Our culture is energy blind.

I've been increasingly using this term to describe how our politicians, our media,

our universities neglect the fundamental importance of energy in our lives, our expectations,

and our future trajectory.

So I would like to take this 20, 30 minute riff to describe what I mean by energy blindness.

So let's just start with a 15 second clip from a recent movie we made, and I hope you

can all watch the entire 30- minute film. But here's 15 seconds

from the end of it.

To our ancestors, the benefits from carbon energy would have appeared indistinguishable

from magic. And instead of appreciating this giant one-time windfall, we developed stories that our

newfound wealth and progress had emerged purely from human ingenuity.

We had become energy blind.

So what does this mean energy blindness?

So first of all, everything in nature that moves or requires effort first requires calories.

And it's no different in human systems.

Every single aspect of our society, every product, every service that results in GDP first requires

an energy conversion.

So there's no exception to that, no matter what good contributes to our GDP, it required

energy to develop, to create, to run, to maintain, to deliver, to dispose of, all aspects of our entire

economic system are moving things around and they require energy.

We have everyday things, think about in your in your

own house. The average American house has 40 items that are constantly plugged in

...