The gods of ancient Greece possessed frightful energies. Zeus, the father of them all, could fling thunderbolts. Helios directed the sunlight; Ares ruled war; Demeter guided growing plants; and moody Poseidon often shook the earth or raised the restless sea. The Greek gods could fly through the air, change the course of rivers, place constellations in the sky, and even cloak themselves with invisibility.
The ends to which the gods put their great powers were not always lofty. They often spent their fearsome energy to settle quarrels, commit adultery, or simply overcome boredom. But their exploits filled ordinary Greeks with wonder. Many dreamed of living like the gods. The Olympians commanded endless power at their fingertips; the immortals did not sweat like slaves or strain like oxen.
Yet the profligate energy-spenders on Mount Olympus had deep concerns about sharing power with lesser beings. When it came time to make humans and the earth, the gods assigned the task to two Titans: clumsy Epimetheus (“afterthought”) and his clever brother Prometheus (“foresight”). Epimetheus made animals first. He gave them speed, claws, fur, and enormous strength. But that didn’t leave much for people. Seeing that human beings had been left naked and shoeless, Prometheus acted quickly. He stole fire from the forge of kind Hephaestus and the mechanical arts from Athena, the goddess of wisdom. In so doing, Prometheus brought energy and technical innovation to early civilization. With fire, humans could now smelt metals and even harden ceramics. “And in this way man was given the means of life,” relates Plato in Protagoras, a minor dialogue.
Zeus, of course, did not take kindly to this theft. He feared that Prometheus might steal more energy and so punished him cruelly: he chained the Titan to a rock and ordered an eagle to pluck out his liver anew every day. Many people believe the parable ends there. They think that poor Prometheus liberated humans from darkness, then got punished for sharing power and innovation. But that’s not the whole story.
Plato continues the yarn in Protagoras, where it crackles with consequences. With the gift from Prometheus, people changed their lives dramatically. Thanks to fire, they began to cook food, heat their dwellings, destroy forests, and build grand cities. But soon they were using this transformative gift unwisely. Their numbers grew without control, and they waged incessant war. Destruction reigned on earth. Fearing that mortals might exterminate themselves, Zeus finally intervened. To end the excess, he ordered Hermes to give humans two moderating gifts: justice (dike) and respect (aidos). When winged Hermes asked if he should offer these gifts to a few mortals or the many, Zeus instructed that the gifts be shared among all people, “for cities cannot exist, if a few share only in the virtues.” His reasoning was plainly divine: if all people did not discern the consequences of employing energy and its technologies, hubris would again engulf human affairs.
Although this parable originates more than 2,500 years ago, it retains its freshness. As noted by the French philosopher Fabrice Flipo, the story of fire tells us that no energy is clean, free, or unlimited and that the use of every Promethean tool must be carefully measured. Only justice and respect can defeat excess. In the absence of proportion and scale, energy invites destruction and dispersion. And it can create a servitude that blinds master and slave alike.
Petroleum companies and petrostate leaders champion the first part of this fable. They claim that they have bettered civilization with fossil fuels and have created a second, if not greater, Promethean revolution. A new fire, fed by mineral fuels, has enabled the development of labor-saving machinery: energy slaves. The proliferation of these inanimate slaves dependent on coal or oil has changed every facet of life. Ordinary people in geographies blessed with oil now possess the power of Greek gods. Using their mechanical slaves, they can fly through the air, blast off mountaintops, grow the population of cities, drain rivers, and even cause earthquakes. What the petro fable doesn’t tell us is that accelerated development has also depleted the gift of coal and oil. And embedded in this unprecedented power is the deeply problematic relationship between master and slave.
This second Promethean revolution did not draw its values from fire. It built upon the institution of human slavery, which once served as the globe’s dominant energy institution. Both Aristotle and Plato described slavery as necessary and expedient. We regard our new hydrocarbon servants with the same pragmatism. To many of us, our current spending of fossil fuels appears as morally correct as did human slavery to the Romans or the Atlantic slave trade to seventeenth-century British businessmen.
But in the absence of wisdom and temperance, every energy relationship becomes a matter of dominion rather than stewardship. Petroleum’s Olympian impact has caused human civilization to again fall prey to hubris. Once dependent on the energy of slaves, we are now slaves to petroleum and its masters. And this time, without Zeus to rescue us, we must challenge the ancient paradigm ourselves and find our own path to using energy on a moral, just, and truly human scale.