• Since the year 2007, more than half of humanity has lived in cities (>80% in all affluent countries), and unlike in the industrialising cities of the 19th and early 20th centuries, jobs in modern urban areas are largely in services. Most modern urbanities are thus disconnected not only from the ways we produce our food but also from the ways we build our machines and devices, and the growing mechanisation of all productive activity means that only a very small share of the global population now engages in delivering civilisation’s energy and the materials that comprise out modern world.
• In US, 3M people engaged in producing food. This is <1% of the country population, hence no wonder most Americans have no idea about how their breads and cuts of meat came to be.
• Dematerialization, powered by artificial intelligence, will end our dependence on shaped masses of metals and process minerals, and eventually we might even do without the Earth’s environment: who needs it if we are going to terraform Mars?
• The real wrench in the works: we are a fossil-fueled civilisation whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years
• Four pillars of modern civilisation: ammonia, steel, concrete, and plastics.
• The relative decline of material needs per unit of many finished products has been one of the defining trends of modern industrial developments. But in absolute terms, material demands have been rising even in the world’s most affluent societies, and they remain far below any conceivable saturation levels in low-income countries
• About 10 millenia ago, the first patches of deliberately cultivated plants begin taking place as small share of the Earth's total photosynthesis become controlled and manipulated by humans who domesticate - select, plant, tend, and harvest - crops for their (delayed) benefit
• Domestication of working animals, starting with cattle some 9000 years ago, supplies the first extrasometic energy other than human muscles
• in 1500, >90% of all useful mechanical energy was provided by animate power, roughly split between people and animals, while all therman energy came from the combustion of plant fuels
• Coal as a heat source in england surpasses the use of biomass fuels around 1620, by 1650 the burning of fossil carbon supplies 2/3 of all heat; and the share reaches 75% by 1700.
• By 1800, plant fuels still supply >98% of all heat and lights used by humans, and that human and animal muscles still provide >90% of all mechanical energy
• Even by 1850, rising coal extraction in Europe and North America supplies no more than 7% of all fuel energy, nearly 1/2 of useful kinet energy comes from draft animals, 40% human, and 15% from the 3 inanimate prime movers: waterwheels, windmills, and steam engines
• By 1950, fossil fuels supply nearly 3/4 of primary energy (coal mainly) and inanimate prime movers - now with gasoline - and diesel-fuelled internal combustion engines in the lead - provide >80% of all mechanical energy
• 60x increase in the use of fossil fuels during the 19th century, a 16x gain during the 20th century and 1500x increase over the past 220 years. This increasing dependence on fossil fuels is the most important factor explaining the advances of modern civilisation. 3500x gain since 1800
• An average inhabitant of the Earth nowadays has at their disposal nearly 700x more useful energy than their ancestors had at the beginning of the 19th century
• Energy conversion are the very basis of life and evolution. modern history can be seen as an unusually rapid sequence of transitions to new energy sources, and the modern world is the cumulative result of their conversions.
• Energy is the only truly universal currency, and nothing (from galactic rotations to ephemeral insect lives) can take place without its transformations.
• Economics assumes energy doesn’t matter much because the cost share of energy in the economy is so small that it can be ignored .. as if output could be produced by labor and capital alone - or as if energy is merely a form of man-made capital than can be produced (as opposed to extracted) by labour and capital
• Establishments that generale electricity are commonly called power plants - but power is simply the rate of energy production or energy use.
• Liquid hydrocarbons refined from crude oil have the highest energy densities of all commonly available fossil fuels, and hence they are eminently suitable for energising all modes of transportation