The growth of civilization has been intimately linked to our ability to harness energy since man's discovery of fire. Our reliance on biomass (wood) and eventually, the wind and hydro power of mills would limit our growth until the use of coal and the invention of the steam engine would launch the industrial revolution. However, it was the discovery of energy dense, crude oil in 1865 that would catapult us into a whole new age of growth, mobility, and abundance. What is “sustainable” is based on carrying capacity, and every human advance in the use and amount of available energy would serve to increase both the population and economic carrying capacity of the earth.
The shear abundance of cheap oil over the last 150 years would change the face of architecture and built environment. Architects and building designers no longer had to consider local climate conditions, they could let their imaginations and ego's run wild and rely on brute force heating and cooling to save the day. Architects like Phillip Johnson would build their design fame and fortune with glass homes in Connecticut and glass skyscrapers in Houston. Buildings that reply for their very existence on cheap and abundant energy.
more>>> http://sunhomedesign.wordpress.com/2007/08/
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The Awesoms Task to Replace Fossil Fuels With Renewables
This analysis of how the development of our modern world has been totally resourced through the abundance of cheap energy is absolutely right of course, and the re-adjustment to renewable sources is going to be hard.
However, do you not think that mankind can lift himself above this change, just as he has conquered so many other challenges? There are more scientists and engineers alive right now than ever before.
We can and shall go on to live much more sustainably and progressively and look back on the days of fossil fuels as just one more step in the progression of technology.
The use of Anaerobic Digestion for example will help. Very few for example realise the huge waste of energy which is the dumping of organic wastes into landfills, and that is just one source of wasted energy from waste. The whole agricultural waste sector is virtually untapped.