Hi,
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Kardashev scale is one of the way to describe the energy requirement of human development. This scale also a measurement of the level of the civilizations according to their energy consumption. Don't mess this up with the 'Kardashian scale' which is a different thing. Lol!
It categorizes civilization in Planetary, Stellar and Galactic categories. Planetary civilization fulfills its own planet. Earth is just at 0.72 according to this scale. It means we are far away from being a true planetary civilization level yet. Stellar civilization consumes all of its star's energy output and the galactic one can consume the entire energy of its galaxy. This sounds crazy but it's not a concept of sci-fi, it's the concept of science as well.
Our modern civilization is consuming hundreds of times more energy than our ancestors had consumed before the start of the industrial revolution. And yet we are just at 0.72 level of being a planetary civilization. From running our vehicles, factories and houses, we are consuming more and more energy for our modern data centers. Data centers, especially AI data centers are consuming more energy than small cities. Those also need water for cooling. That water evaporates and creates water scarcity in the neighborhood of the data centers. In future electric vehicles will also consume enormous amount of energy. Our population will also increase multiple time in future. So, that will put a lot of burdens on our resources. It will also destroy environment which is already in a bad state. We don't have any other place to live. Earth is the only place we could have find so far for our habitation. Will it lead to destruction of our entire civilization before we could even reach the level of a planetary civilization? This is a burning question I think. We need to think before we destroy ourselves.
From Erica.