The Energy Ladder: A Narrative of Accumulation

The single measure of human intelligence and fitness, from larger brains to longer lives to greater knowledge, has always centered on capturing and using more energy. We have never transitioned from one fuel source to another; instead, we have accumulated them sequentially for billions of years. Some think the past was idyllic and yearn for a slower-paced, less energetic world, but that doesn't align with our history or evolution.

Our story isn't one of restraint. It's one of cooperating and conquering.

You are here because every single ancestor in a billion-year chain succeeded in having offspring and raising them to do the same. The odds of that unbroken winning streak producing exactly you? A popular estimate of 10^2,685,000, a number so vast it makes the number of atoms in the observable universe (10^80) look like a rounding error. [1] You're special because of those impossible odds. But turn it around: there were trillions upon trillions of tries. Every life has the opportunity, and life fills the voids where it can. Guaranteed. Like Jurassic Park. If conditions had been even slightly different, something else would be standing here instead of you. [2]

That improbable chain didn't happen in isolation. It was built on partnerships deep in the origins of life itself: In the soup of creation, we found others, combined with them, shared, and evolved from a single cell to who we are today. We partnered with an ancient bacterium through endosymbiosis, and together we forged the mitochondria, the "powerhouse of the cell", a phrase so common it almost always follows the word. This partnership enabled a new way to generate energy, allowing simple life forms to overcome their limits and evolve into complex cells. [3] And a foundational topic in today's longevity and health craze. [4] We are a miracle of time and evolution. But even this biological breakthrough had its limits; eventually, we had to look beyond our own cells for energy to fuel the next leap.

On the cognitive side, our evolution was fueled by a mastery of energy. By consuming cooked food, we repurposed proteins and fats to support larger brains and more complex social bonds, leveraging food chemistry to compensate for our shortened digestive tracts. [5] We became biological alchemists—ancient peoples in the Near East and Egypt sprouted barley, lightly baked it into "beer bread," and fermented it with wild yeast to unlock calories, vitamins, and digestibility from grains, creating nutrient-rich beer and leavened bread as early as 13,000 years ago; countless likely perished in trial-and-error batches gone wrong, from mold toxins to failed ferments, yet this risky chemical mastery sustained growing populations through scarcity. [6]

Later innovations like Mesoamerican nixtamalization used alkaline ash or lime to transform maize, preventing deadly niacin deficiency in corn-dependent societies. [7] This caloric surplus enabled us to transcend our origins: we harnessed the waves to encircle the globe, survived ice ages by 'modifying' our bodies with clothing, and sustained ourselves on the high-energy yields of large game such as mastodons. [8] Even our genetics reflect this expansion, as we mated with and absorbed other hominins.[9] Ultimately, our history is a ladder of increasing complexity, where each step forward demanded and discovered a new source of power.

From cooking with wood to harnessing petrochemicals, coal, and steam power drove the Industrial Revolution. Every step forward has meant more energy under our control, and societies that master this advance in health, options, and creativity. [10]

This is where a Buddhist insight feels right: everything is perfect exactly as it is. [11] It took me a long time to come to terms with that. The world doesn't look perfect when you focus on suffering, loss, destruction, doom, and gloom. But it is perfect because everything follows the laws of nature, unfolding precisely as causes and conditions dictate. There is no "imperfect" alternative; this is the only reality. The present. No cosmic mistake, no deviation from what must be. The universe is thus complete in its flow. Accepting this doesn't imply passivity; it means letting go of the emotional resistance that fuels fear and hubris, thereby freeing us to act clearly in the real world. We move between the fear that the world is coming to an end and the hubris that we can stop the wind.

Consider a beehive: a natural example of collective engineering. Natural ventilation keeps the interior cool in summer; clustered bodies generate and trap heat in winter; shared labor stores honey for lean times; and the whole structure protects the group. A human house does the same: passive solar design or ventilation manages heat and cold, walls and roofs shelter families, and shared effort maintains the home. Both are adaptations built by evolved creatures using available materials to thrive. One uses wax and instinct; the other wood, stone, steel, and planning. Both are fully natural; there is no pristine Eden we're corrupting or rescuing. We're inside the system, rearranging Earth's elements like bees do, complete participants in the flux. A skyscraper is as "natural" as a reef.

