Thread by @homemadeguitars

My friend Gozo and I see the world differently. He sees disparate elements, I see component parts of one thing.

https://twitter.com/GozoTweets/status/1401251337845813252

2. Since it's all one thing there is no starting point, but as it goes around let's enter at "high levels of imported energy."
Amount of work done in any system by any means requires energy. There is a ratio. Einstein mentioned it.

3. When Homo Habilus invented the stone knife, it was a means of concentrating energy.
You put energy into the knife over a large area - your hand / its handle number of square centimeters.

4. Then all that energy is concentrated on a surface a few micro-meters wide and maybe five cm long, and that much surface can't sink that much energy without catastrophic failure. So the animal skin comes apart. (Homo Habilus, remember.)

5. There are two ways to do more work, as a person. Figure out how to accomplish your goal with less waste energy, or import energy. So much energy per task per repetition. If you want more, add energy.
Since we're using what we have, we have to import it.
Oil, coal, wind -

6. Unfortunately oil and coal are more energy dense than wind. E=MC².
But that's another issue.
So - we couldn't be where we are without imported energy. We couldn't pave everything and bulldoze all the forests and melt all the sand and ship all the rhino horn without it. 🤷

7. Capitalism. Capitalism is a system - to use non derogatory terms - wherein the objective of the game is to think up something somebody will buy, and make that.
That's where cars came from. Henry Ford invented (a) something people would buy,

8. (b) a system to make them by the shitload.
And he got richer than Pharaoh. Because you could buy imported energy for nearly nothing. Oil was laying around all over the top layer of the world and you could gather it up with a tanker truck and a hose. Cheap.

9. Modern capitalism runs on imported energy. We can't even grow and provide food at an energy break-even. In terms of imbedded energy your average apple is more petroleum than nature.
Be cheaper if we could just eat the oil.
They're working on that, by the way. Lab-grown meat.

10. I got the automobile in there already, by accident, but I'm going to come back around to it. The average earth-surface footprint of a typical auto-owning American is vast. The energy demand to move that one body over all that surface is almost unimaginable.

10. Because of cars we have to have highways. Because of cars those highways have to be smooth as a baby's behind.
Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to move all that Earth, make all that concrete, ship all that limestone, ship all that sand... Mine all that limestone

11. Dig all that coal pump all that oil.
That shit everybody's talking about hasn't been made yet.
Does anyone have the vaguest idea how much fire it takes to do all this work?
This is just so we can drive fast.
If the cars ran on air we'd be spending this energy, most of it.

12. Remember that energy in that knife blade? How we concentrated our strength into a sharpened edge and pushed it against our skin and - oops. Bloody mess. Because our skin could not sink that much energy per unit of surface. Period.
Look at the energy we are dumping into Earth.

13. As far as Socialism et al - Socialism is a noun, a name for an idea. Books have been written about the idea. They don't agree with each other. I'm not getting into that mess very deeply, except to say, so far it hasn't prevented climate change and ecosystem degradation, so 🤷

14. How to get XX billion people to cooperate. That is a challenge I am often presented. Proof of uselessness: you can't make everybody do it!
Today the vast majority of those XX billion are living energy efficient lives with nearly no imported energy. There are 2 billion cars.

15. So we got a six billion people head start.
What about the other two billion?
Are you under the impression that everyone in America went to sleep in a horsedrawn world, and when they woke up in the morning it was Freeway Frontage Road USA?
One person at a time.

16. If everyone who has told me that it's not worth doing because you can't make everyone do it, had done it instead, there would be little clusters of not-Amish, eclectic, donkey and oxen and horse drawn communities of oddballs and people would be saying

17. Already people are driving up and down the country roads in these little semi-open off-road capable gasoline buggies that go about 20 mph. Why? Who made them do that?
I have it better than the guys on the tractors. They go up and down the country roads, ten feet in the air,

18. Air conditioned cab, all the windows closed, and here's this old fart twice their age with a team of donkeys and a cart full of seedlings and shovels and stakes.
Yes, they wave. It's polite.

19. I seriously need to get donkey powered mowers. The contrast, from the donks back to the mowing tractor, earplugs, I need another hundred dollars' worth of gasoline...
Yeah, how could you ever force anyone to give that up?
Please don't throw me in that briar patch.

20. And finally... Amishism?
Well, you know, I can't prove it, but I suspect there isn't an established ism anywhere that will solve our problems. I know that's a hassle. One word solutions are the easiest to market. But I don't have one.
This is about energy, y'all. Physical.

21. The way all species survive on Earth is, they harvest more energy, as food, than they require to live, without adversely changing the ecosystem within which they live.
We eat more energy than we require - particularly the two billion with cars, because according to the UN,

22. About two billion, globally, are overweight or obese. 🙋 Coincidence, I'm sure.
What we need to do is acknowledge a few facts.
🔹There is no system large enough and complex enough on Earth to manage the carbon balance except the biosphere.
🔹We're degrading all of it daily.

23. The problems, and the solution, can be expressed in calories, btus, kilowatts, horsepower... It is not possible for us to rewrite the energy budget of planet Earth over the long term.
I often mention the Amish because historically they have lived much lower energy budgets.

24. This is shrinking. Because they don't do it because of energy, and they can stick wind turbines out in the pasture and solar panels on the roof, and run battery drills and cordless everything.
But it's about energy. It's real stuff. It's the realest stuff there is.

Guess that's a good quitting spot.