Could this be the most Energy Rich period ever for humanity?

Wednesday, May 1st - morning

May Day. International Workers unite. Welcome in Spring and the May Queen. And also, the day for this particular bit of writing.

Since my early teens I've had a level of environmental consciousness - sometimes at the forefront of my mind, sometimes lurking in the background, but certainly there. The past decade or so has seen it predominantly as a subplot to my life rather than The Main Event but what with somewhat of an overload of thought provoking media on the subject of global warming in the past few weeks, it's come back to the fore again.

Am I living sustainably? I suspect not - although I haven't done the sums. I do what I feel able to in terms of lifestyle choices and hope that by my choices others may see something they could do themselves. Everyone has different priorities and pressures on their life in terms of what they can do, but the one thing that has been metaphorically hitting me in the face recently has been the rather unique energy situation we find ourselves in.

For now, forget about energy efficiency. Forget about renewable energy. The reality of now is that the "Western" lifestyle is only made possible by thousands of years worth of harnessed sunlight being burnt every day.

Photo credit: Ben Kimball

That "reframing" - that we're using a non-renewal-battery-supply of sunlight to support our lifestyles was a real revelation. We've got the technology to utilise all sorts of different forms of this stored sunlight, there are even controversial efforts to get to the "harder to reach" stored sunlight (fracking, drilling in sensitive areas, the list goes on). And life is really exciting! Space travel, international holidays, complicated machines for almost anything you can think of - I've totally been seduced by this amazing luxury and I think much of the population living this lifestyle has as well.

But. This is a non-renewal supply of trapped sunlight. And by releasing back into the atmosphere the elements tied up in fossil fuels we're creating a rate of change in the atmosphere greater than has been seen in recorded history. The planet is awesome - and it's survived an awful lot longer than most of the species inhabiting it. How will it respond? Now, there's a million dollar question. But churning through these fossil fuels in the misplaced hope that someone else will solve the problem, or that it simply won't become an issue in your own lifetime, seems rather ostrich-like to me. An attractive option, I grant you (thinking about how to address the issue - from the global to the personal levels - I find incredibly daunting). And change is never easy. But for me the reflection of the amazing realities of this era must be taken in the context of "what next".

I certainly haven't got all of the answers, but I'm committed to keep hunting. My most recent step was starting the process to change to a renewable energy supplier. Does that mean all the electricity in my house will come from renewable sources? No - the grid simply doesn't work like that. But it DOES mean that I'm taking another step towards a more sustainable lifestyle. Is it enough? No. Can I now sit on my laurels and feel smug? Absolutely not/ But it's what I feel able to do just now - while I keep working on the rest of it...

So why not take a moment to revel in this amazing period of Energy richness. Isn't it incredible?