ABSTRACT
If man is to survive, he needs energy. Energy provides us with electricity, heat, transportation, communication, and a multitude of other things. However, most important is the fact that energy enables us to acquire food. Food is grown in developed countries on fertilized soil using sophisticated machinery developed through advanced technology. Modern agriculture is sometimes defined as a ‘process of transforming energy into food’. In order to feed the vast world population of about five billion people of today and to provide for the growing number of the future, an enormous amount of energy is required. Today, we can obtain energy by burning coal and petroleum on a large scale and from the Sun, waterfalls, or windmills on a small scale. In developed countries, energy is also acquired from nuclear reactors by the burning of nuclear fuel such as uranium. But what will happen when most of the energy supplies of today become exhausted? Without an alternative solution, civilization will be destroyed (see figure 5.1). This chilling fact was well portrayed in the movie Soylent Green. The
year is 2022. New York is extremely overpopulated. The city feeds its hungry, poor, and homeless on government-rationed synthetics and plankton derivatives made by the Soylent Company. Because there are few sources of energy, the city of New York is in darkness. Electricity is heavily rationed and most of the average homes are lit by a single light bulb. Very often this limited power supply is switched off entirely by the electric company and to avoid total darkness the people are forced to pump in electricity manually. Without electricity, the modern luxuries to which we are accustomed today have almost vanished. No trees or parks or gardens are anywhere in sight. The trees were cut down for heating homes during the winter. The parks and gardens were destroyed to provide room for the dilapidated housing. Most people live like rats in run-down structures. Food is very expensive. It is very seldom if ever that people can afford to buy fruit and vegetables. History is returning to the Dark Ages.