This perspective shifts the focus from human guilt to the planetary scale. George Carlin, in his 1992 routine, put it with brutal comedy: 'The planet is fine. The people are fucked.' He mocked the arrogance of 'saving the planet,' noting that the Earth has survived ice ages, asteroids, and volcanoes. To Carlin, even our most 'unnatural' inventions are merely part of the flux: 'The Earth plus Plastic. The Earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth... Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself.' [12]

More Energy = Better Life!

That claim should hit. It sparks hope in some, outrage in others, and defensiveness in most. Because every "fact" in your head is attached to an emotion. It's how the brain works. [13] Emotions tag what we notice, what we remember, and what we fight for. A statistic about rising emissions feels like impending doom to one person and like a solvable engineering challenge to another. That's why debates about energy, climate, and progress so often turn into moral battles. We cling to stories that let us feel in control: green transitions will fix everything, or collapse is inevitable, and we must repent. Both narratives breed fear and guilt, trapping us in cycles that may do more harm than good, paralyzing action, or pushing fixes that ignore reality. We spin comforting tales: we'll transition to zero-impact energy and save the planet, or apocalyptic tipping points force us to repent. Both let us feel morally superior and in control.

What is Reality?

We've already remade the world to suit us. We killed, ate, and replaced most animals over a few pounds. As Yuval Noah Harari notes in Homo Deus, wild wolves number approximately 200,000, whereas there are more than 400 million dogs. Lions? Perhaps 40,000 left; house cats exceed 600 million. African buffalo number approximately 900,000; domesticated cattle exceed 1.5 billion. Penguins? About 50 million. Chickens? Often cited as 26–33 billion at any moment. The wild has become a remnant; our choices have dramatically tilted the scales. We complain about climate change and biodiversity loss, yet few seriously propose scaling back the conveniences of pets to Starbucks. Today, the most energy-intensive human creations are datacenters: some single facilities consume more power than entire small counties or even mid-sized cities, fueling AI and the internet we all rely on. It's naive to think "we" (whoever that is) could reverse course. [14]

Byron Katie put it plainly: "When you argue with reality, you lose—but only 100% of the time." [15]

Aldous Huxley called the mind and brain together a “reducing valve,” a filter that shuts out almost all of reality, so we can cope with the tiny slice that remains. [16] We’ve perfected that valve so thoroughly that we now spend our days arguing with the little that leaks through. Social or mainstream media does the programming for us; endless scrolls, filter bubbles, and dopamine traps, narrowing the trickle even further into echo chambers and manufactured conflicts. That’s why everyone is stressed. Our collective exhaustion isn't born from the world itself, but from the friction of arguing with the narrow stories our consciousness processes.

The Real Pattern: Accumulation, Not Escape

Look closely at the history of energy: sources don't neatly replace one another in clean "transitions." They accumulate. We burn more wood now than we did 100 years ago. [17] Coal consumption has roughly tripled in some metrics since the 1970s. More oil, more gas, and now more renewables layered on top. Innovations expand what's possible, entangling old and new: oil and coal service mines that still require wood props, oil powers the massive machines that extract coal, and wind turbines stand on pedestals of steel forged in the heat of fossil energy. The internet's data centers and AI systems now consume as much electricity as entire countries like Japan or the UK, while the computing power driving gene editing and modern biotech rivals that of small cities.

