1776 was the year that Scottish economist Adam Smith published his famous work “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, which was the first book ever to outline the case for free markets and laissez-faire governments. The same year USA declared itself as an independent sovereign nation. But we’re not even finished yet with the big events from 1776. Because that year saw something else take place that was truly profound… again, potentially outweighing the impact of both US independence and capitalism.

The steam engine changed all of that. For the first time on a mass scale, an inanimate fuel source (like coal or wood) could power machinery, which could do the work of dozens, even hundreds of people. It was the steam engine that really kicked off the Industrial Revolution and brought about an extraordinary period of growth to the world, where wealth and standards of living increased like never before.

Over time, human being figured out better, faster, cheaper ways to produce energy to fuel their machines. And there is an inextricable link between prosperity… and cheap energy. When energy is cheap and abundant, societies are able to invest heavily in growth; they have more resources (i.e. more energy) available to grow, to produce goods and services, to invest in the future. When energy is expensive and scarce, the opposite happens. A society has to spend most of its energy just to sustain itself, and there is limited surplus left over for growth and investment.

After generations of enjoying cheap energy and declining costs that fueled unparalleled prosperity, we are now facing steeply rising energy costs. Not meant in payment terms, even if the cost of a barrel of oil has more than doubled in the last year and electricity prices are high too. What is more important and not resilient is the cost, in energy, of producing energy.

Oil wells, for example, require electricity or diesel fuel to power their pumpjacks. So oil wells essentially consume oil in order to pump oil. In the past, this ratio of oil produced vs. oil used was quite attractive. For every barrel of oil it burned in fuel, an oil well would produce 30-40 barrels of output. And that was a great cost/benefit ratio. But this ratio is falling rapidly, making energy a lot more expensive. And that’s a terrible trend. Again, cheap and abundant energy is a critical factor in driving prosperity. More expensive energy has the opposite effect.

Europe is already in a full-blown energy crisis, and many developing countries aren’t able to get their hands on enough energy to sustain themselves agriculturally. So this is already becoming a major issue, and it could potentially become much worse. There has also been a deliberate political agenda to drive investment and enthusiasm away from fossil fuels towards more expensive, inefficient forms of energy production… like installing solar panels across cloudy Germany. So these incompetent, spinless politicians and climate fanatics are dragging the world down a terrible path.

If, just if, humanity must continue to waste energy on “amusement”, “comfort”, “development”,”progress”, whatever you call the race to manipulate the human body and finish the resources of the Earth,  there is already a real solution to this problem: nuclear. It’s controversial. But momentum is really starting to build for a new energy renaissance driven by nuclear power. It could drive human “prosperity” for generations to come.

Or, if not nuclear power, slow down the race and back the lifestyle to something similar what we had 100 to 150 years ago. A task only possible under dictatorship or after a devastating war. Few people will choose that voluntarily, but it is an option that may be imposed.

What we absolute NOT want is our soft politicians, lazy lifestyle, overconsumption, decadence and the massive “green” stupid energy. Yes, stupid - when it is built up in extreme big scale. Wind generators existed already 200 years ago in the new farmlands of America but it was for local and limited use and as such, optimized. The same with sun energy, nice if you manage to put up some panels on buildings, but when solar farms are built over agricultural farmland and mass produced panels and batteries are made in such big quantity that when obsolete, they will carry the  environment with new problems, then it is clear stupidity.