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[[File:Relationship_of_energy_slaves_to_human_employees_in_a_personal-intensive_company_(no_text).svg|thumb|Relationship of energy slaves to human employees in a personal-intensive company]] |
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[[File:Relationship of energy slaves to human employees in an energy-intensive company (no text).svg|thumb|Relationship of energy slaves to human employees in an energy-intensive company]] |
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| ⚫ | An '''energy slave''' is that quantity of energy (ability to do work) which, when used to construct and drive non-human infrastructure (machines, roads, [[Electric power|power grids]], fuel, draft animals, [[Windpump|wind-driven pumps]], etc.) replaces a unit of [[Manual labor|human labor]] (actual work). An energy slave does the work of a person, through the [[energy consumption|consumption of energy]] in the non-human infrastructure.<ref name=":1">{{cite book|title=The first measured century: an illustrated guide to trends in America, 1900–2000|author1=Theodore Caplow|author2 =Louis Hicks|author3=Ben J.Wattenberg|publisher=[[American Enterprise Institute]]|year=2001|isbn=0-8447-4138-8|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/firstmeasuredcen0000capl}}</ref> |
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| ⚫ | An '''energy slave''' is that quantity of energy (ability to do work) which, when used to construct and drive non-human |
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==History== |
==History== |
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The concept of energy slaves was implied by [[Oscar Wilde]] in "[[The Soul of Man Under Socialism|The Soul of Man under Socialism]]" when he compared the steam engine to slavery. |
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The term was first used by [[R. Buckminster Fuller]] in the caption of an illustration for the cover of the February 1940 issue of [[Fortune Magazine]], entitled "World Energy". Alfred Ubbelohde also coined the term, apparently independently, in his 1955 book, "Man and Energy", but the term did not come to be widely used until the 1960s, and is generally credited to Fuller. |
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During the second half of the 19th century, during the industrialization process in the West, the increasingly prominent role of fossil fuels redefined the notions of labor and energy. Labor was no longer solely human, but became a movement producing force through the use of energy. The distinctions between human workers and inanimate objects such as a block of coal blurred, as both could generate work. |
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| ⚫ | An energy slave is used to compare the productivity of a person and the energy that would be required to produce that work in the modern, |
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As early as 1827, a slave owner in [[British Guiana]] attempted to estimate the value of labor provided by a slave compared to that provided by a steam engine. For Bob Johnson, this marked the beginning of a reflection on the abstraction of labor and its potential reduction to a simple standardized measure. In the 1820s, the concept of "manpower" emerged, representing the power provided by a human (similar to horsepower, which measures the power provided by a horse). |
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The choice to “employ” energy slaves is only at the margins of their total impact, so are called slaves because users receive the value produced by them as an entitlement of the society. |
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In 1930, the [[Westinghouse Electric Corporation|Westinghouse]] company created a robot resembling an African-American, known as the mechanical negro, which could perform simple tasks such as sweeping and sitting. It was a great success. According to Bob Johnson, this robot gave a human face to mechanical energy, unlike industrial machines that lack both a face and emotions. |
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===Macro view=== |
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One way to look at an energy slave might be called the “[[macroscopic scale|macro]]” view. This is to look at the total flow through of energy divided by the number of persons being supported by the [[infrastructure]] where that energy is being used. It is a number that can change instantaneously as the flow through of energy changes. Although this formulation is challenged by the need to decide whom to include in the count, and the massive data-keeping it would require, it is intuitively simple because we merely divide one number by the other, and guides us in thinking about the other perspective. It is suited to large blocks of a given economy and to comparisons of economies. |
