I was having dinner with a friend of mine the other day and we were discussing the amount of energy that we need to consume as a society. Evidently we are a Type 0 society; using chemical process to convert energy and are limited in both the efficiency of conversion and the quantity of energy available through that process. To become a Type 1 society we would need to consume energy in an entirely different scale. A planetary scale. Yup, the evolution of our society requires that we start consuming planets.
As you may have already guessed, the successive levels of society consume exponentially larger sources of power, Universes, Galaxies, etc. I don’t know why a picture of the Death Star instantly popped into my mind, but perhaps the idea wasn’t so far off. Except rather than blowing up planets for political reasons the device converts the planet directly into energy which then powers society (the destruction of the planet is just a necessary step to ensure our survival).
It sounds rather sci-fi, but when you take a step back it isn’t so strange. We are in that very process right now. As inefficient as it may be, we are slowly converting our planet into energy. Our current mind set is so obsessed with energy that everywhere we look we see a potential energy cash crop. Cellulose, algae, hydrogen, methane, waves, wind, the core of the earth… There is only a minor regard for the impact on other elements of human existence. Food, water, clean air, clean living environments.
Perhaps we know something we don’t know. Perhaps there is a way to free our bodies from these base requirements and survive on Energy alone. At the rate things are going I guess we’ll find out.
Maybe instead of the Death Star, you should be searching the sci-fi genera for a different reference, a.k.a. the Transformers. I am thinking about the 1986 animated movie where in the year 2004 the Autobots where fighting to save there home planet from a planet consuming Transformer that transformed into a planet. The planet Transformer, named Unicron, ate the other planets to convert them into energy to power himself. Just like what we are doing with all of the other energy sources on our planet. We are no different at all, you have to remember that everything on this planet is some form of embodied energy. We started with wood to burn for heat and then we found other fuels to use and different ways to change there forms of the energy to more user friendly energy that we can store, or horde, whichever you prefer. We have now gone beyond plant life into organisms like Algae for fuels. How do we know for certain that we are not just like Unicron to the Algae?
Transformers! I love it. I’ll have to try that in one of my lectures. “Transformers: transforming our world”
Seriously though, perhaps we are wrong. perhaps we need to start consuming energy on an entirely new scale. The natural state of the earth is not hospitable to life, especially complex forms. The earth is a giant energy storage device, and we should extract every scrap of energy possible and then move on. Heritic, I know. But you have to wonder…