Imagine you had no worry for food, shelter and warmth. Seems like a perfect place doesn’t it? So put yourself into this place and then imagine what you would do with the results of your daily labour. Perhaps you would play all day. Or maybe, like the !Kung San, you would spend your spare time simply enjoying the companionship of your neighbours. If you’re like most then even being worry free would have us doing something no matter how slight.

As a worry free individual maybe you’d like to be entertained. Apparently that’s the desire of many people today who aren’t struggle for the basics. An example of this is the value we place upon sports teams. The most valuable club, the Dallas Cowboys football club, is worth an estimated $4B. The total worth of the top 50 teams is estimated to be $76.8B. When the number 2 valued sports team, Real Madrid, plays a game, an estimated 500 million people watch; that’s about 7% of Earth’s human population.

While certainly we use a huge amount of energy to set up and watch a top tier football match, can we estimate the energy value of this entertainment? If we put oil’s value at $50 a barrel then the top 50 sports teams combined are worth 1.5e9 barrels or about 768 supertankers worth. This amounts to 9.2e18J of energy, about the same as released by Krakatoa when it exploded. As we run out of energy will we still continue to invest in globe spanning entertainment? As we run out of leisure time, we will still be content with our lives even if we worry?