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In 1940, [[Richard Buckminster Fuller|Buckminster Fuller]] was the first<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|language=en|author1=Imre Szeman|author2=Dominic Boyer|title=Energy Humanities : An Anthology|editor=JHU Press|date=2 April 2017|page=210|isbn=978-1-4214-2189-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ImNgDgAAQBAJ&q=energy+slave&pg=PA210|accessdate= 11 December 2019}}</ref> to use the term "energy slave" in a map in [[Fortune (magazine)|''Fortune'']].<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|language=en |author1=Richard Buckminster Fuller |title=World Energy |periodical=Fortune |date= February 1940 |url=https://www.fulltable.com/vts/f/fortune/xb/50.jpg}}</ref> He calculated the yield of an energy slave by taking the energy from minerals and water consumed by industry and dividing it by the energy provided by a human being. For a world population of just over two billion people (2 125 000 000 exactly), Fuller estimates that there are thirty-six billion energy slaves at the time, representing 17 per capita. In 1940, these energy slaves were not equitably distributed around the world: the United States owned twenty billion of them (54% of the world total).<ref name=":3" /> In 1950, Fuller revised his calculations upwards and estimated that, on average, each human holds 38 energy slaves.<ref name=":2" /> |
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This macro view of the energy slave concept is similarly useful for critiquing the macro-economic dynamics of Capitalism. To the degree [[fossil fuel|fossil carbon's]] energy slaves underwrite the creditworthiness of the debt that the economic meme is predicated on, and its currencies are denominated in, any net reduction in energy slaves constitute a systemic economic threat. |
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In 1963, [[Alfred Rene Ubbelohde|Alfred René Ubbelohde]] also used this concept in his book ''Man and Energy''.<ref>{{Cite book|language=en|author1=Alfred René Ubbelohde|title=Man and energy|editor=Penguin Books|date=1963|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d704AAAAIAAJ|accessdate=11 December 2019}}</ref> In Germany, the physicist [[Hans-Peter Dürr]] used this concept.<ref>{{cite news |language=de|author1=Christiane Grefe |title=Energiesklaven in der Armutsfalle |periodical={{lang|de|Die Zeit}} |date=7 October 1999 |issn=0044-2070 |url=https://www.zeit.de/1999/41/Energiesklaven_in_der_Armutsfalle |accessdate=11 December 2019 }}</ref> The term is also mentioned in a 1975 book<ref>{{cite book|language=en|author1=Robert S. Rouse|author2=Robert OwensSmith|title=Energy : resource, slave, pollutant :A physical science text|editor=Macmillan|date=1 March 1975|isbn=978-0-02-404000-8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nQwi3KPVakcC|accessdate=11 December 2019}}</ref> and has become popular in the scientific literature. |
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The macro view of energy slaves is also helpful for thinking about risks inherent with climate change policies that reflect the scientific concept of a carbon budget and its requirement that fossil carbon be kept in the ground. Such policies, in conjunction with [[peak oil|peak conventional oil]] also being a peak in energy-equilivant slaves, represent a threat that [[renewable energy|renewables]], due to the capitalization costs involved, are challenged to redress. In the short to medium term, more creditworthiness will be required for leveraging to create the needed credit required for renewables to be implemented at the scale implied in the [[Paris Agreement]]. At the same time a significant amount of the existing credit, based on fossil carbon energy-equilivant slaves and the infrastructure these are predicated on, will be a force pushing for a write-down of existing debt. On the macro level, [[quantitative easing|quantitative easing's]] short-term utility is of limited value. QE is not well suited to be the long-term solution to ramping up replacement energy slaves and affect a mitigation of this threat. (Hence an argument why the label of CapitalismFail could, rationally, enter the lexicon.) |
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An exhibition in [[Switzerland]] in 2001 presents a popularised definition of "energy slaves" based on the work carried out by Tourane Corbière-Nicollier under the supervision of Olivier Jolliet of the EPFL-GECOS laboratory in Lausanne. The definition given is ː "The energy slave is a unit of measurement that allows us to better understand and evaluate the consequences of our life choices. An energy slave works to produce energy 24 hours a day. He produces an average power output of 100 W (876 kWh per year)." |
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===Micro view=== |
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Another way to look at the energy slave might be called the “[[microeconomics|micro]]” view. This is to look in detail at the substitution of [[human labor]] by non-human sources of [[productivity]], in particular the modern industrial infrastructure of machines and services. |
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In France, the term energy slave is used by [[Jean-Marc Jancovici]] and has been studied by the historian Jean-François Mouhot. Jean-Marc Jancovici draws the following conclusion: "in a democracy: it is not only the way of life of [[Marcel Dassault|Mr. Dassault]] or the {{sic|[[List of English monarchs|Queen of England]]}} that has become unsustainable if we put ourselves in the realm of physics, but that of each and every one of us, including factory workers, cleaners and supermarket cashiers." |
