Kurt Cobb: No second chance

It is the mission of nearly every mainstream economist to overcome the pessimism of those who study the natural world and who don’t see how the human endeavor can continue on its current course of endless exponential economic growth. “Now, now,” these economists will say to the natural scientists, “you are being alarmist just like many before you. Let the marketplace work its wonders and let economic prosperity come to all parts of the world and this will enable us with our newfound wealth to address the many environmental problems we need to face.”

Such arguments seem like mere nonsense to any scientist who believes that endless economic growth is the cause of those problems. But the difference between these two camps may be less than it appears. Enlightened economists do acknowledge the need to treat the environment which sustains us with more care. The main issue appears to be timetables.


Most economists believe that we are not in any imminent danger of societal collapse. We have plenty of resources and the big problem of global warming can be solved by taxing or otherwise restricting the use of carbon-based fuels. New technologies will give us what we need, in time and affordably. It has always been thus. (Except when it hasn’t. But one would have to know the history of civilizations that did succumb to resource degradation and scarcity, and most economists are very much concerned with the utterly now.)

To the scientist who worries about sustainability and perhaps more urgently about the availability of enough energy, particularly oil, to run our society, this leisurely attitude seems quite dangerous. Partly, this is because the cheap fossil fuel energy we now enjoy will be needed to build the next energy economy. If we as a global society wait until the last minute to begin building that new energy economy, we may not have enough fossil fuels to do it. Those fuels may decline faster than we can replace the energy we currently get from them. This is often referred to as the rate-of-conversion problem.

Let us see how these different timetables might effect world society.

Energy Bulletin