For those who ignore the energetic and material imperatives of our world, those who prefer mantras of green solutions to understanding how we have come to this point, the prescription is easy: just decarbonize—switch from burning fossil carbon to converting inexhaustible flows of renewable energies. The real wrench in the works: we are a

Tracing the trajectory of useful energy deployment is so revealing because energy is not just another component in the complex structures of the biosphere, human societies, and their economies, nor just another variable in intricate equations determining the evolution of these interacting systems. Energy conversions are the very basis of life and

Using modern scientific units, 1 joule is the force of 1 newton—that is, the mass of 1 kilogram accelerated by 1 m/s2 acting over a distance of 1 meter.[27] But this definition refers only to kinetic (mechanical) energy, and it certainly does not provide an intuitive understanding of energy in all of its forms.