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来源类型 | Commentary |
规范类型 | 评论 |
Labor Day Is Also Thank Energy Day | |
Robert L. Bradley, Jr. | |
发表日期 | 2019-08-30 |
出版年 | 2019 |
语种 | 英语 |
正文 |
Labor Day commemorates productive America. Begun in the late 19th century by the U.S. labor movement, the first Monday in September is celebrated annually as a public holiday. The unofficial end of summer also is a peak travel time. This Labor Day weekend, a record 17.5 million passengers are expected to fly to hundreds of U.S. destinations and around the world, according to the trade group Airlines for America. And that means a high demand for energy, specifically petroleum to fuel the planes. Labor Day could also be called Thank Energy Day. Human productivity is enabled by the appliances and machines that run on mineral (dense) energies, either directly or indirectly via electrical generation. To capture the essence of human-freed labor, Buckminster Fuller coined the term “energy slave” in 1940 to provide a rough translation of how modern energy did the work of countless would-be laborers in the industrial economy. “Bucky saw that coal, oil and gas were batteries for ancient sunshine that allowed civilization to, for the first, live beyond its [direct daily] solar income,” Stuart McMillen wrote in an illustrative comic of Fuller’s insight. Energy experts took up the analogy. “Mineral energy provides a greater concentration of power than could the most ingenious and efficient use of untold human and animal labor,” wrote Gloria Waldron and J. Frederic Dewhurst in Power, Machines, and Plenty (1948: 11). Added Erich Zimmermann:
Today, the average workweek for an American (non-farm; 16 years or older) is just under 35 hours, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. That person in the office and at home employs hundreds of “energy slaves” without even realizing it. That productivity permits time off and allows an unprecedented quality of leisure when off. Critics Dispute Good The energy-slave metaphor has been badly polluted by Fuller’s disciples. In The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude (2012: xi), Andrew Nikiforuk wrote:
Nikiforuk then mentioned yours truly as a trafficker of such “pseudoscientific absurdities” as expanding depletable resources. He states (pp. 144–145):
I plead guilty as charged. Thanks to dense, mineral energies running countless machines and appliances, Americans have a leisure side to their work personae. So, this Labor Day, take a well-deserved day off for a long weekend—or even more—in good conscience. |
标签 | american energy ; labor ; labor day ; Productivity ; vehicle miles traveled |
URL | https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/uncategorized/labor-day-is-also-thank-energy-day/ |
来源智库 | Institute for Energy Research (United States) |
资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/413733 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Robert L. Bradley, Jr.. Labor Day Is Also Thank Energy Day. 2019. |
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