Inventing Green

Fortune Magazine infographics from the middle of the century are fantastic at depicting the astonishment of the business class at the new world of plastics, rockets, and chemicals that emerged in the 1940s. Each new wonder industry increased the amount of energy we use, as Buckminster Fuller notes above.

For many people, the most important energy metric was power available per capita. Slavepower is a chilling if evocative translation of that concept. Depending on the task, one horsepower equals about 25 slavepower.

Now, here, see what those slaves can do! Among other things, they make ammonia, which is the basic ingredient in the nitrogen fertilizers that power the world’s industrial food systems.

That nitrogen fertilizer then gets applied to crops. 96 percent of corn acres, for example, are fertilized. In 2007, 5.7 million tons of nitrogen helped grow the nation’s corn stalks and ears. Then, corn is broken down and reconstituted into the products of the (post)modern world.

(Personally I like the Dry Starches Branch that goes: edible starch, textiles, paper, laundry, adhesives, dusting powder, explosives, baking powder and other uses.)

A story of the new food system in three infographics from Fortune Magazine Via @brainpicker.