Gail Tverberg: Humanity’s Need for External Energy

Strange as it may seem, humans seem to have evolved in a way that we have a need for external energy, such as energy from burning wood or fossil fuels.

While the evidence is not 100% certain, it appears that we learned to use fire long enough ago that it is now necessary for our food to be cooked. Otherwise, we would need to spend half the day chewing our food, and we would not be able to do much besides gather food and eat it. (People on raw food diets get around this issue by using a blender, which also uses external energy.)

There are other evolutionary deficiencies as well: How do we deal with our lack of fur? How do we deal with our evolutionary dental problems? How we deal with “survival of the fittest”? We don’t think of humans as having instincts, but like dogs, we have a tendency toward hierarchical behavior, and this affects our need for (or at least “want for”) external energy. In this post, I will explain how these and other evolutionary issues relate to mankind’s need for external energy, such as wood, or gasoline, or electricity.

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2 Responses to Gail Tverberg: Humanity’s Need for External Energy

  1. Maybe if we reduce our dependence on excessive government the other problems will be easier to address.

  2. I think Gail has some “intelligent design” issues.

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