And Yet, the Gains Are Real

That growing surplus has delivered historic improvements. Death rates from weather disasters, including floods, storms, and droughts, have fallen by more than 90% since the early 20th century, even as the population has quadrupled. Global forest cover shows net gains in temperate regions and countries like China/Europe, offsetting tropical losses, though global net forest area has declined overall (at a slowing rate). Per-person calorie intake has risen sharply, creating surpluses that feed billions. Poverty is a relentless driver of destruction, forcing a desperate reliance on wood charcoal and slash-and-burn clearing. In contrast, energy abundance allows us to shrink our physical footprint; it spares the land, replaces smoky hearths with clean power, and fuels the medicine and forecasting that keep us safe. The data doesn't point toward an inevitable cliff; it reveals a high-energy path that, for the first time in a billion years, has made flourishing the rule rather than the exception. [18]

Zoom out: cooperation often outpaces pure competition, complexity builds across scales, and reflective agents emerge. Beehives show emergent social intelligence; human societies further scale it. The beehive survives because it pools energy. When we deny that same scaling to other humans under the guise of 'protection,' we break the very cooperative chain that allowed us to evolve.

The Greater the Difference, the More We Can Learn

We don't need to agree on whether more energy is "good" or share the same emotional starting point to have a real conversation. The greater the difference between our views, the more we can learn from each other if we approach the discussion with curiosity, focus on specific evidence, and let criticism do its work. [11]

That openness allows us to examine things we might otherwise dismiss, such as the simple truth that humans and nature aren't separate.

And here's the staggering part: By blocking high-energy pathways for the world's poorest—opposing dams, grids, and industrialization in places like Myanmar or the Amazon basin—we trap them in low-energy poverty. The result? In many regions, households burn charcoal or wood inefficiently for cooking and heating, often using 2–3 times more than necessary without modern stoves or electricity. Slash-and-burn farming expands to clear land for subsistence crops because there are no alternatives for fertilizer, transport, or markets. We thought we were protecting the wild by keeping energy "clean" and scarce. Instead, we've accelerated the very deforestation we feared; poverty-driven clearing outpaces corporate logging by a factor of 2 or 3, according to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) studies, perpetuating cycles of soil depletion, biodiversity loss, and smoke-related health crises. [18] Real consequences: the poor stay poor, forests keep falling, indigenous communities suffer, and the moral high ground crumbles. Abundance isn't the enemy of nature. Scarcity is.

Blind Spots on Both Sides

Conservatives often dismiss wind and solar outright as unreliable, landscape-destroying, or bird-killing threats—pausing permits, calling them "scams," or prioritizing fossil fuels alone. Yet integrated smartly—with nuclear baseload, storage, and grid upgrades—wind and solar deliver cheap, dispatchable power that strengthens reliability and cuts costs, not weakens it. Liberals sometimes romanticize "pure" renewables without acknowledging the challenges of intermittency or the need for reliable backups. Both sides risk ideology over evidence, missing how diverse, high-energy systems (nuclear + solar/wind + gas bridges) can serve flourishing without fear.

It's like the scene in Life of Brian: the rebels rant against the Romans, "What have they ever done for us?" only to list aqueducts, sanitation, roads... The crowd grudgingly admits, "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, fresh water, and health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"

We decry modern energy abundance even as we rely on its benefits, tired of needing more, paying more, and feeling guilty for both the cost and the planetary toll we’re told it exacts. We stand in the air-conditioned comfort of the present, fueled by the most complex energy grid in history, and ask: 'What has the industrial world ever done for us?' Apart from the 90% drop in disaster deaths, the doubling of the human lifespan, the global regreening, the end of extreme poverty for billions, and the smartphones in our pockets... what has it done?

Putting it all Together

Relentless energy accumulation powers the abundance that yields real gains because evolution wired complexity, cooperation, and conscious agency into the system. We're not doomed villains or savior-heroes, just natural agents in a high-energy flow, with practical and emotional stakes high enough to make choices matter. Drop the hubris of perfect fixes or inevitable doom.

Embrace sober, cooperative action: more energy intelligently used can mean more flourishing for humans and the life around us, if we choose wisely.

The world nature made is here.

The world we made is here.

They are the same.

Lift the mask of advertising.