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==Energy expenditure== |
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As a very simple example, ten [[apple]] pickers descend from their trees and walk to the processing shed with their apples, and then return to their trees. They have produced some number of units of work. Ten other apple pickers unload their apples into an empty box, and then return to picking. The box, now full, is carried by a field [[tractor]] to the processing shed. The work of these ten pickers plus the driver of the tractor plus all of the energy inputs have also produced that number of units of work. |
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==Calculation method== |
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The energy inputs include the life cycle share of the energy required to build and maintain that tractor and the box (called "[[embodied energy]]"), plus the [[fuel]] required to run it for the time occupied by bringing, placing, idling, and returning that box to the shed, plus the energy required to acquire, process, transport, and distribute that energy (more embedded energy). |
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The number of energy slaves per capita depends on the method of calculation: either we take the average energy provided by a slave 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or, as Fuller does, we use the mechanical energy provided by a healthy individual working 40 hours a week (or 3 kWh per week).<ref name=":2" /> In comparison, a litre of gasoline can provide 9kWh<ref name=":2" /> to run an engine for example. |
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The [[energy]] used in the two systems is not defined to be [[Equality (mathematics)|equal]]. The ratio of the energy used to produce an energy slave’s volume of work, through [[machine]] labor, as opposed to the energy used to produce a unit of human labor, is one of the most salient questions implicitly raised by this concept. |
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If we let ''Lw'' the labor of walkers, ''Ln'' the labor of non-walkers, ''Ld'' the labor of driver, ''Ei'' the non-human energy inputs, ''C'' the constant to convert units of energy into units of work. Further, let 1 ''Ph'' be one person-hour. |
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| ⚫ | An energy slave is used to compare the productivity of a person and the energy that would be required to produce that work in the modern, oil fuelled industrial economy, although it could be applied anywhere that labor is produced with non-human sourced energy. It does not include the ancillary [[Environmental economics|costs]] of [[Environmental degradation|damage to the environment]] or social structures. Formally, one energy slave produces one unit of human labor through the non-human tools and energy supplied by the industrial economy, and therefore 1 ES times a constant that converts to work accomplished equal one human labor unit. |
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== Bibliography == |
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Then given what has been said above |
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* '''(fr)''' Jean-François Mouhot, ''Des esclaves énergétiques – Réflexions sur le changement climatique'', Champ Vallon editions, 2011.<ref>Critical review by historian Fabien Locher, [https://laviedesidees.fr/L-Histoire-face-a-la-crise.html L’Histoire face à la crise climatique], November 2011; on the website [http://laviedesidees.fr/ La vie des Idées].</ref> |
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:<math>Lw = Ln + Ld + CEi</math> |
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* '''(en)''' Andrew Nikiforuk, The Energy of Slaves : Oil and the New Servitude, Greystone Books, 17 August 2012, 272 p. ({{ISBN|978-1-55365-979-2}}, read online [archive]<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4b2sAAAAQBAJ|title=The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude|isbn=9781553659792|last1=Nikiforuk|first1=Andrew|date=17 August 2012}}</ref>). |
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* '''(en)''' Bob Johnson, Mineral Rites : An Archaeology of the Fossil Economy, JHU Press, 26 March 2019, 256 p.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O-qKDwAAQBAJ|title=Mineral Rites: An Archaeology of the Fossil Economy|isbn=9781421427560|last1=Johnson|first1=Bob|date=26 March 2019}}</ref> |
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And therefore, since the human labor inputs equate to the energy slave units |
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:<math>Lw - Ln - Ld = CEi</math> |
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Supposing then that work is measured in person-hours, and supposing further that the walkers require half an hour each to go to the shed and back, that both groups take 6 minutes to fill their apple pouches, and the driver takes 30 minutes to go to and return from the shed: |
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:<math>Lw = 10\, Laborers \cdot 0.6\,\frac{Ph}{Laborer} = 6\,Ph</math> |
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:<math>Ln = 10\, Laborers \cdot 0.1\,\frac{Ph}{Laborer} = 1\,Ph</math> |
