In this, the 21st century, we like to think we are advanced, sophisticated and evolved far beyond the ancient Romans, but when it comes to our attitudes about our resources, Alberta investigative journalist and author Andrew Nikiforuk said we are no different.
And while we no longer condone and participate in human slavery – even though it still continues as a practice throughout the world – Nikiforuk argues in his latest book, The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude, our modern lives and attitudes enslave us and abuse resources, specifically oil, in the same manner slave owners throughout time have enslaved and abused people: for cheap power and benefit that brings the masters.
“(Slavery) was a powerful institution that governed so many different civilizations and was part of our life to the 1850s and is still alive in many parts of the world,” Nikiforuk said during an interview with the Outlook.
“From that institution we have derived a lot of our attitudes about spending energy and our callous disregard for waste and our callous disregard for the consequences of extreme and high-energy living. We’re really no different than wealthy Roman landowners who had virtually no regard for their slaves, when they were cheap. That was a critical thing; when everything is cheap, you abuse it,” he said.
The difference today is, rather than harnessing the energy of human slaves, we take resources – oil, coal and electricity – and use it to power “energy slaves,” a term that appeared during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century.
Each of us, on average, has 89 energy slaves at our disposal, be it a cellphone, computer, GPS, dishwasher or waffle iron, all of which are intended to make life easier and better, all of which use energy.
But in our rush to buy the latest gadgets and gizmos and time and labour saving devices, we forget to consider the implications this servitude has on our environment, our families and our lives.
“It’s about what we are using that energy for. What are you feeding that energy to? And the power for all those convertors or energy slaves, what kind of work are they doing?
“We never ask the question how many inanimate slaves do we need? And then the more philosophical question is what are we using them for? Are we using them to become fat, incompetent and lazy?”
But Nikiforuk isn’t saying having energy slaves is necessarily wrong. Some of the greatest benefits society has undergone, such as democracy and women’s liberation, came as a result of energy slaves allowing for massive societal change by freeing up time.
“This endless march of energy slaves into the household happens and then what do we see a decade or two later? All of these gadgets changed the role of women in the household and then women’s lib appears a decade later and we still haven’t made that connection, but the story is that when you start employing inanimate slaves in huge numbers, there are social, political and economic consequences, just like the industrial revolution was the product of deploying billions of energy slaves,” he said.
Of course, the informal rule of too much of a good thing applies to energy slaves as it does to chocolate or wine.
And while energy slaves do make tasks easier and faster, Nikiforuk pointed out they also become distracting and can make life complicated. Take, for example, the amount of time needed to stay on top of social media, email and texting.
“The more energy slaves you employ, at the end of the day the less time you have time to be a human being because your time is being constantly shaped, moulded and engineered by all these machines. You lose your vitality as a person,” he said.
“We’re no different than the Romans even though we’re using hydrocarbons. We still haven’t wrestled with that fundamental question. It’s something about human beings and I think we can still learn a lot, but we have to start asking those questions.
“We’re fixated on this idea in North America that you have to have a great army of energy slaves at your command consuming all sorts of fossil fuels in order to be happy and that was also the assumption of slave holders, when in fact the quantity of energy you consume has nothing to do with happiness.
“It all comes down to the quality and the fact that when a lot of that energy is provided by your own family and your community, that is when you are the happiest.”
The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude, published by D&M Publishers and in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation, is available for $29.95.
