Energy consumption

[AI & energy: The mass production of images demands energy.
As human brainpower is offloaded onto machines, that energy too must be drawn from the Earth and the sun.]

Between 2011 and 2023, statistics reveal a runaway rise in global energy consumption, requiring ever more land and resources from the planet.
The expansion of renewable energy has not kept pace with rising demand—let alone replaced the fossil fuels that release CO2 from carbon mostly stored between 250 and 66 million years ago.
That CO2 now lies over the atmosphere like a blanket, heating the planet and turning the oceans into acidic pools—beginning to end the pleasant conditions that made the rise of human culture, starting around 11,000 years ago (the end of the last ice age), possible.
We are exponentially extracting energy from the only place that sustains our life, in pursuit of a vaguely defined goal of expansion, optimization, and automation.
If we respect the limits set by physics, reduction is the possible—but seemingly impossible—way forward.


Petajoule ≡ cm3
1 PJ = 0,2778 TWh