Face up to natural limits, or face a 1970s-style energy crisis

None of the various technofixes on offer alter that fact that humanity has to learn to stop living on the last drops of cheap energy, and to start living within its means

Britain has a serious problem with its energy supply. After examining this issue for a few years now I perceive that the greatest difficulty we face is not that we lack energy resources (arguably we do), or that we are becoming precariously dependent upon imported energy (which we are), or that our large demand for energy makes reforming our economy extremely difficult (as evidently it does); the most significant problem is that the political and business community cannot accept that natural systems impose physical limits upon human society.

We may be told that our present problems can be solved through measures such as ‘green growth’, ‘low carbon energy’ or ‘carbon markets’, but such a view ignores the growing body of evidence concerning the relationship between the way the economic system operates and the physical nature of energy and material resources that the economy relies upon.

Cheap energy = cheap growth

If we look at how Britain’s energy economy has changed over the last two centuries we can see an interesting trend emerging – one that demonstrates the evidence for a link between energy sources and the well-being of the general economy. Throughout its history, up to the Second World War, Britain was largely self-sufficient in energy. Then from the 1950s, on the back of the post-war consumer boom, this historic trend ended as imported oil gained a wider role in the economy and indigenous coal production declined. By the 1970s, when we imported about 50 per cent of our energy needs, the imbalances in the national economy caused a whole range of economic problems, essentially because Britain was trying to spend more than it could create through its national income.

The Ecologist