Do we have too much energy?

So much talk these days centers around whether we have will have enough energy to power the world economy. The pessimists respond, “Not this world economy at this level of activity.” The optimists, on the other hand, say not to worry. We have plenty of fossil fuels for the time being and new, clever technologies will harvest all the energy we need for the future. What is almost never discussed is whether we, in fact, have too much energy and whether that abundance has been our undoing.


Let’s take four areas in which the growth of energy supplies has led to severe environmental distress. The most obvious and widely agreed on effect of burning our main energy source, fossil fuels, is global warming. Very little needs to be said about how the abundance of fossil fuel energy has led to the warming of the Earth.

Other problems include the deleterious effects of industrial agriculture, water depletion, and loss of biodiversity. What links all of these problems is population growth. And, that population growth has been made possible in part by vast increases in the productivity of agriculture–which, in turn, have been made possible by the development of petroleum-based insecticides and herbicides and natural gas-based nitrogen fertilizers. Of course, the advent of cheap liquid fuels also made it easy and cheap to mechanize farm operations including the transport of farm goods to market. The so-called “Green Revolution” was, in fact, a “Green and Black Revolution” when the role of fossil fuels is considered. And, that revolution has led to directly to rampant soil erosion, a precipitous decline in soil fertility, and the poisoning of our water and food with insecticides and herbicides.

The needs of agriculture and the growing populations they fostered led inevitably to water depletion. Naturally, that depletion was aided and abetted by cheap energy used to pump and purify water for agricultural, industrial and household use. In addition, great dams could never have been built without liquid fuels derived from petroleum used to run heavy machinery. Beyond this, huge amounts of electricity are needed to power water pumps and purification equipment. In California, for example, at least 6.5% of the total electricity consumed is used just to pump and purify water. It is doubtful that the great water projects of that state would have been built were it not for cheap electricity.

Energy Bulletin