Imperialism is a term that is thrown around with something of an alarming amount of regularity these days. Almost always, it is used to reference coercive, exploitative foreign policies or international relationships. This makes sense, in that there is a pretty strong relationship between the such relationships and those of so called “high imperialism,” when Europe, in essence, took over the world with the leverage provided by their technological advantages (advantages which, it can be noted, required a huge amount of raw materials, be they human, energy based, or otherwise_.
But all wasn’t fine and well before that. Most of us have seen pictures of 9 and 10 year olds working coalmines in order to power British and American factories. Many had lost fingers before they were 14. This class conflict and exploitation is an imperialism in its own right, dehumanizing and exploiting a vulnerable population in the same way that we continue to do in our global economy.
In many ways, the industrial revolution was an energy revolution. The steam engines that powered the revolution required fodder to create the steam, whether that was wood or coal. The artificial lighting essential for high density urban living came from gas lamps, and later from (almost always) coal electric plants. Over time, a few “high power” sources came to dominate the energy mix which we use to maintain our industrialized “Western lives…” coal, natural gas, eventually thermonuclear energy and, of course, petroleum distillates… oil. The industrial revolution rang in a world in which economic growth within a lifetime was possible, where people (and, much more importantly, cargo) could move from one continent to another in a predictable manner, and, quite simply, where goods could be produced as quickly as they could be consumed. In a sense, it blew the top off of our planet’s system of “supply and demand” in favor of a capitalist interpretation of the concept.
We live in a society shaped and changed by the laws of mechanization and modernization. Another revolution has irreversibly changed our planet during many of our lifetimes, that of the digitization and information transmission. Digitization has changed our communications, our music, the way we do business, the way we do research, and, critically, the way we work. Think about how many hours a day most of us, for one reason or another, spend in front of a computer!
Yet like the industrial revolution before it, our current age of modernity is totally dependent on the exploitation rung in under high colonialism. My 5 year old apple computer contains conflict minerals in the battery, gold on the contacts, and was assembled and polished by Chinese factory workers laboring under near slavelike conditions. Electricity is running through it as we speak. Natural gas is burning in the appliance that is drying my clothes while fluorescent tube lights allow this laundromat to stay open 24 hours a day. And lets not get into the telenovelas blasting out at the flat panel TV. You get the point.
If you think about your life without energy, be it petroleum derived or electronic (including the indirect inputs such as manufacturing and transporting everything you consume in a day), I imagine that you will find that life as you know it is completely unimaginable without it.
My point in writing this piece isn’t to convince you that our current energy habits are unsustainable. Others have done that better than I have. Even major oil companies see economically accessible petroleum in decline. Independent research shows that both the United States’ and the Planet’s peak oil production has long since been surpassed. This doesn’t even begin to address the environmental impacts of oil consumption and coal production. Or the human rights implications. But look around. The answers are out there.
In terms of the geography of the issue, it won’t surprise anyone to hear that the United States is the biggest per capita energy hog in the world.
My first exposure to politics was related to environmental concerns, and as long as I have been alive the so called “American Addiction to Oil” has been pushed by green groups as one of the greatest threats facing our country. Headlines relating to the US oil habit tend to involve pictures of Hummer driving soccer moms or the McMansions which are so in vouge in most of the United States, but that is an oversimplification, and a dangerous one at that.
It’s a way for those of us in cities to “let ourselves off the hook” for the deadly legacy of the modern energy supply chain, and for the disastrous climactic impact of its generation. New Yorkers tend to tout the fact that we are the most sustainable people in the United States. The Data is clear here, the average San Franciscan (the city with the number two rating) has DOUBLE the carbon footprint of the average New Yorker. The Average person in the US has 4X this amount. It’s a unique phenomenon to the city. I haven’t been in a private car for months. Very few people in the West can likely say this. I haven’t been in a vehicle powered by oil for three weeks (most of the City’s transit runs on electricity), and I bike 5 days a week for most of my transportation needs. Local farmers markets dot the city, even in winter, and I can find virtually anything I want within a 10 minute walk from my house. Barges take our trash and recycling down the Mississippi to be deposited in some southern state where property is cheaper and aesthetics aren’t as closely protected. When we want to travel, the most modern aircraft i the world are servicing our airports daily, meaning we burn FAR less fuel in the air than the average person in the US, who would have to drive hours to an airport, or take an energy inefficient regional flight. We also have better intercity train service than most of the United States (though it is still embarrassingly bad) and discount busses that traverse the region, burning very little fuel (some average 400 passenger miles per gallon), saving us both money and energy.
But all of these efficiencies are deceptive. A New York without energy imperialism wouldn’t be New York at all. That electricity isn’t generated in Manhattan (though about 25% of is IS generated only a few miles away in one of the nation’s most unsafe nuclear facilities). The food is trucked in on diesels. All of it. Anyone who has been near one of the tunnels or bridges at about 3AM will have had a second thought about where our food comes from when an army of Whole Foods trucks come by to drop off the cargo that keeps us all running day in and day out.
If exploitative energy policies were to end tomorrow, new york would be starving, coated in waste, without viable transportation options, without heat in the winter, and completely unproductive. There are better and worse choices we can decide to make (better choices being slow, local food, sustainability, flying on more modern aircraft, buying green power, etc) but the realities of the system in which we live are still here.
I suppose it is all about striking a balance, and fighting to tip the scale farther in the direction of equality.
