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Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical Economy
Abstract
For the past 150 years, economics has been treated as a social science in which economies are modeled as a circular flow of income between producers and consumers. In this "perpetual motion" of interactions between firms that produce and households that consume, little or no accounting is given of the flow of energy and materials from the environment and back again. In the standard economic model, energy and matter are completely recycled in these transactions, and economic activity is seemingly exempt from the Second Law of Thermodynamics. As we enter the second half of the age of oil, and as energy supplies and the environmental impacts of energy production and consumption become major issues on the world stage, this exemption appears illusory at best. In Energy and the Wealth of Nations, concepts such as energy return on investment (EROI) provide powerful insights into the real balance sheets that drive our "petroleum economy." Hall and Klitgaard explore the relation between energy and the wealth explosion of the 20th century, the failure of markets to recognize or efficiently allocate diminishing resources, the economic consequences of peak oil, the EROI for finding and exploiting new oil fields, and whether alternative energy technologies such as wind and solar power meet the minimum EROI requirements needed to run our society as we know it. This book is an essential read for all scientists and economists who have recognized the urgent need for a more scientific, unified approach to economics in an energy-constrained world, and serves as an ideal teaching text for the growing number of courses, such as the authors' own, on the role of energy in society. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012. All rights reserved.
Chapters (20)
The years that ended the first decade of the new millennium were not kind to the economic situations of most people and institutions in the United States and much of the rest of the world, nor to the economic and financial theories that once explained and operated our economies so well, or so it seemed. For the majority of people it has become more difficult to meet basic obligations such as rent or mortgage payments or feeding or educating a family, and especially to do this when diminishing asset values, particularly home values, threaten future financial security. Ten to twenty percent of Americans have no job at all, a poorly paying job in the service sector, or work part time. Incomes for the middle class have been stagnant at best for decades while the size of the middle class shrinks. Many, perhaps most, new college graduates have had to greatly reduce their aspirations. The stock market and real estate have become far less reliable ways to amass wealth. Some 46 of our 50 states and many of our municipalities face crippling budget deficits, and many colleges, pension plans, charities, and other institutions are operating with diminished funds or going bankrupt. Even the U.S. government faces the prospect of seeing its credit rating diminished. “Tea Partiers” seek to cut debt and the role of government even while poll after poll shows the public does not want its health or most other benefits cut. There are many pronouncements about “waiting, or borrowing, until the economy grows again,” but little evidence of that growth happening. The inflation-corrected GDP of the United States was about the same in 2010 as it was in 2004.
There are many scientists from different disciplines who have thought deeply about the long-term relation of humans and wealth production. Most have concluded that the best general way to think about how different societies evolved over time is from the perspective of surplus energy. To chemists Frederick Soddy and William Ostwald, anthropologist Leslie White, archeologist and historian Joseph Tainter, sociologist Fred Cottrell, historian John Perlin, systems ecologist Howard T. Odum, sociologist and economist Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen, energy scientist Vaclav Smil, and a number of others in these and other disciplines, human history, including contemporary events, is essentially about exploiting energy and the technologies to do so. This is not the perspective taught in our schools and the role of energy is essentially missing from our dominant books and teaching about history. Instead human history usually is seen in terms of generals, politicians, and other personalities.
This chapter focuses on the importance of fossil fuels (coal, gas, and oil) and especially petroleum (meaning natural gas and oil, or sometimes just oil). First we want to ask why petroleum, and especially oil? Why has petroleum been so important, and why is it so hard to unhook ourselves from it? To do that we need to look more broadly for a moment at the energy situation that has faced, and that faces, humanity. Solar energy, either directly or as captured by plants, was and is the principal energy available to run the world or the human economy. It is enormous in quantity but diffuse in quality. As we have developed in the previous chapter, the history of human culture can be viewed as the progressive development of new ways to exploit that solar energy using various conversion technologies, from spear points to fire to agriculture to, now, the concentrated ancient energy of fossil fuels. Until the past few 100 years human activity was greatly limited by the diffuse nature of sunlight and its immediate products, and because that energy was hard to capture and hard to store. Now fossil fuels are cheap and abundant, and they have increased the comfort, longevity, and affluence of most humans, as well as their population numbers [1].
This book is written by an ecologist and an economist, and part of our objective is to assess where insights and principles from these two disciplines can be combined to understand economies better. Although the two disciplines may appear very different we believe instead that the phenomena they study are very similar in many ways. From a biophysical perspective the economies of cities, regions, and nations can be viewed as ecosystems, with their own structures and functions, their own flows of materials and of energy, with more or less diversity and stability and so on: in short with all the characteristics of natural systems, with, generally, much greater energy intensity and dominance by one species. From the perspective of individual organisms there are also important similarities between natural and economic systems.
