Why Colonialism Happened
I was in my daughters class for her ‘book look’ and I saw something interesting. It was a map of the world by climate zones. The colder countries in the north and the warmer climate to the south. This struck me because it’s a map of why colonialism happened.
The cold, sun-poor regions stole solar energy from the south, and the sun-stained people that lived there. Then ‘they’ dug up even more stored solar energy (fossil fuels) and colonized even harder. Now it’s all ending in tears as the climate ‘they’ exploited is falling apart. To understand this just follow the money, I mean the energy, I mean the sun.
The Sun
My daughter’s map is a map of where the sun hits the earth. This is really where the energy is, the source of almost all energy in the world. We take the sun for granted in our fallen age, but the ancients worshiped the sun for good reason. The sun doesn’t just keep us warm, it grows and feeds all plants and animals (including us), powering all labor. Even energy sources we don’t think of as solar-powered — like wind and hydropower — actually are. As Dr. Tom Murphy writes in his physics textbook:
Wind is replenished daily by the sun heating the land and driving air currents. Solar energy drives the hydrological cycle, refilling the reservoirs behind…
