50 slaves

From EcoReality

Want to understand what the world will be like in 50 to 100 years? Give your 50 slaves the day off!

"What?" you might say, "I don't have 50 slaves! I can't even afford a house keeper!"

Ah, but if you live in a modern, industrial nation, you do have 50 slaves!

The average human slave would produce about 150 to 200 watts of power for perhaps twelve hours a day. That's roughly 1/5th of a horsepower. (A trained athlete might produce twice that much; a world-class athlete like Lance Armstrong can do perhaps 400-500 watts on a sustained basis.)

Prior to the discovery of non-renewable fossil fuel, humans lived on the exosomatic average energy of about one 40 watt light bulb. That came primarily from firewood for cooking and heat. Today, the average human being uses about 7,500 watts of power, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days per year.

This means that each of us on the planet has 50 fossil-fuel "slaves" working for us: 7,500 watts of non-renewable, fossil-fuel power is roughly the same amount of power that could be expended of 50 human beings, working 24 hours a day.

So what will it take to give your 50 slaves the day off? It is not so easy to figure out as it might seem.

Obviously, you must not use any non-renewable energy source. For most people, this means:

• No fossil-fuel-powered transportation. For most people, this means:
  • no driving
  • no public transportation
• No electricity. For most people, this means:
  • no lighting
  • no computers
  • no cooking
  • no refrigeration
  • no water supply
  • no food produced by conventional agriculture techniques

This sounds quite dire! But at least, you could ride a bicycle, or eat organically grown food, or drink water you had stored in bottles!

That would be a hasty assumption. That would be keeping in the spirit of giving your 50 slaves the day off, but if you really want to know what life will be like in 50 to 100 years, you can't just give your 50 slaves one day off -- you must free them completely!

This means that you cannot use any product that contains the embedded energy of those 50 slaves.

This means that the bicycle that you power with your own muscles can't be used, because your 50 slaves worked hard to mine the ores, forge and machine the metals, lubricate the bearings, and bring the finished machine to your door, so you can conveniently use your muscle power.

This means you can't eat that organic food, because your 50 slaves ran farm machinery that produced it and transported it to you.

This means you can't drink that water you stored, because your 50 slaves pumped it out of the ground or into reservoirs, so you could put it into your bottle.

more to come