Basic Choices and Constraints on Long−Term Energy Supplies

Population growth and energy demand are exhausting the world’s fossil energy supplies, some on the timescale of a single human lifespan. Increasingly, sharing natural resources will require close international cooperation, peace, and security.

Paul B. Weisz
Human society, like any system composed of dynamic processes, depends on an external energy source. Historically, that source was the Sun, which provides heat, light, and photosynthesis for food to support work energy by man and animal, and affects wind and water motion. Since the early 19th century, though, the discovery of and access to a vast supply of fossil fuels within Earth has enabled the industrial revolution, near−exponential growth of population, technologies, and wealth. That period could well be renamed the energy revolution

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