The last century has seen the ascendancy, indeed intellectual dominance, of neoclassical economics (NCE, also known as market or Walrasian or University of Chicago or, Washington consensus or, occasionally, neo welfare economics). The basic neoclassical model represents the economy as a self-maintaining circular flow among firms and households, driven by the psychological assumptions that humans act principally in a materialistic, self-regarding, and predictable way. Unfortunately the NCE model violates a number of physical laws and is inconsistent with actual human behavior. Consequently the NCE model is unrealistic and a poor predictor of people’s actions, as an array of experimental and physical evidence and recent theoretical breakthroughs demonstrate. Despite the abundance and validity of these critiques, few economists seriously question the neoclassical paradigm that forms the foundation of their applied work. This is a problem because policy makers, scientists, and others turn to economists for answers to important policy questions. The supposed virtues of “privatization,” “free markets,” “consumer choice,” and “cost–benefit analysis” are considered to be self-evident by most practicing economists, as well as many in business and government. In fact the evidence that these concepts are correct or do what most people believe they do is rather slim and contradictory. Thus this chapter is a strong critique of economic theory, in this case NCE [1].
In our first chapter we developed the link between the historical development of energy sources and the development of human society. More energy has allowed humans to do more work, including that of producing more humans. We use the joule, for those not steeped in physical science, as the standard measure of energy. One joule is the amount of energy needed to lift a mass of 1 kg a distance of 1 m on the surface of the earth. A joule is equal to about one quarter of a calorie. Our more familiar unit is the kilocalorie (often written as Calorie), and is found, for example, on the back of food packages. One kilocalorie is 1,000 cal, equal to about 4.18 kJ. Thus if you consume a drink that says it has 100 Calories it you will have consumed 418 KJ. Later, in Chap. 8, we explore the relation between energy and power from a scientific perspective. Power is the rate of doing work, and is commonly measured in watts. From the standpoint of physics, power is energy used or expended per unit of time, or the work that power causes or allows to be done. The most common unit of power is the watt, where 1 W = 1 J used/second.
A recurring theme of this book is that economics should be approached both from a biophysical and a social perspective. This is especially important when viewing economics through the contours of history. For the vast majority of time humans lived off solar flow. For a very brief moment in time we have been able to appropriate fossil hydrocarbons to power our economy, and the result was a tremendous increase in productivity and the amount of material goods available to humans. Fossil fuels enabled the industrial revolution and beyond. At the same time, the increase in energy does not automatically determine the course of economic history. The industrial revolution consisted of more than simply more energy and more machines. It also entailed a fundamental reorganization of work and the general institutional arrangement of society. The economy of the early twenty-first century is not just a larger version of the economy of the early nineteenth century. It is fundamentally different. This chapter views the development of the American economy from the middle of the twentieth century through the financial crisis and recession of 2008. In 2008 Barack Obama was elected president of the United States with a great deal of optimism. But 2010 saw a conservative resurgence based on poor economic growth. We pose a question. Can the progrowth agenda that dominated the twentieth century withstand the biophysical limits that will be imposed by peak oil and climate change? To answer this crucial question we need to look carefully at the patterns of history as well as viewing carefully the scientific data, which we do with the remainder of this chapter.
Young adults today have grown up in a world where globalization is a pervasive reality and where most of our politicians accept its supposed virtues. Sometimes there are discussions about how globalization is losing (or gaining) us jobs, or whether we have globalized too much or not enough, but for most people it is just a fact represented by the labels from all around the world on their clothes or electronic devices. This was not the case when the authors of this book were young; at that time nearly everything we ate, wore, or drove was made in America. Anything from overseas – except specialized luxury goods – was normally assumed to be cheap and inferior. Globalization, at least on the scale we see it today, is a relatively recent phenomenon so it is important to understand how globalization grew so large so fast, what are the perceived and actual gains and costs, and how these are related to energy use.