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:<math>Ld = 1\, Laborer \cdot 0.5\,\frac{Ph}{Laborer} = 0.5\,Ph</math> |
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Therefore |
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:<math>CEi = 6 Ph - 1 Ph - 0.5 Ph = 4.5 Ph</math> |
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The energy inputs (times the constant) replace 4.5 person-hours of labor. Returning to the original definition, an energy slave is the energy required to produce a unit of human labor otherwise than organically, so we need to convert these 4.5 person-hours into energy slaves. |
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In the original example, ten laborers produced their all-human work output in six hours. The other laborers plus their machines produced the same work in 1.5 hours of human labor. Therefore the energy slaves replaced 4.5/6.0 hours of human productivity, and there are 7.5 energy slaves. |
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The question “How many energy slaves do I have?” (<math>{}_{Es}</math>) is answered by looking at the amount of energy required to build and drive the infrastructure to support your lifestyle (<math>{}_{Ei^{*}}</math>), multiplied by slaves per unit of energy (<math>{}_\frac{Es^{*}}{Ei}</math>). This would be expressed as |
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:<math>Es = Ei^{*} \cdot \frac{Es^{*}}{Ei}</math> |
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===Questions=== |
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One of the questions that arises is: |
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Was the [[calorie|caloric]] expenditure of the laborers producing the person-hours less than, equal to, or greater than, the caloric energy inputs to the system? In terms of the variables used thus far, is the question if <math>{}_{7.5\,Es \cdot \frac{calories}{Es}}</math> is less or equal ''Ei'', or bigger? |
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In meaningful terms, did the economy use more or less energy, by using energy slaves, than it would if it had used actual human labor? This value might be a kind of benchmark, but an economy crossing this benchmark won’t notice a qualitative difference. |
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==Implications== |
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The implication of the energy slave unit is that each of the workers who did not walk were able to return to picking apples, and therefore increase their personal productivity. Doing the labor of 10 persons with 2.5 persons worth of work (10-7.5), the laborers with energy slaves can produce 10/2.5, or 4 times, as much work, in the same amount of time. Their personal wealth, and/or that of their employer, can be expected to increase; however, because of the huge energy investment behind the [[infrastructure]], the margin of benefit for the employer and the workers must be less than 4 times the value of the work of the unassisted workers. |
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If energy slaves were actually free, then we would seek to shunt off as much labor as possible onto them. However, they are not free, and the cost of an energy slave, compared to the cost of human labor, may decide when to use an energy slave and when to use a person. A more interesting question than that about the calories used by the different systems is the question of the cost of each. The cost of human labor trends downward as the number of workers grows faster than the work available to support them, and as the number of energy slaves decreases per person. Meanwhile, as the cost of energy increases, the investment required to use energy slaves instead of people may become greater than the cost of people. |
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When someone discusses the amount of energy used to produce, harvest, transport and distribute a head of [[broccoli]] to a store three thousand miles away, the energy used can be expressed in terms of the number of energy slaves required to do that work. Since there are so many such deeply nested costs associated with the industrial infrastructure, we need some way to resolve the energy used to build the truck, to smelt the [[steel]] and convert [[petroleum]] into plastics, into units of human labor. Would we directly substitute an actual person walking across the country with the head of broccoli for the truck that actually carries it for the sake of comparative productivity? Or do we just divide the units of energy used by the industrial infrastructure by the number of calories used by one person to accomplish the same task, to get energy-slaves? |
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People who use this term want to convey in human terms the amount of energy required to support our modern [[United States|American]] lifestyle. Another way to articulate this ratio is in terms of the energy required to grow food and transport it, as compared to the energy that food provides to a person. In a society with only human labor, you could not consume more energy than you produce in food. What does it mean when the energy required to produce food exceeds the food value it provides to a person? Just how much more energy than is contained in the food is acceptable? These are questions like those when using the "energy slave" unit, that need to be answered by people seeking understanding of these units. |
