Dear Daughter: Two Truths about our Earth
Letters to my daughter #1, on the Earth
I’m expecting my first child, a daughter, and I’ve started taking notes of my advice so I might write a book as a gift for her and tell her stories as she grows. I found this advice general enough that I wanted to share it with all of you. Perhaps I will share future notes, too.
"If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration."
— Nikola Tesla
Dear Daughter,
I’d like to share with you two truths about the natural environment, our Earth.
1. There is a natural, overwhelming, and increasing abundance of energy and resources on Earth, due mostly to the Sun.
You must do some arithmetic to understand this. First, looking at the Earth’s mass alone, just 1% of 1% of 1% of our Earth when converted to energy1 could power all of humanity for 920 TRILLION YEARS at current energy consumption. For reference, the Sun will naturally die, expand until it consumes the Earth, and commit massive suicidal supernova in just 5 billion years.2 So the Sun will die, and guess how many years of fuel we would still have? That’s right, 919.9995 TRILLION years.3 The universe will go dark long before we reach that point.
My point is this: The energy in the Cosmos is beyond human comprehension — it cannot be wasted by humans, for it is already and constantly being “wasted” by the universe (although that’s a silly way to think of it). Our Sun “wastes” 99.9999999999…% of all its energy by dissipating it into lifeless space, and yet… our Earth still has more than enough to thrive AND we “waste” it by radiating it back into space. And thank goodness we do, because if we didn’t, the planet would absorb so much energy that it would literally melt.
The nature of the Cosmos itself is to “waste” an overwhelming amount of fuel — as much as it can, and almost none of it devoted to life or… anything at all, really! Compared to the universe or the Earth itself, humans (and all organisms) are remarkably efficient in devoting resources to what we deem “good” causes. As far as I can tell, we are among the most resource-efficient systems in the known universe.
You do not need to correct every pessimist who believes we will “run out of resources” — but please do not fall victim to their faulty conclusion. Their error is borne of virtue: one ought not waste scarce resources needlessly. But this should only be applied when the resource is truly scarce, such as in the case of wasting time, wasting a life, or wasting the clean air and water we all breath and drink.
We will not and cannot ever run dry the energy on Earth to do work toward good ends — not until our Sun runs dry of the fuel it is already “wasting” at a rate 21,681,000,000,000 times faster than the energy consumption of humanity, at which point the more pressing problem will be that the Earth was engulfed by it years earlier during its expansionary phase.
My point in saying this is to take great joy in the abundance on Earth. You live in Paradise.
Seeds will grow, animals will breed, new species will evolve, and fruits will ripen — all without a single human hand being lifted.
This is remarkable. With truly no labor, no work, massive value is created at all times. The Earth is at all times absorbing so much energy from the Sun, and using it to create so much of value to you and I that the Earth literally does not know what to do with it all — entire ecosystems are created, nurtured, and evolved. Trillions of organisms are sustained; and yet the vast, vast majority of the energy is still merely absorbed by rocks and radiated back into space.
Do not ever forget this beautiful fact of the world, for many well-meaning and idealistic cynics will try to tell you that value comes exclusively from the labors of human workers. This is a simple and wrong economic theory.
All you need do to prove them wrong is plant a single Apple tree, my dear, and watch it fruit without any labor.
Legend tells that you can singlehandedly turn a state into an apple orchard merely by walking and scattering seeds — the Earth will do the rest of the work for you. This idea that a powerful system can accomplish massive tasks with a relatively tiny effort from us humans is called “leverage”, and it is a core concept in building a good life.
Remember this: the Earth itself is the greatest lever, and the greatest industrial factory, we know. It is our job to cultivate the Earth well.
"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."
— Albert Einstein
2. The natural world can be vicious and capable of “evil”
This seems to contradict my last point, but in fact it does not. The Earth is the greatest industrial factory of all time — it produces so much abundance that we, and all species on Earth, have plenty. But a good home is habitable not just to kind and generous organisms, but vicious, painful, parasitic, and even horrific ones, too — consider wasps, mosquitos, parasites, neurotoxins, viruses, and cancers, to name a few.
It is up to us to exhibit good judgment in guiding and shaping the products of the Earth, because we are of this Earth, too. Good environments and ecosystems ought to prosper, and vicious ones ought to perish or at least be mitigated — I think this should be obvious enough at first blush.
A warning, however: this judgment comes with extraordinary responsibility, due to an example of leverage. A small change to an ecosystem (like many complex systems) can, but does not necessarily, cause massive unexpected effects — this does not mean we shouldn’t change things, but it does mean we must take care to learn from and improve our changes over time.
Furthermore, we must understand that all unique organisms are a type of natural technology and art — a newly evolved DNA code — which instructs matter itself to reshape according to the code; and all technology has good use, in context. We should be careful not to destroy organisms completely — instead, we might remove them from environments where they cause harm, and redirect them to environments where they cause good — the most basic of which might at first be the research lab.
Would you allow a malaria-ridden mosquito colony to live in your house, merely because it is “natural”? Of course not.
Would you allow a cancer to take over and kill your body, or your friend’s body? Of course not.
Though the Earth is beautiful and abundant in resources, it is our job to shape our environments carefully but optimistically toward flourishing.
Use e=mc^2 to find e = 5.972×10^24*c^2 = 5.37×10^44 Joules, thanks Einstein. Math can be found on Google Colab here.
Technically it’s more than this because I rounded down earlier, but it doesn’t matter.
so beautiful.