In recent decades there has been considerable discussion in academia and the media about the environmental impacts of human activities, especially those related to climate change and biodiversity loss [1]. Far less attention has been paid to the diminishing resource base for humans. Despite our inattention, resource depletion and population growth have been continuing relentlessly. The most immediate of these problems appears to be a decline in oil production, a phenomenon commonly referred to as peak oil, because global production appears to have reached a maximum and may now be declining. However, a set of related resource and economic issues are continuing to accumulate in ever greater numbers and impacts – water, wood, soil, fish, gold, copper – so much so that author Richard Heinberg [2] speaks of “peak everything.” We believe that these issues were set out well and basically accurately by a series of scientists in the middle of the last century and that events are demonstrating that their original ideas were mostly sound. Many of these problems were spelled out explicitly in a landmark book called The Limits to Growth, published in 1972 [3]. In the 1960s and 1970s, during our formative years in graduate school, our curricula and our thoughts were strongly influenced by the writings of ecologists and computer scientists who spoke clearly and eloquently about the growing collision between increasing numbers of people, their enormously increasing material needs, and the finite resources of the planet. The oil-price shocks and long lines at gasoline stations in the 1970s confirmed in the minds of many that humans were facing some sort of limits to growth. It was so clear to us then that the growth culture of the American economy had limits imposed by nature in 1970 that the first author made very conservative retirement plans in 1970 based on his estimate that we would be experiencing the effects of peak oil just about the time of his expected retirement in 2008.
Energy is, at best, an abstract entity for most contemporary people. Only rarely does it enter our collective consciousness, generally in those relatively rare times when there are particular shortages or sharp price increases in electricity or gasoline. In fact, as this book demonstrates, energy and its effects are pervasive, relentless, all-encompassing, and responsible for each process and entity in nature and in our own economic life. Energy is also behind many aspects of the basic nature of our psyches and many of the ways that world history has unfolded. Few understand or acknowledge this role because the pervasive impact of energy shown in this book does not usually enter into our collective training and education, and it does not enter into our educational curricula. Why is this so? If energy is as important as we believe then why is that not more generally known and appreciated? The answers are complex. One important reason is that the energy that is used to support ourselves, our families, or our economic activity generally is used at some other location and by other people, or by quiet automatic machines whose fuel tends to be relatively cheap. After all, coal, oil, and gas, our principal sources of energy, are basically messy, smelly, dangerous, and unpleasant materials. The energy from food that we need to fuel ourselves surrounds most of us abundantly and is available readily and relatively cheaply. Society has gone to great lengths to isolate most of us physically and intellectually from the energy sources upon which our food, our comfort, our transportation, and our economy depend. It is convenient to ignore energy because many facts about it are uncomfortable to know.
This chapter is designed to provide in a very basic way enough science so that it is possible for the reader who has not had an extensive background in science, or who simply wants a review, to do so relatively easily. The contents of this chapter are divided into five main sections: understanding nature, the scientific method, the physical world, the biological world, and the integrative science of ecology.
Most of the time economists do not “do science.” Rather they tell stories dressed up in mathematics. Neoclassical economists mostly tell stories of the magic of market self regulation. Keynesian economists tell stories about how correct amounts of spending, taxing, and money creation can balance an otherwise unstable economy and lead to economic growth. If you want to understand the economist’s story you should learn the requisite mathematics. Perhaps more importantly, if you want economists to listen to your story, you need to learn to present it in a language they understand and respect. If you can’t express yourself mathematically then most economists will not even bother to listen to your story, no matter how compelling or well-supported by evidence. Even if presented with mathematical elegance mainstream economists may still reject your story if it conflicts too badly with theirs. But at least speaking the language of mathematics will give you a fighting chance of being listened to. Far too many economists arrogantly dismiss the analyses of other social scientists whose valuable insights are expressed primarily in words or oral histories.
Economies exist independently of how we perceive or choose to study them. For more or less accidental reasons we have chosen over the past 100 years to consider and study economics as a social science. Before the late nineteenth century economists were more likely to ask “Where does wealth come from?” than are most mainstream economists today. In general, these earlier economists started their economic analysis with the natural biophysical world, probably simply because they had common sense but also because they deemed inadequate the perspective of earlier mercantilists who had emphasized sources of wealth as “treasure” (e.g., precious metals) derived from mining, trade, or plunder. In the first formal school of economics, the French Physiocrats looked to the biophysical world and especially land as the basis for generating wealth (e.g., Quesnay, 1758; see Christensen [1, 2]) focused on agriculture.
