THE ENERGY PHENOMENON or Save our Grandchildren

Energy is the vital force of the human being and of humanity. Hence the comprehensiveness of terms like energy and energetic which, besides their basic meaning, comprise as well the ideas of dynamism, firmness, vigor, moral and physical strength, etc. With the commercial and large-scale use of mineral coal, petroleum, natural gas and hydraulic and nuclear energies, the world has witnessed its most intense phase of economical development. The industrial and transport revolutions, as well as those of other sectors, were started and accelerated with the help of these relatively recent forms of energy. Recent, that is to say, in the historical sense. Without care for precision, we could situate the arrival of coal in the XVIII century, petroleum and gas in the XIX century and energy nuclear in the XX century. We are beginning the XXI century without a perspective of a new energy source that is technically, economically and environmentally viable for universal utilization. This is the reason why our forecasts of half a century ago did not prove right such as, for example, interplanetary trips and personal flying vehicles. Despite the large scientific and technologic progress that has been achieved, notably in telematics and communications in a general way, the most used energy sources are the traditional ones. They result from heavy mining of organic material that are decomposing since the most remote ages or of large projects aiming at controlling and using watercourses. They are sources that do not befit the present technological phase, what would justify the epithet of Jurassic sources.

The non-existence of an energy source that would substitute them has prevented the forecast to come true. Flash Gordon has not yet left the comic strips. Kubrick has seen his “2001, A Space Odyssey” transformed into a time odyssey, the total consummation of his forecast was, Homerically , postponed until the Greek calends. Possibly the energy industry implanted nowadays, specially that of petroleum, with its international power, is preventing the emergence of this new source.

At the start of the present century, we are witnessing the richest country in the world, headquarter of the petroleum multi-national companies, experience a crisis in its most developed state and coping with the implementation of an audacious national energy program aiming at offering more energy to the voracious appetite of its economy. For this purpose, it has the help of a President from the petroleum bunch.

On the other hand, Brazil is immersed in the worst energy crisis of its history, ironically or tragically, in a society with poor indexes of energy consumption per capita, where million of people don’t have electric energy in their homes. It has been left to chance (or doom) what should be object of serious planning.

What are the most appropriate reflections for the present moment? I allow myself to make some considerations that disagree with the set of recommendations, decisions and actions that abound in this occasion. I notice that each crisis produced by the dominant energy model brings about new plans having the same criterion. It is a dynamic, centrifugal, vicious circle that at each turn increases its radius. It is necessary to interrupt this process. I will not analyze what is gone or suggest this or that line of action to increase offer, rationalize consumption, preserve the environment, make economic considerations, etc. I have exhaustively worked in this area. More competent people and with more “energy’ are engaged in this important activity.

From now on it is not the expert who will address the subject, but rather someone with a philosophical and even artistic approach. I will speculate on the need of a drastic change in the world’s energy path in order to save the planet. Just like that, without inhibition, with all letters and complete paranoia. The book “The Turning Point’ by Fritjof Capra must have sharpened my sensibility in this direction when he considers that mystic visions may be in the forefront of human thought, to be later confirmed by science. As I have large restrictions concerning mysticism and mainly religiosity in the sense of explaining and forecasting events, I would rather, as I have already mentioned, make philosophical or artistic speculations. They have a larger freedom grade, are more loose, inventive, creative, without technical hindrance and less prone to metaphysical rave.

I will not restrict myself to the short run, when the national energy programs can have their need validated. I will make more strategic, long-term considerations.

What will happen in the year 2050 when probably the hydrocarbons will be exhausted, the large hydraulic reserves already used, the atmosphere more polluted, the greenhouse effect more acute, the atomic waste more accumulated and more records of some non- disposable nuclear accidents. In the recent short term we have had three: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and that of Japan.

Will we still be elaborating pompous energy programs as that envisaged by the United States or as presumably will be made here in Brazil after the fiasco of our present crisis?

The American energy plan has the year 2030 as its temporal horizon. The Brazilian “patch” will reach at most the next electoral period of 2002. In a way they are short-sighted or blind. The year of 2050 is not that far. I clearly remember the 1950 Football World Cup when I was 11 years old and Brazil lost the Cup to Uruguay. It was yesterday! And still today that trauma is present in the head of the sixty-two-year-old man. How will be our planet whose population is already large and if it grows considerably the energy consumption per capita, more precisely, if the more than one billion Chinese will have some day the same consuming standard as that of the Americans? I was frightened when I saw photographs of the construction of that huge dam at the Yang Tsé river in China. II was terrified by its gigantic structure and massive environmental consequences. The plant’s lake will cover 12 cities and 356 villages and cause the removal of 2 million people. The planet will hardly bear the prolongation of this model.

The statesmen of this world owe us an energy plan that grant us a Turning Point in this crazy energy race in which the world is trapped and whose results obviously are prophetically catastrophic. The United States , as hegemonic power, has this responsibility and they are not aware of that when they elected a businessman (or with the same sprit de corps) as their President, who recently presented a plan with an eminently entrepreneurial perspective, without much environment concern. An umbrella plan must emerge from the international institutions with the due American support so that a new energy form may be developed, more viable and in conformity with the life conditions in the planet, as well as to permit our old dreams of human progress come true.

Even though it is known that energy is the fuel that drives human activities in the planet, and this has been exhaustively inculcated, and the energy indexes are really synonyms of development, from now on it must be understood that for the sake of life, energy parsimony is better than its uncontrolled proliferation, as it has been done.

Misquoting Lincoln when he referred to liberty, I conclude :”Energy, energy, how many crimes have been committed in your name”. And the last crime to be committed will be the impossibility of a healthy life, the possibility of extinguishing the human phenomenon and, with this disaster, unfortunately, allow Mother Earth to breath clean and relieved of energy aggressions.

Genserico Encarnação Júnior
Itapoã, Vila Velha, ES, May 2001.

Graphic Edition/Edição Gráfica:
MAK
Editoração Eletrônica

Revised/Revisado:
Tuesday, 11 November 2008.