There are several ways we can measure the progress of human civilization: population growth, the rise and fall of empires, and our technological ability to reach for the stars.
But one simple metric is to calculate how much energy humans use at any one time. As humanity spreads and develops, our ability to harness energy is one of our most useful skills.
If one assumes that civilizations on other planets might possess similar skills, a species’ energy consumption is a good approximation of its technological skills. This is the idea behind the Kardashev scale.
The scale was proposed by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev in 1964. He classified civilizations into three types: planetary, stellar and galactic. Type I species are able to harness energy on a scale equal to the amount of stellar energy reaching their home planet. Type II species can harness the energy at the scale of their parent star, and Type III can harness the energy of their home galaxy.
The idea was further popularized by Carl Segen, who proposed a continuous scale of measurement rather than just three types.
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So what kind of civilization are we? Although humans use a tremendous amount of energy, it turns out that we don’t even qualify for the first type. On average, about 1,016 watts of solar energy reaches the Earth, and humanity currently uses about 1,013 watts. On the SIGNS sliding scale, this currently puts us at around 0.73. Not bad for a group of evolved primates, but it does raise a question: Can we even get to the first type? After all, we can’t capture all the sunlight that reaches Earth and still have a habitable planet.
This question was examined in a paper recently published in arXiv. The paper looks at the three main sources of energy: fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewables, and calculates their potential growth over time.
On the other hand, getting to the first type may seem very easy. Make energy production a top priority, and you’ll get there eventually. But each type of energy source has its limitations.
And in an extreme case, such as burning every ounce of fossil fuels, that could lead to a level of climate change that could put us all in the so-called Great Filter. And you cannot become a Type I civilization if it becomes extinct.
So the team takes a more nuanced approach, analyzing the physical limitations of each type of energy source, balancing them with the need to reduce climate change and pollution levels as outlined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency.
They found that even with realistic limitations, humanity can still reach the first level. The downside is that we won’t get to that level until at least 2371.
While advanced civilizations require significant energy, we have seen how advances in low-power computing and increased efficiency allow us to reduce or flatten our energy consumption while continuing to advance in technology.
And while this study shows how we can become a Type I civilization, we can really advance when we realize we don’t need to.
Source: Science Alert
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