When we talk about energy usage, it’s usually abstract. It’s hard to grasp the scale of energy we use just going about our daily lives. Maybe there’s a moment at the gas pump, or when we get that monthly electric bill that we get a small inkling of it, but the aggregate use by everyone is almost too much to grasp.
Which is why I found the video below to be so fascinating. From ATB, the video for Beautiful Worlds is mesmerizing. Using time-lapse photography it shows how modern civilization is tied to the ready usage of energy on a massive scale. Watching people, cars, planes, boats in motion, seeing landscapes filled with light, the sheer amount of energy in various forms we consume every day is a little easier to visualize. Collapsing the time scale makes it more apparent. It’s like watching the pulse of a living organism.
It’s beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Now think about how to do all of this without greenhouse gas emissions. Take away that energy, it’s all gone — but unless we clean up our act, it’s not going to last either.
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