Energy Spending Spree aD Nineteen Eighty.
Who cared back in the day?
– #From the Attic: class notes[1] –
My generation or perhaps the one that preceded mine, was the first to wage a devastating kind of colonial war against nature under the supremacy of the so-called genuine understanding of natural sciences. We will therefore be cursed. (Erwin Chargaff, A Supernatural Understanding)
ENERGY
However, such energy consumption coincides with an unparalleled wastefulness permitting the electricity companies‘ board of directors to use up enormous stocks of coal for the production of a quantity of electricity without remorse, which could be produced at a fraction of the quantity of primary energy used, alongside decisively reduced environmental pollution.
PRIMARY
Two thirds to three quarters of the world's assets of primary energy resources are lost on their way to serving consumers. The tremendous unfolding of the energy-guzzling raw materials industry (metal production, chemical raw materials, etc.), which accounts for almost half of the economy’s end energy consumption but generates only just a little bit less than one eighth of the national product, plays a pivotal role in generating critical awareness of such considerations.
GREENERY
The large-scale polluters don't even have to stand in for the environmental damage they inflict on nature. As long as the Energy Economy enjoys a fool's privilege, profound environmentalism isn‘t possible. The preservation of nature ultimately remains window dressing reminiscing of roadside greenery along the freeways.
HUNGRY
1 kilogramme of soybeans provides as much protein as 3 kilogrammes of pork or beef. But they are fed to cattle. It's hard to believe but true, although soybeans are an ideal source of food for malnourished people – who almost always suffer from protein deficiency – only about 5 percent of the world's 90 million tons of soybeans is directed at human nutrition.
MONEY
Industrialised countries invest more money in pig-fattening than in foreign aid to the benefit of the poor people in the Third World. Enhanced meat quality produced on grain refinement for efficient live-stock feeding suggests an incredible amount of endogenous energy, i.e. figuratively, the steaks we eat, should slap us in the face.
If it were possible to extract 200-gramme steak’s inherent energy potential without any loss, it would likely deliver electricity serving a dry-shaver for about 75 days.
In so-called refinement farms introducing a gathering of a few hundred international champions of pig modelling, a few hundreds of thousands of kWh of energy consumption can easily accumulate. Just for comparison, the average annual consumption of a three-room apartment featuring 70 square metres of living space amounts to 1,200 kWh.
MILKY
Despite lakes of wine, mountain-like piles of milk powder, butter and meat as well as large-scale dumps filled with copious quantities of wheat, sugar, fruits and vegetables, farmers are still coerced to overproduce.
The tentative result was, that in 1974 milk had become so much more expensive, that the withdrawal of skimmed milk was no longer attractive for farmers. For example, the European Community got rid of a deluge of skimmed milk quite extravagantly, as usual by drying. 11 litres of skimmed milk processed in spray towers at around 180 degrees Celsius shrink to one kilogramme of skimmed milk powder.
About 50 cubic centimetres of oil are required per litre of skimmed milk for drying. Thickening and powdering a lake of more than 20 billion litres of skimmed milk required around 1 billion litres of oil in the European Community alone in 1978.
TOTALITY
The consequences of such chemical and mechanical large-scale attacks on Earth's natural cycles and the grand total of sensitive, natural relationships are as numerous as its effects and repercussions.
In fact, these measures of industrialised agriculture often get trapped in a vicious circle – i.e. a downward spiral of reciprocal causes and effects aggravating each other, gradually worsening the situation – also proves how little legislators, producers of pesticides and their users basically know or wish to know about the ecosystems they sustainably impair.
Frame of Reference
Glyphosate To Be Found Legally Sound
[1] Transcript to documentary on energy consumption in industrialised countries: Energy Spending Spree (1980)