Above all, the quality of life that’s made possible by a high per capita energy footprint comes with a profound disconnect between those who benefit the most and those who bear the costs.

Aluminum is a good example. The metal wasn’t discovered until 1824, but that wasn’t because it’s rare—it’s the third-most common element in the earth’s crust—but because it’s such a challenge to purify. It takes an enormous amount of energy to isolate aluminum from its ore and it always will, because it’s related to the strength of the chemical bon

Even if they don’t hit their design limits and avoid being fully overwhelmed, more severe weather means that infrastructural systems will be operating closer and closer to the edge of capacity and are likely to need more maintenance to keep them in good repair.

subscription to the online version of The New York Times is what economists call a “club good”—it’s excludable but nonrivalrous because, while only subscribers have access to the articles, anyone with access can read articles without diminishing the experience of others in any way.

(It’s not quite a joke that sixty-odd countries celebrating their independence from the British every year likely makes it the most widely observed secular national holiday in the world.)

Just because the ways in which they behave aren’t obvious doesn’t mean that they aren’t knowable. In her essay “Holy Water,” Joan Didion described her visit17 to the Operations Control Center for the California State Water Project in Sacramento. It’s one of several agencies that move water around the region, between reservoirs, through dams, and al

For all of its uniqueness, water in California is also typical of many of the infrastructural networks that we are embedded in. They are huge in extent, spanning multiple jurisdictions, and incorporate elements that are physically enormous and that require significant amounts of energy to function. They’re also fiendishly complex, often under conti

In the U.S., about half of the pollutants11 that contribute to anthropogenic climate change are directly attributable either to the energy and electricity we use in our homes and workplaces or to vehicles on transportation networks. The U.S. isn’t an outlier—this pattern of energy usage and emissions is pretty typical of industrially developed coun

Niagara Falls might be a natural wonder, but they’re shaped by paired hydroelectric power stations and an international treaty. A few miles upstream of the Falls, next to the scenic parkway that runs alongside the Niagara River, are two large, windowless buildings. They house the controls and equipment for the intake valves that divert water from t