Renewability of Renewable Resources

Renewability of Renewable Resources

Human beings are indeed strange creatures. We are perpetually involved in a game of snake and ladder with nature.  

A couple of centuries ago, when muscle power got replaced by machine power, there was wide spread celebration. We started ascending an almost vertical ladder. Little did our great grandfathers realize that the celebrations were hinged on their absolute ignorance about accumulated consequences. 

Pretty high up the ladder, we realized that it opens into the mouth of a snake! Today we are tired, gasping and the lower steps of the ladder have disappeared! We can only continue to climb into the reptilian mouth. 

The good part is; we have moved up, considerably. However, there still exists a slim chance that we might escape being completely devoured by the snake, if we can climb softly without provoking it. Hence, after every few steps, we reaffirm ourselves and jointly agree to climb up softly so that we leave behind minimal or no foot prints. 

In this endeavor we have developed an infatuation for renewables. It is an appealing adjective that is currently trending.Like our great grand fathers who danced at dawn of mechanical era, we are today celebrating the prospects of renewable energy to help us live in a manageable environment. 

Do we have a scale to measure our level of ignorance?

How renewable are our renewable resources?

Let us consider the case of solar power. Albeit modest space requirement estimated to power our planet exclusively on solar energy, we will end up trapping about 700 quadrillion Btu (estimated global energy consumption by 2030 - US Projection) energy on the Earth.

Going by documented history of human energy consumption, our greed will make us eventually transform the surface of Earth to become heat absorbers and thereby again intervene in the radiative balance. Hence it is highly likely that a couple of centuries later, our great grandchildren will continue with the snake and ladder game and debate global warming. The principle culprit will be solar panels!

Todays' hero will become tomorrows' villan. There is nothing in nature that is perpetually renewable. We only expose our ignorance by labelling certain things, renewable.