Energy-consumption paper

Members of the PEOPLE 3000 working group published a paper in PNAS yesterday which looks at human energy consumption reaching back 10,000 years and across four continents.

The paper, led by Jacob Freeman and titled "Synchronization of energy consumption by human societies throughout the Holocene", pulls together, for the first time, radiocarbon dates analyzed in recent decades into a single model.

Historical records provided information on energy consumption in eight countries since 1880, while radiocarbon records provided estimates of energy consumption in societies from four continents over the past 10,000 years. The authors believe their research highlights the importance of long-term perspectives that can lead to novel insights for today’s societies and help prepare us for changing global environments.

Access the paper here.

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