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==Criticism== |
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In the apple pickers and tractor example there is a further consideration where the tractor is replaced by animal type of tractor power, for example a horse. If the horse is being feed on 'low-value' energy inputs such as grass grown in situ with the apple trees. The grass would have been utilized by the living ecosystem around the apple trees by, for example rotting down and providing [[humus]] but has, instead, been used by the horse with most of the energy content of the grass being used to produce waste heat by the muscular action of the horse but the remainder being returned to the apple tree ecosystem in the form of dung. |
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Whereas the tractor has used a 'high cost' and effective non-renewable source of energy in the form of petrol, the horse has used a relatively 'low cost' fuel in the form of grass that is quickly renewed by the energy input of the sun. As long as overgrazing does not occur resulting in the degradation of the apple orchard ecosystem. |
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==References== |
==References== |
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==External links== |
==External links== |
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{{Commons category}} |
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* '''(en)''' [http://www.nous.org.uk/energy.slave.html Definition and description] |
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* '''(en)''' [http://www.eoht.info/page/Energy+slave Description] |
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* '''(fr)''' Pour une histoire de la notion : Fabien Locher, [http://www.laviedesidees.fr/L-Histoire-face-a-la-crise.html "L'Histoire face à la crise climatique"], revue en ligne ''La vie des idées'', 7 November 2011 |
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{{Portal bar|Energy|Economics}} |
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[[Category:Energy economics]] |
[[Category:Energy economics]] |
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Latest revision as of 16:04, 12 May 2023
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (June 2009) |
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An energy slave is that quantity of energy (ability to do work) which, when used to construct and drive non-human infrastructure (machines, roads, power grids, fuel, draft animals, wind-driven pumps, etc.) replaces a unit of human labor (actual work). An energy slave does the work of a person, through the consumption of energy in the non-human infrastructure.[1]
History
[edit]The concept of energy slaves was implied by Oscar Wilde in "The Soul of Man under Socialism" when he compared the steam engine to slavery.
During the second half of the 19th century, during the industrialization process in the West, the increasingly prominent role of fossil fuels redefined the notions of labor and energy. Labor was no longer solely human, but became a movement producing force through the use of energy. The distinctions between human workers and inanimate objects such as a block of coal blurred, as both could generate work.
As early as 1827, a slave owner in British Guiana attempted to estimate the value of labor provided by a slave compared to that provided by a steam engine. For Bob Johnson, this marked the beginning of a reflection on the abstraction of labor and its potential reduction to a simple standardized measure. In the 1820s, the concept of "manpower" emerged, representing the power provided by a human (similar to horsepower, which measures the power provided by a horse).
In 1930, the Westinghouse company created a robot resembling an African-American, known as the mechanical negro, which could perform simple tasks such as sweeping and sitting. It was a great success. According to Bob Johnson, this robot gave a human face to mechanical energy, unlike industrial machines that lack both a face and emotions.
In 1940, Buckminster Fuller was the first[2] to use the term "energy slave" in a map in Fortune.[3] He calculated the yield of an energy slave by taking the energy from minerals and water consumed by industry and dividing it by the energy provided by a human being. For a world population of just over two billion people (2 125 000 000 exactly), Fuller estimates that there are thirty-six billion energy slaves at the time, representing 17 per capita. In 1940, these energy slaves were not equitably distributed around the world: the United States owned twenty billion of them (54% of the world total).[3] In 1950, Fuller revised his calculations upwards and estimated that, on average, each human holds 38 energy slaves.[2]
In 1963, Alfred René Ubbelohde also used this concept in his book Man and Energy.[4] In Germany, the physicist Hans-Peter Dürr used this concept.[5] The term is also mentioned in a 1975 book[6] and has become popular in the scientific literature.
