In 1964, Soviet-Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed a framework for measuring the advancement of civilizations across the universe: The Kardashev Scale. The scale is divided into three stages—Type 1, 2, and 3—that measure a civilization by how much energy they are able to harvest and consume. The idea is that advanced civilizations would be presumably surrounded by sophisticated, energy hungry technologies that were built by a group of beings who had ample food energy to thrive. To Kardashev, energy consumption was a virtue of progress.
A Type 1 civilization is able to capture all the free energy available from their home planet, from fossil fuels, to wind and geothermal, to nuclear energy. Type 2 societies can capture all the energy from their solar system, including the entire energy output of their local star. And a Type 3 civilization can harness all the energy contained in the stars, planets, and other material contained in their galaxy including black holes. Scientists estimate that we are currently a Type 0.7276 civilization and on our current-day energy cultivation trajectory, it might take thousands of years to become Type 1, if ever.
Kardashev came up with his scale in the midst of the Cold War while the space race was beginning to heat up—both things that needed energy to win. He was also interested in the search for extraterrestrial life and reasoned that a high energy consumption world would be easier to detect in outer space. Energy was clearly top of mind for Kardashev, but is it a worthy metric to define a civilization’s progress? Humans seem to be hard wired to grow and expand, which requires energy, but what about other measures of civilization like health, culture, and justice? What good is being able to consume all the Sun’s energy if your citizens are suffering?
Before any talk of galactic scale energy capture can happen, a civilization needs to have enough food energy for its individuals to do the work. Having enough food doesn’t guarantee the advancement of a civilization, but not having it guarantees its demise. This is an implied truth for the leaders of any society and securing food energy is the foundation on which civilizations are built atop.
In this spirit, Big Food and Ag are systems designed by humans to maximize the production of calories to support a growing population. But progress is a never-ending treadmill where creating more food leads to more humans, who build more technology, which require more energy that humans need to harvest while eating more food so they can harvest that energy for the technologies they built, and so on. While the true meaning of life is a mystery to me, it sure seems like a big part of life is a constant search for more energy.
Today, there is an illusion of having plentiful food and fuel to feed our bodies and power our machines, but they all come from finite stocks that will run out soon. At current consumption levels, we only have about 57 years of oil left on the planet (with 139 years of coal and 49 years of gas). Fossil fuels are finite and drive climate change, while industrial agriculture has drained the vitality from our soil while flooding grocery stores with cheap, empty calories. Big Food, Ag, and Energy may be sufficient for now, but in 250 years from now our current systems of sustaining life will probably look as primitive to future people as pre-industrial revolution society 250 years ago looks to us. And if we don’t find better ways to create energy soon, there might not be many people left 250 years from now to look back on today.
The Kardashev Scale certainly feels like science fiction, as the idea of Dyson Spheres and becoming an intergalactic species is unfathomable to us now. But zooming out for a moment to a cosmic-sized timescale can put things in perspective and remind us of how primitive we are now. Homo Sapiens have only existed for 550,000 to 750,000 years, which feels long to us, but is a blink of an eye for the universe (a mere 0.0055% of the 13.7 billion years the universe has existed). What feels permanent is actually fleeting in the grand scheme of things, and this fact can be reassuring or unnerving depending on your state of mind.
Good science fiction can open your eyes to what’s possible in the future that might not be apparent from current day limitations. It’s the closest thing we have to a time machine where we can easily visit a world far into the future to gather insights that might help us out today. So if you believe in the Kardashev scale and want humanity to become a Type 1, 2 or even 3 civilization, it’s highly implausible that we can get there with a fossil fuel based food and energy system.
The deeper you look into the future, the more you start to realize that we don’t have enduring food and energy solutions for the long term. This is not to say that we should abandon the challenges of today, but it’s a healthy reminder that we need to keep thinking about next-generation innovations as much as we think about today’s. Today’s Big Food and Ag system is not the best solution for humanity, it’s just the one we have until we create something better.
Once a civilization can produce a sufficient quantity of life sustaining materials, it needs to focus on the quality of those materials if it wants to thrive rather than merely survive. Big Food & Ag was designed to do one thing really well, which is manufacture calories as cheaply as possible. It has succeeded on that one metric and eliminated hunger for many societies on Earth, despite creating many negative externalities that need to be dealt with.
The biggest question that those working in food and energy industries today need to consider is: what the right balance of quality and quantity for our energy sources? Should we continue to prioritize the extractive cultivation of cheap calories or implement new forms of agriculture that are self-sustaining and supply real nutrition? Should we double down on finite fuel sources, or accelerate work on turning science-fiction innovations like nuclear fusion into science-fact?
These are difficult questions because for many working in food and energy, their paychecks—used to buy food and energy to sustain themselves—are derived from extractive, finite food and energy businesses. They are stuck in the classic dilemma of not wanting to cannibalize their current livelihood to pursue something that might work better in the long run. It can be profitable in the short run to keep up the status quo, but that’s not what advances a civilization. Kardashev tells us that to advance, we must use energy. But the way we use that energy is up to us and will leave a legacy that endures long after we are gone.
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Footnotes
3 Recent posts from my Substack
3 Highlights from my current reading list
Unpacking the hype around OpenAI’s rumored new Q* model by Melissa Heikkiläarchive page - MIT Technology Review
The Lies in Your Grocery Store by Sarah Larsen - The New Yorker
What Social Responsibilities Should Companies Have? A New Approach by Alex Edmans - The Wall Street Journal
My email is mike@thefuturemarket.com for questions, comments, consulting, or speaking inquiries.