Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, 2021a

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Preface: Before Taking the Plunge
This book somewhat mirrors a personal journey that transformed my life, altered the way I look at
the great human endeavor, <strong>and</strong> redefined my relationship to this planet. The transition that took a
couple of decades for me is unlikely to be replicated for the reader in the short span of time it takes to
absorb the content of this book. Nonetheless, the framework can be laid down so that readers might
begin their own journeys <strong>and</strong> perhaps arrive at some profound realizations. This preface explains the
approach <strong>and</strong> some overarching principles of the text.
We live in a physical world governed by physical law. Unlike the case for civil or criminal law, we are
not even afforded the opportunity to break the laws of physics, except in fiction or entertainment.
We do not need to create a physics police force or build physics jails or plead cases in front of some
physics court. Nature provides perfect, automatic enforcement for free.
The domains of energy, the environment, economics, etc. are no exceptions, <strong>and</strong> can be put on a
physical footing. It is worth exploring the emergent framework: reflecting on scale, efficiency, <strong>and</strong>
thermodynamic limits of the human enterprise. By underst<strong>and</strong>ing the boundaries, we can begin to
think about viable long-term plans in a way that too few are doing today. Thus far, heeding physical
boundaries has not been necessary for the most part, as the scale of human endeavors has only recently
become significant in a planetary context. We are now entering into a new reality: one in which our
ambitions are on a collision course with natural limits on a finite planet. It is a slow-motion trajectory
that has been apparent to some for an embarrassingly long time [1], but not yet acute enough to have
grabbed the lasting attention of the majority.
The delirious ascent in energy <strong>and</strong> resource use witnessed over the past few centuries has been
accomplished via the rapid, accelerating expenditure of a one-time inheritance of natural resources—a
brief <strong>and</strong> singularly remarkable era in the long saga of human history. It has produced a dangerously
distorted impression of what “normal” looks like on this planet. The fireworks show on display today
is spectacular, fun, <strong>and</strong> inspirational, but also exceptionally unusual. Just as a meteorologist somehow
born <strong>and</strong> trained within a 15-minute fireworks display likely cannot make useful predictions about
weather <strong>and</strong> sky conditions over the next week, we are ill-equipped to intuitively underst<strong>and</strong> what
comes after the present phase. Luckily, science offers tools by which to transcend our narrow, warped
perspectives, <strong>and</strong> can assist in discerning likely from wishful visions. The aim of this textbook is to
set quantitative bounds on the present era as a way to better prepare for the possibility of a much
different future. Our eventual success depends on serious attention to planetary limits.
This book is written to support a general education college course on energy <strong>and</strong> the environment. It
was formulated as a physics course, but is written in the hope that it may also be accessible beyond
this narrow setting. Physics is built on a mathematical foundation, <strong>and</strong> the domain of energy dem<strong>and</strong>s
quantitative assessment. As a consequence, the book does not shy away from numbers. The math that
is covered is presented in a way that aims to integrate intuition <strong>and</strong> the formality of equations. While
math <strong>and</strong> quantitative elements are present throughout the book, Chapters 1, 3, <strong>and</strong> 6 are perhaps
the most math-intense, featuring exponential functions, logarithms, <strong>and</strong> the lightest exposure to
differential equations. But students need not master math beyond simple arithmetic operations, being
able to rearrange equations, compute logarithms <strong>and</strong> exponentials, <strong>and</strong> raise a number to a power.
Appendix A may serve as a useful math refresher.
© 2021 T. W. Murphy, Jr.; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Lic.; Freely available at:
https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions.