Adaptation – Our Greatest Challenge

L.W. Nicholson

All through history the primary source of energy available for the use of the human species was his own muscle power. Even up to the beginning of  the good old U.S. of A. in 1776, approximately 98 percent of the energy used by the human race was obtained from his own muscles. Only 2 percent was provided by animals, wind mills and a few water wheels.  This was not enough energy to provide for mankind much more than the bare necessities of life, the food he ate, housing and clothing.  Therefore, 95 percent of the people lived, and worked,on farms. Not necessarily because this was the preferred lifestyle, but because it was necessary with only his own one-tenth of a horsepower available for his use.

The invention of, and the improved version of the steam engine by James Watt, was the beginning of an entirely new age for mankind. It provided a new source of energy, a source outside of, and in addition to, that available from his own muscles. A new world of power, energy, was opened up and since has grown by leaps and bounds until today, 98 percent of the energy used by mankind is provided by extraneous energy, that is, energy from outside of the human body. All this new found energy has changed the way humans live more than all the philosophies, all the politicians, and all the combined superstitions in all previous history.  It has made the greatest technological mechanism ever before imagined to be built right here on this little planet.

The most rapid growth of technology was, of course, possible in areas of the earth which had the most available resources with which to work. North America, especially north of the Reo Grande, was such an area. We had the wood, the coal. oil and gas in what seemed like a never ending supply. We had the iron, lead, tin, zinc, and most of the mineral resources needed. We  had enough people to operate this mechanism, and a population which grew at a rate which was needed for the growth of technology.  We had it all, everything required to supply every American, and Canadian, with everything needed for a great lifestyle. From about 1920 through the rest of the century we could have eliminated poverty on this Continent. We had all the necessary physical resources and the technology, and the trained people to operate the technology. All the physical requirements were here.  We did not provide this great lifestyle, or even eliminate poverty on this Continent because we didn’t have an economic system designed to fit the technological age in which we live.  We are still using the “Barter System” which has been in use since before recorded history and we haven’t had the intelligence to replace it with an economic system capable of distributing the products our technology can produce. What an insult to our own intelligence !

Now we are running out of oil, we are running out of gas, we are running out of iron, lead, tin, zinc, and many other mineral resources which we have wasted in the production of shoddy and obsolete goods and products to sell in foreign trade, in return for money.  We are in process of ruining our own country because we are more patriotic to a political ideal, and to money,  than we are to the real, physical country in which we live. We are destroying our own nest, which in turn will destroy our own species.

Since the changeover from an agrarian society to a technological society, the physical complexity of our social mechanism has increased many times.  Almost every thing we do effects almost everything else. A changeover from a fossil fuel energy base to some form of alternative energy source, if that is possible, will effect everything we do and every way we live. We will have no choice but to conserve energy in every way possible for that is the only way any alternative source of energy so far known can supply the energy we need.  And with a total national debt already in the range of $34 trillion, how can we change our entire infrastructure to one using an alternative energy source without eliminating the value of money?

In the future we will not have the resources, energy or otherwise, to support 6 billion people on this little earth. Therefore, like it or not, the human population must decline. Hopefully, and if we have the intelligence, we can reduce the population level in a humane manner, probably by a significant reduction in the birth rate. If we don’t make the effort ourselves, nature will do the job by starvation, and during this process there is little doubt that many will be killed in widespread efforts to obtain the requirements of life.

Presently many people refuse to believe that we are approaching such drastic conditions.  And many others are more concerned with their own little individual lives and can’t spare the time to think about, or care about, the human race as a whole. Nevertheless, time goes on and there is no way to reverse it. All natural resources that are not renewable, like hydro power, will be used and no longer available. We are already substituting materials and that has, and will, prolong the race toward the cliff.  However, as time goes on, more and more resources will be used and at a faster pace as the population increases.

Many of our resources have been used in “helping” other nations to feed their starving people, and the result is, they have postponed any serious effort to limit their own population growth which only provided more people to need “help” just to stay alive.  Soooo —  the problem increases and the earth’s resources rate of depletion continues to increase.

Our world, our technology, our population density and our economic requirements have never been so complex, We can’t build enough solar collectors, for example, without considering the materials, energy cost, the space and a dozen other requirements, including the transport of the resulting energy to places far from the source.  This requires an engineering approach to the problems. And, when all the related problems are considered, our whole economy requires an engineering approach.  We must have an engineered society, one scientifically designed and engineered to operate in a very complex physical world. Never before has the human race become so interrelated with, and dependent on, economic conditions.

We must literally start over,  we must start from scratch, and redesign a social mechanism which will, and can, operate in the highly complex world in which we now live.  We must rethink everything we ever thought we knew about the physical world, and we must discontinue allowing the superstitions of the past to interfere with our thinking.  The very existence of our species depends on it.  To hub a tree with an ox cart is one thing, but to fly a 250 passenger aircraft into a skyscraper is another.  Both are mistakes but the results are different, the cause is different, and the solution is different. The age of the ox cart is past, and the age of the barter system is also past.  We must assume that we know nothing, and that is not far from a fact.  We must reeducate ourselves, and if we can’t, or won’t, then we haven’t much chance of survival.

As our education concerning the physical realities of our situation progresses, we will begin to realize that we must rebuild our physical infrastructure to allow our society to operate with far less energy. That in order to do this we must rebuild our economic system because we can’t pay for the construction with money that must remain scarce in order to have any value.  We will realize that our present transportation methods, and our present methods of housing the population must be improved drastically in order to conserve energy. We will realize that the leadership required to accomplish these enormous projects must have   the knowledge to do so, rather than a political approach which can’t even protect our people from economic terrorism by the drug companies.

Our present is vastly different from the days of 1776, and our future will continue to change, there is nothing we can do to stop this process, The only thing we can do is to prepare for it as best we can.  That future will require a greater increase in human knowledge than has the past 200 years.  Our politically controlled educational system has failed to supply the knowledge required for a greatly changed future. Our news media has done no better.  As a result the future is slipping up on us before we are prepared for it. The price we pay for these failures are yet to be determined, however, very likely this particular period in human history will, no doubt, be remembered for its failure to adjust to the technological age in which we live.