The Oil Drum

Trying to re-imagine our economy is a job for anthropologists or perhaps science fiction writers, I think.  It has more in common with the classic "utopia" novel than with current economic theory.

Jared Diamond's Collapse doesn't just talk about societies that failed, but also those that succeeded.  And it's fascinating.  What it takes to become a successful sustainable society is often brutal by our standards.  Population control is critical; zero population is the ideal.    This is achieved not only via abortion and birth control, but by encouraging infanticide, warfare, and suicide.  One of the societies studied in the book has a hard population cap; the king sends away people each year, to keep under the cap.  

One incident that stuck in my mind was the way one society dealt with the pig problem.  Pigs are often a problem.  They aren't very sustainable.  They are tempting, because they turn plant matter into meat more efficiently than just about any other critter.  But meat production really isn't efficient, even at best, and pigs do not provide milk or eggs or wool or transportation, as other animals do.  And they eat only food people can eat.  So societies declare them unclean, as in the Middle East, or put taboos on them that allow only certain people to eat them (as in ancient Hawaii).  

One society Diamond studied went a step further.  They decided to exterminate every pig on the island.  The pigs were getting into the gardens and eating food people needed, and only the elite ever got to eat pork.  So they decided to eliminate every pig on the island, and did.  (Must have been a heck of a barbecue!)

I just can't see us ever agreeing to anything like that.  We  believe that if you can afford it, you can have it, regardless of the cost to society.  I don't think we have it in us to make the hard choices.  At least, not yet.
 

This is really at the heart of the issue. The world's economy has grown, on average, for centuries, and our fossil fuel consumption has increased in lockstep with it. We can get one-time efficiencies, and be more productive. But can we, as a world economy, grow long-term without using more energy? I doubt it, but I don't think anybody really anybody knows the answer yet.

Could we continue to grow by substituting other forms of energy for oil or natural gas? Sure, if they are available in enough quantity, at an acceptable price, and in usable forms. But the physics, economics, and logistics of pulling this off are unbelievably enormous.

The problem with substitutes
If you look at any aspect of the energy problem, it looks like a house of cards. Half the homes in America heat with natural gas. No gas? Electricity is a substitute heating technology that is feasible and commercialized and ready to go--a best case substitution scenario. Call the contractor, put in a heat pump.

It works fine for one home-expensive, but otherwise quick and fairly easy. But consider scalability. If a large number of people convert, transmission lines overload. Remember the East Coast blackout? So we need to tool up to manufacture a lot of heatpumps, and rebuild the lines, and the substations, and then we need to put in more electricity.

But where do we get the electricity? Can't burn more natural gas, 'cause there isn't any more. So we need to build new power plants using other fuels or renewables of your choice, which takes years, and raises lots of other issues.

We need substitutes, but it's a process that will take decades to do. In the meantime, economies will suffer. We simply do not know how to manage a steady-state economy, or how to manage economic shrinkage in a humane way. There is a lot to learn.