Entropy
When your students were mining, refining, manufacturing, retailing, consuming and disposing of Earthsquares, they were adding to the pool of entropy. The miner’s equipment needed Earthsquares to dig up the soil containing the Earthsquares. The refiner’s machinery needed Earthsquare energy to extract the Earthsquares from the miner’s mixture. The machines used by the manufacturer to package the Earthsquares needed Earthsquares. The retailers used Earthsquares to heat and light their stores, as well as to advertise to the consumers that they had Earthsquares for sale. And of course the consumers used the Earthsquares to run their stoves, refrigerators, computers, stereos, TV’s, VCR’s, pickup trucks, and so on.... And even the disposers used Earthsquares to run the dump trucks and to operate the landfill. In this respect, each player was also a consumer. Every time Earthsquares were used, their energy became less available. All the energy that was used to produce and consume Earthsquares can never be captured again to do the same amount of work.
When you put all your students’ roles together they made a system. Their system created, consumed, and disposed of Earthsquares.
Similarly, your school is part of an energy system. And every time it uses energy to run the buses, light and heat your classrooms, and run equipment your school is adding to the pool of entropy. Because the world’s population is growing exponentially, your school system is adding to the exponential increase in entropy.
There’s another huge problem with entropy that we haven’t even touched upon yet. It has to do with how entropy affects natural systems as small as a forest and as large as the Earth.
Every time energy or matter is transformed from one form into another it moves from complexity to simplicity. To make sense of this, we need to extend what you did with the 2 small hand-cranked generators to something like an ecosystem (e.g., forest, desert, ocean, wetlands) that supports a diversity of life.
Many ecologists think forests as either getting more complex, being in balance, or becoming simpler. For a forest to become more complex, it must support a greater diversity of life. To do this, more energy must enter the system then leave it. For a forest to reach a state of equilibrium (balance), in which it is hardly growing, the amount of energy going into it must equal close to the amount of energy going out.
A forest becomes simpler when more energy leaves the forest than enters it. This is entropy at work. If energy coming into a system is less than the energy going out, the system is going to get more and more disorganized and simple. This is true even for a system as large as the Earth itself.
For most of Earth’s history, more energy has been coming into the Earth than going out. Most of this energy is stored in dead and living plants, fungi, and animals. Throughout most of Earth’s history, there has been an increase in the diversity of life (most of which is invisible to the naked eye).
As the human population increases exponentially, so does the number of energy transformations. The exponential increase in the burning of fossil fuels uses far more energy than is coming into the Earth via photosynthesis. Currently, more energy is being used (transformed) on the Earth than energy coming in. As a result, the Earth as a system for sustaining life is becoming simpler.
There are lots of signs of how our planet is becoming more simple: a decrease in species; a decrease in forests; increases in the area of fields and pavement; increases in erosion (a type of disorder); global warming; and the depletion of ocean fisheries, to name just a few. These major biosphere problems are all examples of entropy.
In order to slow down how quickly we are degrading the Earth through entropy, we need to use less energy than we currently do. PERIOD!
Every additional step involved in the production of something whether it is Earthsquares, your dream car, your favorite fashions, or your preferred meal causes more entropy on a global scale. If you want to contribute to less entropy then consider purchasing those products that require fewer steps than their alternatives. These products might involve less transportation, less packaging, less manufacturing, less pollution, fewer metals, less processing, and less destruction of ecosystems.
When you put all your students’ roles together they made a system. Their system created, consumed, and disposed of Earthsquares.
Similarly, your school is part of an energy system. And every time it uses energy to run the buses, light and heat your classrooms, and run equipment your school is adding to the pool of entropy. Because the world’s population is growing exponentially, your school system is adding to the exponential increase in entropy.
There’s another huge problem with entropy that we haven’t even touched upon yet. It has to do with how entropy affects natural systems as small as a forest and as large as the Earth.
Every time energy or matter is transformed from one form into another it moves from complexity to simplicity. To make sense of this, we need to extend what you did with the 2 small hand-cranked generators to something like an ecosystem (e.g., forest, desert, ocean, wetlands) that supports a diversity of life.