Walk away from the narrative.

Kill the preconceived notions.

Drop the memes.

Stare at reality. Open the valve.

It is perfect.

Why waste it?

Go enjoy the fuck out of it.

Jim

Further Reading / Influences

A short list of books that helped shape and sharpen my thinking on energy, evolution, progress, and our place in the flow:

• Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy (2025) – A sharp historical takedown of the clean-transition myth; energy sources accumulate, they don't politely replace each other.

• Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (2020) – Challenges doom narratives with data on real human and environmental progress through abundance.

• Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014) – A sweeping look at how cognitive leaps and cultural fictions let us cooperate at scale and reshape the biosphere.

• John Hands, Cosmosapiens: Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe (2015) – An ambitious synthesis of cosmology, biology, and consciousness, questioning orthodox stories of matter, life, and mind.

• Vaclav Smil, Energy and Civilization: A History (2017) – A comprehensive account of how energy flows—from muscle to machines—have driven human societies and complexity across millennia.

• Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life (2015) – Explores how energy constraints and endosymbiosis powered the leap from simple cells to complex life, with echoes in modern longevity.

• E.O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence (2014) – A profound synthesis of biology, evolution, and culture, exploring cooperation, meaning, and what makes us human in a scientific age.

• Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (2008) – A clear-eyed look at how chance, probability, and hidden patterns shape decisions, beliefs, and the illusion of control.

• Daniel E. Lieberman, The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease (2013) – An evolutionary tour of how our Stone Age bodies struggle and adapt in the modern world, from diet and movement to chronic illness.

Footnotes

1. Compounded Probability of Existence: Calculation based on ancestral survival through selective bottlenecks and the 10^400 odds of unique gamete pairing. See Binazir, A. (2011), The Probability of You Existing, Harvard University.

2. Maximum Power Principle: Concepts drawn from Lotka (1922) and H.T. Odum (1995), suggesting systems that maximize energy flow prevail in evolutionary competition.

3. Endosymbiotic Origin of Mitochondria: Mitochondria arose from an ancient alphaproteobacterium that was engulfed by a host cell in a symbiotic merger (endosymbiosis), enabling efficient aerobic respiration and the energy surplus required for eukaryotic complexity. This breakthrough is central to the transition from prokaryotic to eukaryotic life. See Sagan (Margulis), L. (1967), "On the Origin of Mitosing Cells," Journal of Theoretical Biology, 14(3):255–274. (Later expanded in Margulis, L. (1970), Origin of Eukaryotic Cells, Yale University Press.)

4. Mitochondria and Longevity Research: Mitochondrial function is central to modern longevity science, as declining mitochondrial efficiency (e.g., reduced ATP production, increased ROS, impaired dynamics/mitophagy) is a core hallmark of aging and driver of age-related decline. Interventions targeting mitochondrial health (e.g., enhancing bioenergetics or supercomplex formation) show promise for extending healthspan in models. See López-Otín, C., et al. (2013), "The Hallmarks of Aging," Cell, 153(6):1194–1217; and updated expansion in López-Otín, C., et al. (2023), "Hallmarks of aging: An expanding universe," Cell, 186(2):243–278. (Mitochondrial dysfunction is listed as a key antagonistic hallmark interconnected with others.)

5. Expensive Tissue Hypothesis: Aiello, L. C., & Wheeler, P. (1995). Posits that humans traded gut length for brain mass, made possible only by energy-dense (cooked) diets.

