3 ms·

What is the essences of civilization anyway? I mean most of the things we need aren't energy intensive.

• bobthepanda 6y ago
  A lot of it is precision and scale. Without coke (the coal product) how would you bootstrap large steel production? Electric furnaces exist but use a lot of energy. Without steel and the loss of knowledge on mass producing precision equipment, we lose most of modern medicine's advancements.
  • carapace 6y ago
    Yes to precision, that seems like a primary metric for "height" of civilization. But I wonder about scale. Like how much steel do we actually need? More to the point of the OP I suspect that energy usage per capita isn't intrinsically linked to quality of life or "height" of civilization at least above some baseline level. > we lose most of modern medicine's advancements. E.g. stone knives are sharp enough to serve as scalpels? Is that what you mean?
    • bobthepanda 6y ago
      Without structural steel, we lose the ability for large structures (e.g. bridges, skyscrapers, large scale ships, etc.) and we probably denude the world of trees. You would be hard pressed to find any new construction using no steel at all. Steel is very easy to sanitize. Most of modern medicine also needs metal shaped precisely. Take out the precision and the sanitization and we're back to medicine that might kill people more often than it helps.
      • carapace 6y ago
        I hear you, but I'm not convinced there aren't possibilities for e.g. carbon fiber and ceramics and such (I'd include basalt fibers but I realized that might have high energy inputs too.)