Energy

98.4 Degrees Fahrenheit. 37 Degrees Celsius. The wonderful regular temperature of our bodies. You can feel yourself as a self-regulating organism, permanently warm. Energy keeps that warmth going.

Close your eyes and feel that warmth inside you. If it goes down a few degrees you will die, if you it goes up a few degrees you will die. Especially when breathing we can feel ourselves as energy. Our bodies use energy to drive all the chemical changes that happen within our cells and, ultimately, to make ourselves.

Most of the warmth in our bodies is the energy of sunlight, stored in organic compounds by plants during photosynthesis, and released as useful energy by tiny cell-structures in each of our cells called mitochondria. They produce Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP,) the chemical from which animal cells get their energy. Without these helpful little structures we would not be able to live.

comes to us in a lot of ways, it's in the way that some of the things we consume are organised. Our bodies use some of this energy to make themselves.

Energy is not something we only use for our bodies: our social body also uses energy in all sorts of ways. The way that our society uses energy is very important from a point of view of interconnectedness. This is because the use of energy by societies, and especially by industrial society has a vast potential (and actual) impact on the lives of all living beings.

Most of our energy is originally from the sun as radiant solar energy. During photosynthesis
plants build
carbon, (from carbon dioxide in the air)
+
hydrogen (from water)
+
oxygen (from water and carbon dioxide)
+
minerals (from soil and water)
+
radiant solar energy

into high-energy chemicals
+
surplus oxygen which is released into the air.

As the above shows, the chemicals which make up life are high in energy and low in oxygen, which they've returned to the air. When these chemicals are combined with oxygen, (oxidised) energy is released. Living cells oxidise these chemicals slowly and use the resulting energy efficiently. When wood, coal or oil is burnt, (oxidised) the energy is released much more quickly and intensely. This released energy is the original solar energy which was trapped by photosynthesis released in a new form. Even the energy from coal and oil was trapped by plants millions of years ago and is still ultimately from the sun. There is also energy from the wind, which is caused by the way the air changes as the sun heats it up.

Oil, natural gas and coal are called fossil fuels because the plant systems which produced their high-energy chemicals no longer exist. They are non-renewable resources - once we burn them up, they're gone forever. We only get one shot at using them.

Only in the last two hundred years have we become reliant on fossil fuels, and, more recently on nuclear energy. This period in human history coincides with the rise of industrialism. The burning of this fossil fuel has provided the energy for this enormous shift in the way that our societies organise themselves. This change has by now reached all areas of the planet:

	Various chemical by-products of industrial society can be found in the South Polar ice;
	The snows of the Himalayas are fouled by the results of the war over Kuwait;
	There are almost no human societies which are not exposed to Coca-Colonialism - the products and lifestyles of industrial society;
	The smoke from burning fossil fuels causes acid rain which damages the living systems and health of people hundreds of kilometers away;
	Global warming caused by the thermal qualities of carbon dioxide and other chemicals in the air threatens climate change on a global scale.

So we can see that the use of these kinds of energy interconnects us on all sorts of ways, not all of them desirable.

	Energy sources which are renewable and relatively common like wind, sunlight and so on but are not very convenient to use with the technology which we have today. Renewable sources also include energy from burning wood, straw, dung and other living material. This form of energy is the oldest which people have used.
	Then there are energy sources which are scarce and non-renewable but are convenient to use like coal, oil, gas, uranium and so on. Our technology is centered around these types of energy, and our economy is almost entirely dependent on them.

It seems rather obvious that we should be spending money and social resources on renewable energy sources, but in fact our society has not done so.

There are powerful interests, reflected in the way that our society is organised, which favour the convenient kinds of energy. It's difficult to own and control sunlight and the wind. It is easy to exercise control over oil and uranium.

In planning South Africa's future energy policy we will have to make decisions about access to energy. Access to energy is a very important socio-political issue, and the impact of energy politics on the landscape is significant and obvious.

The situation has not changed all that much. The rural poor, however defined, still gather fuel from an already overburdened landscape. Though many more townships are now electrified, the vast majority is still deprived of the use of centralised energy - it is "beyond their means".

Energy is not an unproblematic issue for us. Most of South Africa's electricity comes from coal-burning power stations which pour millions of tons of pollutants into the air. The nuclear option is extremely expensive, especially if decommissioning and storage of waste are taken into account, and the risks, in the event of accident, mean that it must remain a non-option. While the capital costs of bringing electricity to the nation are bearable, and could be supported by military cuts, the problem is that sloppy economics may cause planners to opt for short-term gains. The costs of cleaning up our generation facilities may be more than our economy can bear - and the costs of not cleaning up the pollution may be ignored.

South Africa is caught in the same cleft stick as many other Southern countries: Having no oil of our own, but situated in a world economy massively dependent on oil for most of its activities, we rely heavily on import. To pay for this, we must generate foreign capital by exporting our primary resources like food and minerals. This means that many South Africans have no access to food at a time when South Africa exports food to other parts of the world.

Strapped for cash like many other Southern economies, we cannot afford the initial costs of cleaning up our power generating facilities. But looking into the future, the hidden costs of pollution and land degradation are waiting.

So the web of dependence in which we are embedded is not a simple one, and the connections are not all equal. Some parts of this web are strained to breaking point. All strains impact directly on us, however subtly. Interconnectedness tells us that everyone will be affected but, unless society is radically changed, the rural poor will, as usual, have to bear the brunt of the problem. I(f decisions are made by city-dwelling bureaucrats without an understanding of the connections which bind us all, the prospects look bleak indeed.

	from our food,
	from water,
	from the air
	directly from radiant heat (sunlight, domestic heating)

	To drive industries and agriculture;
	to light and heat our homes;
	to drive vehicles;
	to make all the commodities which we learn to desire;
	To fuel the systems of law, military, health, education etc., which we have set up.

	Only twenty-two of the townships in South Africa had some electricity, whereas all white towns were supplied.
	Township dwellers, obliged to burn wood and coal for heating and cooking, lived in a blanket of air pollution.
	They were obliged by poverty and lack of access to deforest areas around where they lived.
	In the rural areas the situation was serious, with deforestation caused by fuel gathering affecting large areas.
	People were obliged to burn dung, which was then not cycled back into the soils.

	Contribution to the greenhouse effect, promoting global warming with a host of uncalculated costs
	Damage to soils and eco-systems from acid rain (The acid rain problem in parts of Mpumalanga province l is said to be worse than East Germany's during the late '80's)
	Loss of productivity through lung disease and other pollution related health problems
	Loss of tourist income as the landscape degrades
	Loss of foreign investment where foreign investors are required to enforce standards of environmental concern.

	fire from burning biomass
	animal and human muscle power
	wind and water power