In 1974 when retired military officer and president of the Downtown Knoxville Association W. Stewart Evans had the idea that Knoxville could host a World’s Fair, the U.S. was facing gasoline shortages following an oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Arab Oil Exporting Companies only months earlier. An energy theme for the Knoxville fair seemed timely, so two years later the Knoxville International Energy Exposition, Inc. was formed to pursue the project.

By the time the 1982 World’s Fair (themed “Energy Turns Our World”) opened 8 years later, it seemed that perhaps the energy theme was no longer so timely. Oil prices had declined so much that a May 1982 New York Times article speculated that if the Knoxville World’s Fair had trouble attracting visitors, it would be because energy was no longer the center of public attention.

The TVA Chairman at the time, Charles H. (Chili) Dean, Jr. warned against energy complacency, predicting that concerns about the cost and availability of energy would come back. “It’s just a matter of time,” he said.

Chili Dean was right in 1982. And he will always be right. The history of energy use is the history of human living standards. Every time we have harnessed and used a more efficient energy source, worldwide living standards – at all income levels – improved by leaps and bounds.

The amount of energy required to power Artificial Intelligence (AI) is difficult to even comprehend. At its basic level, AI requires the seemingly simultaneous computation of an enormous number of math calculations – and this requires massive amounts of energy, both to perform the calculations and to cool the computers running those calculations. Microsoft and OpenAI are building a data center that will consume an estimated 13 million MWh of energy annually – enough to essentially require its own dedicated nuclear power plant.

And this is just one data center.

The historical arch of energy production is to move to increasingly denser energy sources. A unit of coal contains more energy than a unit of wood – and oil contains almost twice the energy of coal. This explains why living standards increased by leaps and bounds whenever industry moved from less to more dense energy sources.

It also explains why I don’t envy current TVA Chair Jeff Lyash. The obvious mathematical solution to meet increasing energy needs is to transition to more dense energy sources, but the industry is facing pressure to do the exact opposite. Wind and solar may be renewable, but they are horribly inefficient. Wind has a fraction of the energy density of oil. Solar energy is even worse, with 20 quadrillion times less energy density than oil.

And never in the history of mankind have we fueled advancements with less efficient sources of energy.

David Moon is president of Moon Capital Management. A version of this piece originally appeared in the USA TODAY NETWORK.