Energy Gratitude | Frankly #18
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 555 Ratings
🗓️ 24 November 2022
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, most of the United States celebrates Thanksgiving. As we think about the things we are grateful for - family, food, football, dogs etc. - we don't often remember to recognize energy's role in enabling all this. . In this brief video, Nate reflects on all the things which abundant and cheap energy provide for us, especially in the United States, that we often take for granted. The opposite of energy blindness might be 'energy gratitude', so being more aware of all the magic we are surrounded by everyday is perhaps a first step in conserving it and planning for a less energy intensive future.
For Show Notes and more visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/18-energy-gratitude
To Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rUEU-0YlPk
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning and happy Thanksgiving. The holiday with an inauspicious beginning that has morphed |
| 0:09.2 | into a couple days off of work, a lot of food, watching football, spending time with family, |
| 0:16.2 | and then shopping for many on Friday. We are thankful for these things without recognizing the finite natural resources that go |
| 0:30.5 | into providing the energy services that allow us comfort, convenience, novelty, security, heat. So I thought I would do |
| 0:44.0 | a little bit of energy gratitude, a whirlwind in my own life. I like food. I drive to |
| 0:52.5 | Whole Foods and I have to look away and not go in because I'll spend and eat a lot. But the average supermarket, grocery store in the global north is a cornucopia. Could you imagine Genghis Khan or George Washington or Cleopatra walking into a modern supermarket. |
| 1:11.1 | The amount of food stuff options is unbelievable. |
| 1:17.4 | The average food in the United States travels around 1,500 miles to get to your plate. |
| 1:24.8 | I'm grateful for the food that has been available in my lifetime. |
| 1:30.3 | Then each of us have our own temperature controlled root cellars in the form of a refrigerator. |
| 1:39.3 | One American refrigerator uses more energy than many countries in Africa and over 150 million |
| 1:47.0 | humans use totally in their lives. |
| 1:50.0 | Between my office and my house, we have two refrigerators and a chest freezer. |
| 1:56.0 | The amount of energy that those devices use just them is more energy than 650 million |
| 2:04.2 | humans use in their lives. That's food and preserving it. What about heat? My house is heated |
| 2:16.7 | with wood, which I chop with a chainsaw. |
| 2:20.2 | The amount of human and animal labor that a chainsaw with a little bit of gasoline replaces is enormous. |
| 2:28.7 | My office is heated with propane, which if you watch my recent podcast with Art Berman, you know, is one of the first |
| 2:35.6 | things distilled from a barrel of oil. These energy services come from ancient sunlight. I have a |
| 2:45.2 | utility vehicle, a little bit of gasoline. I can do a lot of chores around the farm here, |
| 2:54.3 | carrying wood and manure and seeds and hazelnuts and any number of water and other things pretty much does things indistinguishable |
| 3:03.0 | from magic from what we could imagine a few generations ago. |
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