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.
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