THE POWER TO GROW

A New Marco Polo Series on Energy and Human Possibility tied to Stewardship

Series theme:
Use energy efficiently. Produce it abundantly. Make it increasingly clean. And never confuse conservation of resources with conservation of human possibility.

Introduction:
I will be asking readers to come on a journey with me. Over a lifetime of travel, I have had the privilege of seeing much of the world—its extraordinary achievements, its inequalities, its resources and, perhaps most importantly, what people can accomplish when energy, ingenuity and opportunity come together. I hope to share some of what those travels have taught me and, in doing so, encourage a fresh appreciation for the world around us and the possibilities still before us.

My fascination with energy, power and human achievement began much earlier, however, with the stories of my grandfather and his part in building the American West. His life intersected with an era of almost unimaginable physical ambition: the enormous undertaking that became Hoover Dam; mining the vast reaches of the Southwest for copper and other valuable ores; constructing highways across distances that had once separated communities by days rather than hours. These were only pieces of his life’s work, but to a young boy they were stories about much more than dams, mines and roads. They were stories about what human beings could accomplish when knowledge, energy, hard work and determination were applied to seemingly impossible problems.

Those stories left me with something that has remained throughout my life: a desire not merely to admire what earlier generations built, but to understand how we might build what comes next. They also imparted an equally important obligation. The resources around us are enormously valuable, but they are not ours simply to squander. We are their stewards. Good stewardship, however, need not mean leaving those resources untouched or accepting scarcity as an inevitable condition of human existence. My grandfather’s generation used resources to create electricity, transportation, industry, communities and opportunity for millions of people who would follow them. The challenge for our generation is to become better at doing the same thing—to use knowledge and increasingly capable technology to obtain more human benefit from resources while reducing the costs we impose upon the world around us.

That tension between building and conserving, abundance and efficiency, progress and stewardship has followed me through much of my professional life and my travels around the world. I have seen places where reliable electricity is so commonplace that people scarcely think about it, and others where its absence constrains almost every dimension of daily life. I have watched technology transform resources once thought scarce and create entirely new demands that previous generations could never have imagined. Again and again, I have come back to the same question: Are the limits we encounter permanent boundaries to human progress, or challenges inviting us to discover better ways forward?

That is the journey I hope we can take together in The Power to Grow. It begins with electricity, but it is ultimately about something larger: our confidence in human ingenuity and our responsibility to use it wisely. I am not arguing for consumption without consequence, nor suggesting that technology magically eliminates physical limits. I am asking whether responsible stewardship and human progress have too often been presented as opposing choices when, properly understood, they may be inseparable.

Perhaps the best way to state the proposition is the simplest:

Use energy efficiently. Produce it abundantly. Make it increasingly clean. And never confuse conservation of resources with conservation of human possibility.

The four essays that will follow test that proposition—not simply as an energy argument, but against history, economics, technology and what I have learned from seeing very different parts of the world. I invite you to make the journey with me.

Across four essays, Marco Polo will explore the relationships among energy, prosperity, technology and human possibility, beginning with a simple distinction that changes nearly everything that follows.

I hope you will join me. Subscribe please, it makes it easy to follow. Get your friends and neighbors to follow along as well. Subscribing does not mean you have to pay. Pay if you wish, but that is not the reason for my writing. If you do, I will put your dollars to work for those that most need it…

Follow me in an adventure of a different sort…

I will soon introduce you to the future 4 Essays..