Nearly all the available energy can
be dated back to the Sun (fossil fuels, biomass, wind and
incidental radiation) and to the processes of cosmic evolution
that preceded the birth of the solar system (nuclear energy).
Less important quantities derive from the Moon’s
motions (tides) and from the inland Earth energy (geothermal
energy). The reserves of fossil fuel are huge, but owing
to the continuous increase of the global demand, they impoverish
100 000 times quicker than the energy they are made up.
However, the quantity of the remaining fossil fuel is estimated
sufficient for more 120-150 years at the actual rhythm
of consumption. The control of the energy transformations
at large scale started with the industrial revolution,
in the XVIII and XIX centuries in England, where the political
and cultural atmosphere was ready for the challenge and
the intellectual climate was strongly influenced by the
Adam Smith book "The Wealth of Nations". The
wider use of engines for the industrial production deeply
modified both the processes of the work organization and
the whole character of the economic and social system.
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At the same time, the development and progress of scientific disciplines asserted
some fundamental theoretical principles connected to the transformations of energy
and to its optimal employment, first of all the principle of the energy conservation
and the impossibility to realize the perpetual motion. In practice the awareness
was asserted that in the nature nothing can be created nor destroyed, but everything
can be transformed. The fundamental stages of this clarification and the lead
joining them pass through the names of Helmotz, Carnot, Clausius, Kelvin, Joule.
Then arrive the electricity and the revolution of the internal combustion engines,
the motor vehicles, the airplanes, the chemical and metallurgical industries
Here the stages take the names of Faraday, Maxwell, Galileo Ferraris, just to
mention some of them . The oil prevailed as a fuel and raw material for the petrochemical
industry and others. At the end of XX century the society lived another revolution,
still ahead, passing from the society of raw materials to the society of knowledge:
computer science, calculators, advanced materials, biotechnologies, optoelectronics,
all the fields needing an ever-increasing quantities of energy. No doubt the
consumption of energy will grow and the use of always greater quantities of energy
and always more powerful technologies represents a magnificent challenge for
the present-day Humanity. For the fist time in the history of the planet the
living species are able to radically transform the whole biosphere. If these
transformations will bring the new equilibrium, rather than the ecological and
civil catastrophe, the level of conscience, responsibility and political maturity
of the human beings will have to progress at least at the same rate with the
development of the technology. |
