BOB MCCRACKEN Nye County History Advertisement

Most of us have wondered at one time or another about the past. We may ask, "Why did things turn out the way they did?" Looking at history, we can ask, "Why did history turn out the way it did?"

There are basically two schools of thought for tackling that question. At one extreme is the idea that history is little more than an endless and more or less meaningless sequence of occurrences, best summarized by the saying, "History is just one damn thing after another."

The human saga, this viewpoint would have us believe, is essentially a collection of more or less random occurrences that are not really understandable in any larger sense. Attempts to understand the forces that might drive history the way gravity, say, controls the motion of the planets, are seen as amounting to little more than construction of sand castles -- fun to build and look at, but nothing more.

At the other extreme is a view of history that says human life and thus history are natural phenomena, fully a part of the natural world. As such, history is understandable in terms of both the natural laws and processes that underlie other aspects of the natural world, including stars, planets, plants, and animals, and also in terms of principles that apply uniquely to human history.

This view assumes that history is a part of nature and that, like nature, history can be understood through science -- that there is a science of history. While very few historians have taken this approach, and in one degree or another subscribe to the "one damn thing" school, my bias lies with the science perspective. I believe that it is possible to develop a science of history.

(There is a third perspective that believes human events and thus history are subject to influence by God or the gods. This view is outside my area of expertise.)

One of the first historians to talk about a science of history was Brooks Adams, a member of the famous Adams clan from America's revolutionary times. Brooks Adams presented his ideas on the science of history in his book "The Laws of Civilization and Its Decay," published in 1895.

Adams' view of human history emphasized physical energy, fear, greed and economics as major forces that helped shape history. For Adams, energy was key. In the foreword to the second edition of his book, published in 1896, Adams wrote, "The theory proposed is based upon the accepted scientific principle that the law of force and energy is of universal application in nature, and that animal life is one of the outlets through which solar energy is dissipated. Starting from this fundamental proposition, the first deduction is, that, as human societies are forms of animal life, these societies must differ among themselves in energy, in proportion as nature has endowed them, more or less abundantly, with energetic material ... Probably the velocity of the social movement of any community is proportionate to its energy and mass."

Looking back, Adams doesn't appear to have had much influence on his own or subsequent generations of historians. Most historians continued to write history as if it were "one damn thing after another," forever focusing on the actions of the rich, famous, and powerful, and attributing psychological causes to the flow of history. But I take my hat off to Adams for the effort he made.

In 1943, Leslie White, an anthropologist from the University of Michigan, published an article titled "Energy and the Evolution of Culture." Essentially, White's theories picked up where Adams' left off. White said energy is the driver of history and determines how societies and cultures rise and fall.

According to Leslie White, culture grows and history is on the upswing as per capita energy consumption expressed through technology increases. The increase in per capita consumption of energy is the basis of the development of human society over the past 10,000 years.

Brooks Adams ascertained, and Leslie White clearly understood, that when a society or a civilization loses its energy source, and that source is not replaced with an equivalent or better one, there can be no escape from cultural and historical decay -- what I call deconstruction. When a society loses its energy source, it sheds many of its original characteristics and morphs into a simpler form, less elaborate and elegant.

It is much the same with a plant that shrivels when removed from sunshine or an animal that becomes weak and sick when not fed -- they deconstruct. Modest energy loss produces contraction; extreme loss causes death of the society. History is filled with examples of civilizations that ceased to exist: Sumer in Mesopotamia, Mohenjo Daro on the Indus River in Pakistan, the Greeks, the Romans, the Incas, the Mayans -- the list goes on and on.

Now, this is not just idle musing. Adams and White's energy theory is applicable to understanding Nye County's past and future. Moreover, it allows us to say something about the future of Nevada and our American civilization.

Until World War II, Nye County's economy was based largely on the extraction of gold and silver. In Adams' and White's terms, the precious metals mined in Nye County were exchangeable for energy or products whose production required the expenditure of energy -- fuel (gasoline and coal), food, automobiles, etc. This import of energy into Nye County led to the development of Nye County communities such as Belmont, Tonopah, Beatty, Rhyolite and Round Mountain, and Goldfield in Esmeralda County.

Food grown locally was another important energy source. When precious metals ran out, less energy flowed into the county, the communities deconstructed. Some shrank dramatically, becoming shadows of their former selves -- for instance, Belmont, following the discovery of Tonopah, and Tonopah, in turn, after World War II -- or they died, as Rhyolite did after 1911.

Taking advantage of restrictive laws elsewhere in the United States, in 1931 the state of Nevada legalized gambling and easy divorce. This led to tourism, which served the same function as gold and silver mining in former times -- it brought energy into the state in the form of money and new residents. This inflow of energy led to the development of Las Vegas and, on a smaller scale, Reno.

The creation of the Nevada Test Site in 1949 by the federal government created many good jobs in Nye County and became, in effect, another pipeline through which energy flowed into the area. Las Vegas's amazing growth has propelled Pahrump's rise, bringing further energy into Nye County.

But the question is, how sustainable are current energy relationships, especially in light of predicted shortages of fossil fuels (oil and natural gas) in the next 10 to 30 years? (The United States currently gets about 40 percent of its total energy from petroleum and approximately 22 percent each from gas and coal.) Unless replaced by nuclear and renewable energy, significant shortfalls of oil and gas supplies have the potential to lead to the deconstruction of the American civilization.

And what about global warming? That is a big wild card, and no one has a good grasp of its potential impact on our way of life. Of course, global warming is related to the burning of fossil fuels.

When we understand the fundamental role that energy plays in sustaining a society, it is clear that Nevadans, and in particular Nye County residents, must give serious thought to these matters. If and when oil and gas supplies falter, and I believe they will, alternative energy sources, in the Adams-White sense, need to be already in place or waiting in the wings. If not, deconstruction will begin. It will be up to each county, or perhaps region, in Nevada to come up with its own adaptation plan.

There might, of course, be serious competition among jurisdictions from both within and outside the state for the most lucrative opportunities. Yucca Mountain and nuclear power production are strong cards in Nye County's hand if played right. But others might well play these cards also, and will likely try.

The people I talk to say there isn't much time -- perhaps as little as 10 years -- before the shoe begins to seriously pinch. Maybe they're wrong. But do we want to take a chance and find ourselves in the position of the old prospector who missed his opportunity for a better life because, upon hearing the news of the big silver strike in central Nevada in 1900, he took his sweet time in getting there?

By the time he arrived in Tonopah, all the good mine sites had been staked out.