ECOR 1010- Final Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam ( 685 pages long!)

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Document Summary

Energy in modern civilization: energy is the key to everything else. Without energy, nothing can happen: no factor has played a greater role in the recent explosive growth of the human enterprise than abundant cheap energy (fossil fuels). In addition, no other resource has changed the structure of economies, the nature of technologies, the balance of geopolitics, and the quality of human life as much as petroleum. The adoption of agriculture ten millennia ago led to a 13-fold increase in average human population growth compared to the previous 10 millennia. The discovery and widespread use of fossil fuels, particularly petroleum, is the major physical factor behind the four-fold expansion of the human population (and every other measure of humanity) in just the past 150 years. A lot of people depend on cheap" energy. Beyond fire and fossil fuels: most people know that we may be forced to use less fossil fuel to avoid risk of serious climate change.