The planetary substrate, 12,000 years
The Civilization Record
The long-run background quantities the four layers stand on: population, land, energy, climate, water, matter, each a series back to 10,000 BCE.
Energy
A forager burned only food and firewood: a few gigajoules a head. The world average today is twenty times that, fifty times in rich countries, and three quarters of it is fossil.
Total primary energy consumption
EJ / yr
10.000 BCE: 0,022025 CE: 620 (log)
Primary energy per capita
GJ / person / yr
10.000 BCE: 5,02025 CE: 76,0
Fossil fuel share of primary energy
%
10.000 BCE: 02025 CE: 80,0
Electricity generation
TWh / yr
10.000 BCE: 02025 CE: 30.000 (log)
Worth knowing
A modern person commands the power of 50-100 'energy slaves': the energy that supports them equals the continuous physical labour of that many people.
Fossil fuel overtook biomass (wood) as the primary energy source around 1900.
A year of fossil-fuel use carries energy equal to 400 years of net primary production of all current land vegetation.
Humanity uses about one ten-thousandth of the solar energy reaching the planet.