An exhibition in Switzerland in 2001 presents a popularised definition of "energy slaves" based on the work carried out by Tourane Corbière-Nicollier under the supervision of Olivier Jolliet of the EPFL-GECOS laboratory in Lausanne. The definition given is ː "The energy slave is a unit of measurement that allows us to better understand and evaluate the consequences of our life choices. An energy slave works to produce energy 24 hours a day. He produces an average power output of 100 W (876 kWh per year)."
In France, the term energy slave is used by Jean-Marc Jancovici and has been studied by the historian Jean-François Mouhot. Jean-Marc Jancovici draws the following conclusion: "in a democracy: it is not only the way of life of Mr. Dassault or the Queen of England [sic] that has become unsustainable if we put ourselves in the realm of physics, but that of each and every one of us, including factory workers, cleaners and supermarket cashiers."
Calculation method
[edit]The number of energy slaves per capita depends on the method of calculation: either we take the average energy provided by a slave 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or, as Fuller does, we use the mechanical energy provided by a healthy individual working 40 hours a week (or 3 kWh per week).[2] In comparison, a litre of gasoline can provide 9kWh[2] to run an engine for example.
Usage
[edit]An energy slave is used to compare the productivity of a person and the energy that would be required to produce that work in the modern, oil fuelled industrial economy, although it could be applied anywhere that labor is produced with non-human sourced energy. It does not include the ancillary costs of damage to the environment or social structures. Formally, one energy slave produces one unit of human labor through the non-human tools and energy supplied by the industrial economy, and therefore 1 ES times a constant that converts to work accomplished equal one human labor unit.
Bibliography
[edit]- (fr) Jean-François Mouhot, Des esclaves énergétiques – Réflexions sur le changement climatique, Champ Vallon editions, 2011.[7]
- (en) Andrew Nikiforuk, The Energy of Slaves : Oil and the New Servitude, Greystone Books, 17 August 2012, 272 p. (ISBN 978-1-55365-979-2, read online [archive][8]).
- (en) Bob Johnson, Mineral Rites : An Archaeology of the Fossil Economy, JHU Press, 26 March 2019, 256 p.[9]
References
[edit]- ^ Theodore Caplow; Louis Hicks; Ben J.Wattenberg (2001). The first measured century: an illustrated guide to trends in America, 1900–2000. American Enterprise Institute. ISBN 0-8447-4138-8.
- ^ a b c d Imre Szeman; Dominic Boyer (2 April 2017). JHU Press (ed.). Energy Humanities : An Anthology. p. 210. ISBN 978-1-4214-2189-6. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
- ^ a b Richard Buckminster Fuller (February 1940). "World Energy". Fortune.
- ^ Alfred René Ubbelohde (1963). Penguin Books (ed.). Man and energy. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
- ^ Christiane Grefe (7 October 1999). "Energiesklaven in der Armutsfalle". Die Zeit (in German). ISSN 0044-2070. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
- ^ Robert S. Rouse; Robert OwensSmith (1 March 1975). Macmillan (ed.). Energy : resource, slave, pollutant :A physical science text. ISBN 978-0-02-404000-8. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
- ^ Critical review by historian Fabien Locher, L’Histoire face à la crise climatique, November 2011; on the website La vie des Idées.
- ^ Nikiforuk, Andrew (17 August 2012). The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude. ISBN 9781553659792.
- ^ Johnson, Bob (26 March 2019). Mineral Rites: An Archaeology of the Fossil Economy. ISBN 9781421427560.
External links
[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Energy Slave.
- "How much of a slave master am I ?" by Jean-Marc Jancovici
- Energy Map, by R. Buckminster Fuller
- (en) Definition and description
- (en) Description
- (fr) Pour une histoire de la notion : Fabien Locher, "L'Histoire face à la crise climatique", revue en ligne La vie des idées, 7 November 2011
