It is night in the Colorado Rockies and it’s brutally cold.
Above the tree line, vast snow fields glimmer
in pale moonlight. The few alpine animals that survive here, such as marmots
and pikas, hibernate or munch stored grasses in their burrows, surviving from
stored fat that was laboriously accumulated during the short summer growing season.
This is a severe ecosystem, where energy is meager and
survival is not assured. It is an effective laboratory to illustrate the physical
world in which we live and the preeminent role played by energy.
In the world of our everyday experience, smartphones and
supermarkets, commuter trains and college tuition, we measure abundance and
scarcity in terms of money. But money is a human invention, a proxy for effort
and achievement, risk and reward. In the stark physical universe we inhabit,
energy is the only true currency.
We can see that on a macro scale by viewing the development
of human energy infrastructure across the ages. The Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany,
offers a sweeping view, from the discovery of fire to the latest in nuclear fusion
research. (If you can’t visit in person, a virtual visit on their website is
highly recommended).
Human history has been fraught with efforts to wrest energy
from our physical world and to direct, store, and utilize it. It is no accident
that northern realms far outpaced the southern in this regard. Winter is a
harsh taskmaster, and failure is met by death. Northern societies were stressed
and challenged by their low available-energy environment, compelled to innovate
to survive.
Abundant sunshine and warm temperatures made human survival
much easier near the equator. But without the challenge of fundamental survival,
there was little drive to innovate and develop beyond basic needs. Fires for
cooking and oxen for plowing were more than adequate for thousands of years.
It is interesting to contemplate the particular circumstances
that brought us to this point. Eons ago, a massive collision knocked the Earth
off its perpendicular axis. This tilted axis gave us seasons – spring, summer,
fall, and winter. The periods of balmy weather invited humans to migrate away
from the equator, but the winters drove them to innovate. This innovation led
to energy and transportation and manufacturing infrastructures which created
great wealth. Most likely, you can thank that giant whack for the British
Empire, the iPhone, and the Mall of America.
Which brings us to the topic of free stuff. What stuff,
exactly, is free? In the context of the physical universe in which we exist, it
is not likely that much of anything is free.
We have been told that the air is free. But is it? For air
to be useful to us, we must breathe, inhaling and exhaling, and exchange carbon
dioxide for oxygen. All this requires energy, the only true currency. Air is
not free.
How about wind? We are assured that the wind is free. But to
harness it, one must build and maintain devices, whether a sailing vessel of
the old British Empire or an advanced wind turbine. Just ask the people of
Portsmouth, RI, who are tearing down a broken wind turbine and are left with an
unpaid $1.5 million mortgage. Wind is not free.
But surely water is free, isn’t it? Water for sustenance,
water for irrigation, must be treated and transported. The Romans built
elaborate, expensive aqueducts to support their citizenry. The City of
Attleboro, likewise, spends millions to provide clean drinking water. Water is
not free.
In all of the above cases, we must expend energy (or funds
representing energy) to utilize what many consider free resources. There is
no free stuff. Consider that alpine marmot, hibernating in its burrow as the temperatures
plunge below zero. His survival depends on husbanding the energy he has stored
as fat. He knows in his genes that nothing is free.
So in this silly season of political theater, beware of
promises of free stuff. We always pay – it is the nature of our universe.
