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in an almost sacrificial ritual

performed over and over.

Agriculture is still

the world's most widespread occupation.

Half of humankind tills the soil,

over three-quarters of them by hand.

Agriculture is like a tradition handed

down from generation to generation

in sweat, graft and toil,

because for humanity

it is a prerequisite of survival.

But after relying on muscle-power

for so long, humankind found a way

to tap into the energy

buried deep in the Earth.

These flames are also from plants.

A pocket of sunlight.

Pure energy.

The energy of the sun,

captured over millions of years

by millions of plants

more than 100 million years ago.

It's coal. It's gas.

And, above all, it's oil.

And this pocket of sunlight freed

humans from their toil on the land.

With oil began the era of humans

who break free

of the shackles of time.

With oil, some of us

acquired unprecedented comforts.

And in 50 years, in a single lifetime,

the Earth has been

more radically changed

than by all previous generations

of humanity.

Faster and faster.

In the last 60 years,

the Earth's population

has almost tripled.

And over 2 billion people

have moved to the cities.

Faster and faster.

Shenzhen, in China,

with hundreds of skyscrapers

and millions of inhabitants,

was just a small fishing village

barely 40 years ago.

Faster and faster.

In Shanghai,

have been built in 20 years.

Hundreds more are under construction.

Today, over half of the world's

live in cities.

New York.

The world's first megalopolis

is the symbol of the exploitation

of the energy the Earth supplies

to human genius.

The manpower of millions of immigrants,

the energy of coal,

the unbridled power of oil.

America was the first

to harness the phenomenal,

revolutionary power of "black gold".

In the fields,

machines replaced men.

A liter of oil

generates as much energy

as 100 pairs of hands in 24 hours.

In the United States,

only 3 million farmers are left.

They produce enough grain

to feed 2 billion people.

But most of that grain

is not used to feed people.

Here, and in all other

industrialized nations,

it is transformed into livestock feed

or biofuels.

The pocket of sunshine's energy

chased away the specter of drought

that stalked farmland.

No spring escapes

the demands of agriculture,

which accounts for 70%

of humanity's water consumption.

In nature, everything is linked.

The expansion of cultivated land

and single-crop farming

encouraged

the development of parasites.

Pesticides, another gift

of the petrochemical revolution,

exterminated them.

Bad harvests and famine

became a distant memory.

The biggest headache now

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