fossil fuel subsidies - vs world GDP in trillions of USD
| Year | Explicit subsidies | Implicit subsidies | Total subsidies | World GDP |
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| 2015 | 0.4 trillion | 4.1 trillion | 4.5 trillion | 75.36 trillion |
| 2016 | 0.3 trillion | 4.1 trillion | 4.4 trillion | 76.59 trillion |
| 2017 | 0.4 trillion | 4.3 trillion | 4.7 trillion | 81.55 trillion |
| 2018 | 0.6 trillion | 4.8 trillion | 5.4 trillion | 86.69 trillion |
| 2019 | 0.6 trillion | 5.0 trillion | 5.6 trillion | 87.95 trillion |
| 2020 | 0.5 trillion | 4.5 trillion | 5.0 trillion | 85.58 trillion |
| 2021 | 0.7 trillion | 5.2 trillion | 5.9 trillion | 97.53 trillion |
| 2022 | 1.3 trillion | 5.7 trillion | 7.0 trillion | 101.23 trillion |
| 105.40 trillion |
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Trillion:
- 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 1012 (ten to the twelfth power). This is now the meaning in both American and British English.
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These implicit subsidies are projected to grow as developing countries—which tend to have higher-polluting power plants, factories, and vehicles, along with dense populations living and working close to these pollution sources—increase their consumption of fossil fuels toward the levels of advanced economies.
If governments removed explicit subsidies and imposed corrective taxes, fuel prices would increase. This would lead firms and households to consider environmental costs when making consumption and investment decisions. The result would be cutting global carbon-dioxide emissions significantly, cleaner air, less lung and heart disease, and more fiscal space for governments.
We estimate that scrapping explicit and implicit fossil-fuel subsidies would prevent 1.6 million premature deaths annually, raise government revenues by $4.4 trillion, and put emissions on track toward reaching global warming targets. It would also redistribute income as fuel subsidies benefit rich households more than poor ones.
| Content source |
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| https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies |
| https://data.worldbank.org/ |
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