The transformity is defined as the emergy (in emjoules) of one kind of available energy required directly and indirectly (through all the pathways required) to make one joule of energy of another type. Transformity is the ratio of emergy to available energy. Transformity measures the position of each kind of energy in the universal energy hierarchy (Odum, 1998).
The instability of the world on fossil fuels (diagram by Abel)
Energy Quality, Emergy, and Transformity: H.T. Odum’s contribution to quantifying and understanding systems
Kurt Cobb on The Unbearable Lightness of Information
Whatever Happened to Hierarchies in Ecology?
Song of the Taste (Gary Snyder, Regarding Wave, 1970)
Eating the living germs of grasses
Eating the ova of large birds
the fleshy sweetness packed
around the sperm of swaying trees
The muscles of the flanks and thighs of
soft-voiced cows
the bounce in the lamb’s leap
the swish in the ox’s tail
Eating roots grown swoll
inside the soil
Drawing on life of living
clustered points of light spun
out of space
hidden in the grape.
Eating each other’s seed
eating
ah, each other.
Kissing the lover in the mouth of bread:
lip to lip.