D. Ray Long: ""It’s something of a miracle that the affordable energy enjoyed by even an average American today (total spending on energy is only about 4.4% of total consumer expenditures so far this year) is the energy equivalent of having nearly 600 full-time “human energy servants” to make our lives more comfortable, convenient and enjoyable."
The short version is that in the millions of years the Earth used to create fossil fuels, it managed to create substances of unparalleled energy density. And this is THE critical factor for the development of modern society over the past 150 years."
