Environments - Energy
3 important questions on Environments - Energy
What were the primary sources of mechanical power?
- Muscle, wood and flowing water were the primary sources of mechanical power in the period.
- Draught power from oxen and horses was used for milling, ploughing and transportation, as often in urban as in rural settings.
- Water drove mills and remained crucial for early industrial manufacturing into the later eighteenth century, while wood constituted the primary heat source for most Europeans throughout our period.
What energy transition happened in early modernity?
- Early modernity witnessed a transition between two quite different energy regimes, moving from an 'organic economy,' characterized by the dominant energy sources being plants which photosynthesized light from the sun and embodied it as a chemical energy, to an 'advanced organic economy', characterized by the exploitation of the photosynthesis of millennia of plants concentrated in coal.
- This transition has been characterized as the breaking of the 'photosynthetic constraint', whereby Europeans were no longer reliant on the primary production of useful energy sources, like wood, for heat and light, and could turn to coal.
What consequences did breaking the 'photosynthetic constraint' have?
- Immediately, the use of coal was able to free up land for purposes other than primary fuel production, meaning woodlands could be converted for agriculture, while cities could grow unrestricted by the supply of wood.
- In the long term, the turn to fossil fuels that began in the early modern period enabled a form of economic development with dramatic consequences: emissions of carbon dioxide released in the later eighteenth century remain in the atmosphere today.
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