Abstract
This chapter retells the history of the modern energy paradigm or orthodoxy with a focus on its overarching purpose. “Convenience” is the moral imperative of the high-energy world. The mission of the energy orthodoxy is to convene around us a constellation of commodities and experiences that are made cheaply, safely, and abundantly available. The chapter draws primarily from John Locke, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx to show how labor power is the essential kind of energy at work in the making of a more convenient world.
Civil Engineering is the art of directing the great Sources of Power in Nature for the use and convenience of man.
Thomas Tredgold (1828)
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Briggle, A. (2021). Convenience. In: Thinking Through Climate Change. Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and its Successors. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53587-2_10
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