Fire

Fire as an elemental concept. 

We can feel fire, we can play with fire and also it plays with us. 

Control of fire and generation of a spark to make a fire are primitive compulsions that seem innate, aboriginal and ancestral. 

Fire can be directly sensed, but the effects of fire can travel time and distance farther than any direct experience can be used to discern.

Fire can inspire and is a basic metaphor fundamental to emotion, behaviour, religion and philosophy.

Fire and the Senses

We can feel fire, we can usually see fire, we can sometimes hear fire and even taste the airborne products of fire. Of our primordial senses, perhaps the most basic is that we can often smell the effects of fire and also before the other senses register it. As a concept in language, fire rates highly in getting fast and prime attention. The awareness of fire can cut through other, attended-to processes: it is a VIP. 

Where and What is the Fire

With a burning Sun in the sky the sensation of heat and especially lack of heat is fundamental to our being. Fire of the sky is above and beyond our reach. As an enveloping aura, it is understandable that the Sun is firmly embedded in the human psyche, culture and society throughout all preserved history. Sunshine is something we come out of, when leaving it. It is something we go not to, but into. Things that you would go into involve an acceptance of surrender, trust and a handover, to some ineffable extent, of responsibility of care. The relationship with fire that is the Sun is on par in many unnoticed ways with that of parents , friends and carers. 

With volcanoes being elemental sources of energy that cannot be put back, stopped or defended against, but only run away from, fire of this sort is a force that cannot be reasoned with. Both Nature and Gods cannot be reasoned with only praised and prayed to. 

With lightning, the gods speak and this fire from the sky has a scale in size and energy release compared to humans that is immense. It is beyond our size, our speed and our anticipation.

With fire burning forests, then fields, then houses, fire becomes a fast, leaping embodiment of energy. This fire may be, with luck, avoided and protected against to some extent, but the when and where are still at the whim of nature. It is outwith fundamental control.

With fire in a hearth, oven or ring of stones, heat can be savoured, food cooked and warmth spread. 

With fire as a spark of electricity, fire becomes embodied within a machine.

Fire at one end of scale, and with its huge sources, is its own independent being.

Fire as encouraged at a human scale is still wild, but becomes a tool for uses of war or peace.

Each of these kinds of fire have aspects connected with sustainability that can be explored.

Machinery of Fire

There are many ways in which the energy of fire is used, and many opportunities to develop sustainable access to fire. 

Air source heat pumps and ground source heat pumps derive their energy from close to the earth. They are becoming more important as sources of relatively sustainable energy. As economics change, the affordability, manufacture and adoption of these technologies increases. In turn, the recycling of units becomes a secondary aspect of sustainability that gains in importance. 

Volcanoes and lightning are still not used to harvest energy. Studies do exist and continue however and the potential such energy has is alluring. The potential energy of volcanoes and of lightning is vast. Volcanic soil is valued for the range of plant life that it can support and this is another aspect of sustainability. 

The major planetary heat source is the Sun and solar energy has many forms and factors of interest.

At one end of the range of associations, biochemical, plants are studied to find if responses to solar intake can be preferentially engineered. 

At another part of the range, mechanical, solar panels are more prevalent and directly accessible. It is a major and multinational economic drive to increase the efficiency of energy conversion and also to economise on costs of production.

Solar based power from mirror arrays can achieve astronomical scale temperatures, while small solar ovens can cook food very quickly and effectively.

Petrol and diesel engines account for one of the prime vectors of pollution and unsustainability. Alternative solutions to such engines involve studies using alternative fuels, electricity based motors or fuel cells such as those based on hydrogen technology.  

Heat based machinery such as power station turbines often uses the change of state of water to steam as a driving force. Using fire is fundamental to many processes. How that fire is produced however can be problematical. 

Sustainable Fire

If fire is produced from fuel, a resource of stored material is being eaten by the fire process. That could be wood, oil, gas or coal. The bulk of these are directly harvested or extracted as they are and then minimally reprocessed. They are ready to use. Any refining done is a relatively minor process and unimportant item, although economically huge, as regards the basic idea that an existing resource of nature is being diminished. Something is being taken, not borrowed and nothing of equal value is being put back.  This "taking" despite all soothing legalities is ultimately, and also right from the beginning , simply theft from the Earth. This sort of use is not sustainable. 

The reprocessing of grown materials to make fuels, for example,  from farmed crops such as sugar beet and sugar cane is, arguably, sustainable. There is the concept that the universe is slowly cooling down and everything is transitioning to more and more broken down materials, from complex to more stable matter. In that view even grown materials represent a process that at some point in the future will no longer be possible. When dealing with sustainability, it is valid to look at the extremes we may conceptualise.