We hear that military spending has increased this year. Seems that we spend more and more on fighting. But look at the numbers. Military expenditure is only 2.68% of the value of the world’s gross domestic product. And, much of this goes to maintain a semblance of law and order rather than for inter-national aggression.

 

The gross domestic product is a sound marker for the amount of energy that humans use. So, we can estimate that 2.68% of the energy goes to defence. And using published figures then 4.8% goes to education and 6.2% to health care. Yet, adding these altogether leaves 86.3% of the energy undefined.

In 2008, humans consumed 4.74e20 Joules of primary energy. How did we use the 86.3% of this? That’s 4.1e20 Joules for which we have no account.