[anthonypz]

I'm fascinated by this idea. Do you have any books or resources you'd recommend that dives into the topic of energy?

I've found two interesting books so far: - Oil: A Beginner's Guide by Vaclav Smil - Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil

[BoiledCabbage]

I haven't read anything that I've felt covered it fully. If you want something easy to consume on our economy and technological progress essentially being getting better at converting energy to productive work you can check out this somewhat decent link from Jancovici:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA

It meanders a bit for the first 5-7 mins, but does a decent job of making the argument. Min 40 also has another pretty good slide.

It does go into covering recommendations which I'm not necessarily recommending, but it does accurately summarize our economy as one of energy transformation.

The best analogy in it is this. Right now if we need to do construction and dig a 10ft x 10ft x 10ft hole we can pull out a backhoe and be done in a min. If we with all of our current knowledge had to do it without consuming energy we'd be digging by hand with a shovel, and no faster than someone pre-industrial would. When you start looking at every industry you come to the same conclusion. All of our technological know how boils down to just better ways to be more productive in converting energy. But fundamentally consuming energy to be productive is the modern economy.

[_aavaa_]

One (of many things) to keep in mind when reading Vaclav’s work is that he is sloppy about distinguishing between types of energy; 1 kWh of energy in coal is “worth” much less 1kWh of electricity. They have the same units in the same way that an American dollar and a Canadian dollar are both measured in “dollars”.