Many ecologists think forests as either getting more complex, being in balance, or becoming simpler. For a forest to become more complex, it must support a greater diversity of life. To do this, more energy must enter the system then leave it. For a forest to reach a state of equilibrium (balance), in which it is hardly growing, the amount of energy going into it must equal close to the amount of energy going out.
A forest becomes simpler when more energy leaves the forest than enters it. This is entropy at work. If energy coming into a system is less than the energy going out, the system is going to get more and more disorganized and simple. This is true even for a system as large as the Earth itself.
For most of Earth’s history, more energy has been coming into the Earth than going out. Most of this energy is stored in dead and living plants, fungi, and animals. Throughout most of Earth’s history, there has been an increase in the diversity of life (most of which is invisible to the naked eye).
As the human population increases exponentially, so does the number of energy transformations. The exponential increase in the burning of fossil fuels uses far more energy than is coming into the Earth via photosynthesis. Currently, more energy is being used (transformed) on the Earth than energy coming in. As a result, the Earth as a system for sustaining life is becoming simpler.
There are lots of signs of how our planet is becoming more simple: a decrease in species; a decrease in forests; increases in the area of fields and pavement; increases in erosion (a type of disorder); global warming; and the depletion of ocean fisheries, to name just a few. These major biosphere problems are all examples of entropy.
In order to slow down how quickly we are degrading the Earth through entropy, we need to use less energy than we currently do. PERIOD!
Every additional step involved in the production of something whether it is Earthsquares, your dream car, your favorite fashions, or your preferred meal causes more entropy on a global scale. If you want to contribute to less entropy then consider purchasing those products that require fewer steps than their alternatives. These products might involve less transportation, less packaging, less manufacturing, less pollution, fewer metals, less processing, and less destruction of ecosystems.
"In prehistoric times, people used leather to clothe themselves. As animal hides became more and more scarce they were forced to replace them with wool from sheep. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the population pressure on available farmland in Europe made sheep grazing less economical. ‘Sheep devour people’ became a favorite slogan of the time, and demands were made to turn more grazing land to crop cultivation. This required a substitute for wool. The answer was found in cotton, which could be grown cheaply in the overseas colonies and imported back to the mother countries for conversion into cloth... Though less desired, each successive clothes substitute has still required the expenditure of greater work (energy) to produce it than its predecessor. It didn’t take a great deal of work to kill an animal, tan its hide, and fashion clothes for an entire family. The feeding and grazing of sheep, the shearing and weaving of yarn, and the
sewing of woolen garments means that a great deal more human and nonhuman energy had to be put into the process. With the growing and processing of cotton, even more energy is expended. By the time we consider synthetics, the whole chemical process--beginning with the drilling of oil and leading up to the giant factories stamping out the final designs-requires an expenditure of work (energy) per garment that is astronomical compared with the killing of animals and tanning of hides. That is what we call ‘progress’.” (Jeremy Rifkin in Entropy: A New World View, p.77)
Entropy and The Solar Age
The use of solar energy technologies is likely to flourish in your lifetime. You can expect to see an increase in the use of solar panels to create electricity. At first glance the solar panel appears quiet, pollution free, and the answer to all energy production problems including entropy. But like the Earthsquare production process, solar panels require the mining, refining, manufacturing, retailing, and consumption of silica, plastics, copper, and rubber to name just a few materials. The good news is that once a solar powered electric system is up and running, there is little energy transformation occurring relative to other more polluting, nonrenewable, and less efficient energy systems.
The bad news is that even a booming solar industry will not necessarily free us from the degrading grip of entropy. If we continue to buy inefficient products, produce and consume stuff we don’t need, and consume nonrenewable minerals and metals at an exponential rate solar-powered technologies will at best buy us a little time. Eventually, the quality of life for future generations will be severely compromised.
By increasing our use of solar and renewable technologies, consuming energy more efficiently, and reducing our rate of consumption we can make a contribution to the quality of life for future generations.
The bad news is that even a booming solar industry will not necessarily free us from the degrading grip of entropy. If we continue to buy inefficient products, produce and consume stuff we don’t need, and consume nonrenewable minerals and metals at an exponential rate solar-powered technologies will at best buy us a little time. Eventually, the quality of life for future generations will be severely compromised.
By increasing our use of solar and renewable technologies, consuming energy more efficiently, and reducing our rate of consumption we can make a contribution to the quality of life for future generations.