6. Ancient Grain Fermentation and Beer/Bread Chemistry: As early as ~13,000 years ago (Natufian precursors) and widespread by 5000–3000 BCE in Mesopotamia and Egypt, humans mastered enzymatic and microbial chemistry by sprouting barley (malting to convert starches to fermentable sugars), lightly baking it into "beer bread," and fermenting it with wild yeast to produce nutrient-rich beer and leavened loaves. This process unlocked calories, B vitamins, and digestibility from grains that were otherwise low in bioavailability and difficult to process, providing a caloric surplus for growing populations and laborers (e.g., Egyptian pyramid workers received daily beer rations as "liquid bread"). The method required precise observation of bubbles, odors, and timing; failed batches likely caused ergot poisoning, mold toxicity, or nutrient loss, with trial-and-error deaths from malnutrition or contaminated fermentations common before reliable techniques emerged. See archaeological residue studies in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (e.g., McGovern et al., 2017 on early chemical evidence); Samuel, D. (2000), "Brewing and Baking" in Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology; and Hornsey, I. S. (2003), A History of Beer and Brewing for biochemical and cultural synthesis.

7. Pellagra and Nixtamalization Oversight: When maize (corn) was introduced to Europe after Columbus (late 15th century onward), the Indigenous Mesoamerican practice of nixtamalization—treating corn with an alkaline solution (e.g., lime or ash) to release bioavailable niacin—was largely ignored or unknown to Europeans. This led to widespread niacin deficiency and outbreaks of pellagra (characterized by dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, and death) in corn-dependent poor populations across Spain (from the mid-1700s), Italy, France, and other regions, persisting for centuries until nutritional links were understood in the early 20th century (e.g., Joseph Goldberger's work identifying dietary causes). Mesoamerican peoples had solved this nutritional challenge millennia earlier (~1200–1500 BCE, as evidenced in Guatemala), thereby preventing pellagra in their maize-based diets. See Wikipedia summaries drawing from historical sources; Southern Foodways Alliance on cultural ignorance in corn adoption; and reviews in Journal of Theoretical Biology / FAO-related works on maize processing. For primary historical context: Rajakumar, K. (2000), "Pellagra in the United States: A Historical Perspective," Southern Medical Journal, 93(3):272–277; and Fussell, B. (1992/1999 editions), The Story of Corn.

8. Evolutionary Evidence of Clothing: Genetic dating of the human body louse (Pediculus humanus humanus) indicates consistent clothing use starting ~170,000 years ago.

9. Genomic Admixture: Sequencing of the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes (Pääbo, S., et al., 2010-2014) confirms these hominins were absorbed into the modern human gene pool.

10. Decoupling and Resilience Data: Based on the EM-DAT International Disaster Database and the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Historical 90%+ decline in weather-related mortality documented in Goklany, I. M. (2021).

11. Tathatā and Non-Duality: Buddhist doctrine of "Suchness." See Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō (Genjōkōan) on the perfection of reality in its present manifestation.

12. Planetary Resilience and the Anthropocene: George Carlin’s routine (from Jammin’ in New York, 1992) reflects a version of the Gaia Hypothesis (Lovelock, 1972). From a deep-time perspective, human-made materials represent a new stratigraphic layer. See: Zalasiewicz, J., et al. (2016), The geological cycle of plastics.

13. Somatic Marker Hypothesis: Damasio, A. (1994), Descartes' Error. Demonstrates that "logic" is inextricably tied to emotional valence in human decision-making.

14. Global Biomass Distribution: Harari, Y. N. (2015), Homo Deus. Updated data suggests 60% of all mammals are livestock, 36% are humans, and 4% are wild. Datacenter energy from IEA (2024).

15. Reality-Inquiry: Byron Katie, Loving What Is (2002).

16. The Reducing Valve: Huxley, A. (1954), The Doors of Perception. Philosophical framework regarding sensory filtration and ego-construction.

17. Global Wood Consumption: Global roundwood production has increased substantially over the past century. FAO data show annual removals rising from ~2.5 billion m³ in 1961 to around 4 billion m³ in recent years (a ~58% increase). Historical syntheses indicate even lower baselines in the early 20th century. See the FAO FAOSTAT Forestry database and the State of the World’s Forests reports.

18. Borlaug Hypothesis / Land Sparing: The principle that high-energy, high-yield agriculture prevents forest conversion. See Burney, J. A., et al. (2010), "Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification." Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) studies on poverty-driven clearing vs. corporate logging.