Living Batteries

Civilization once embraced renewable energy

The requirement of any civilization, old or new, is energy. Alvin Toffler said First Wave societies took their energy from living batteries— human and animal muscle-power— the human power were slaves, serfs, or peasants. They also made efficient use of the sun, wind, and water.  They used the forests to heat their homes and cook their food. They also used watermills and windmills to turn grindstones. Oxen pulled the plows. By the late 18th century, Europe took energy from an estimated 38 million horses and oxen. All First Wave societies took advantage of renewable power sources. The environment could be given time to replenish the forests they cut, the wind refilled ship sails, the rivers continued to turn their paddle wheels. People and animals as living batteries were essentially renewable energy.

By the advent of Second Wave societies, things changed, as humans started to get their energy from non-renewable sources such as coal, gas, and oil— from fossil fuels. This radical shift started when Thomas Newcomen invented his steam engine. This meant that humanity was digging into nature’s wealth literally and figuratively rather than simply living off the interest it supplied in renewable forms.

This tapping into the earth’s energy resources provided hidden subsidization for industrial civilization, vastly hastening its economic growth. From this point onward, wherever the Second Wave industrialism went, people and nations erected industrial and economic edifices on the notion that cheap fossil fuels would be continuously obtainable. In both capitalist and communist industrial societies, in East and West, this same change has been evident— from renewable to non-renewable, from many different energy sources and fuels to a relative few. Fossil fuels established the power basis of all Second Wave societies. Our current civilization’s wealth and woes start here. Our up-and-coming Third Wave civilization calls for many different energy sources and getting off fossil fuels. We have the technology but do we have the will?