Many important earlier writers, including sociologists Leslie White and Fred Cottrell and ecologist Howard Odum, as well as economist Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen have emphasized the importance of net energy and energy surplus as a determinant of human culture. Human farmers or other food gatherers must have an energy surplus for there to be specialists, military campaigns, and cities, and substantially more for there to be art, culture, and other amenities. Net energy analysis is a general term for the examination of how much energy is left over from an energy-gaining process after correcting for how much of that energy (or its equivalent from some other source) is required to generate (extract, grow, or whatever) a unit of the energy in question. Net energy analysis is sometimes called the assessment of energy surplus, energy balance, or, as we prefer, energy return on investment, depending upon the specific procedures used. To do this we start with the more familiar monetary assessment and then develop how this relates to the energy behind economic processes [1].
The expansion of the human population and the economies of the United States and many other nations in the past 100 years have been facilitated by a commensurate expansion in the use of fossil fuels. To many energy analysts that expansion of cheap fuel energy has been far more important than business acumen, economic policy, or ideology, although they too may be important [1–15]. Although we are used to thinking about the economy in monetary terms, those of us trained in the natural sciences consider it equally valid to think about the economy and economics from the perspective of the energy required to make it run. When one spends a dollar, we do not think just about the dollar bill leaving our wallet and passing to someone else’s. Rather, we think that to enable that transaction, to generate the good or service being purchased, an average of about 8,000 kiloJoules of energy (roughly the amount of oil that would fill a standard coffee cup) must be extracted and turned into roughly a half kilogram of carbon dioxide. Take the money out of the economy and it could continue to function through barter, albeit in an extremely awkward, limited, and inefficient way. Take the energy out and the economy would immediately contract. Cuba found this out in 1991 when the Soviet Union, facing its own oil production and political problems, cut off Cuba’s subsidized oil supply. Both Cuba’s energy use and its GDP declined immediately by about one third, groceries disappeared from market shelves within a week, and soon the average Cuban lost 20 lb [16]. Cuba subsequently learned to live, in some ways well, on about half the oil as previously, but the impacts were significant and the transition was difficult. Yet Cuba moved away from monocrop agriculture to food production. There are more rooftop gardens per capita in Havana than in any other city. The United States has become more efficient in using energy in recent decades, however, most of this is due to using higher-quality fuels, exporting heavy industry, and switching what we call economic activity (e.g., [15]), and many other countries, including efficiency leader Japan, are becoming substantially less efficient [17–20].
The words “model” and “modeling” are found frequently in economics and in science in general. Therefore it is important that we consider here some of the most important characteristics of these words and concepts and introduce the reader to how they are used in energy studies and in economics. Some of what follows is a deliberate repeat of material in Chap. 12 because the points are important in both places.
It seems imperative that we as individuals who care about the human condition in the poorer parts of the word and about nature
must create a new way to undertake what is usually called developmental economics, usually seen as the application of economic
principles to less-developed nations. Our reasons include: dissatisfaction with the intellectual foundations of conventional
economic models used in development and with the results that have occurred with their use, the general sense of many development
economists themselves that conventional economics has failed, the need to do something that will work, the concern that most
knowledgeable people have that the future, and especially the future of most developing nations, will be much more constrained
by the “end of cheap oil,” and the need to protect whatever nature is left. We generate the “alpha version” of such a model
in this chapter, summarizing certain useful approaches and successes of the past, and using a biophysical basis try to generate
a synthesis to help the reader. We are not foolish enough to believe that we can in one fell swoop cure all the economic problems
that generations of traditional economists have not been able to, but we believe that we do provide a useful basis here for
beginning that process and for generating useful results now for field workers. Although our focus here is on developing nations
the concepts are applicable anywhere.
Much of what traditional economics believes “works” because of clever technology, substitutions, and intelligent investments, in fact does so only because we have had huge amounts of cheap energy to throw at the problem [1]. Our present situation is perhaps most readily captured by the phrases “the end of cheap oil” and “the second half of the age of oil,” created by petroleum geologists Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère. These concepts also apply to a very much broader suite of the basic resources and environmental conditions required to fuel our economy (Fig. 18.1). Although many people are taught and believe that technology has made natural resources increasingly irrelevant, this book contains a great deal of evidence to show the contrary. Our national and global society is becoming more, not less, dependent upon natural resources, as oil, for example, underlies essentially everything we do economically. Second, many of the things that are treated as externalities in conventional economics, that is, as supposedly secondary issues not properly included in prices, are instead what we believe to be often the main issues of economics. Depletion of highest quality fuels is one such issue. More generally, understanding and protecting the basic systems of the Earth, such as the atmosphere, far from being a luxury or an externality as is indicated in conventional economic analysis, are the critical issues for economics.
Once, thousands of years ago, all humans were supported directly and entirely by nature. Our food, water, and everything else
came directly from natural ecosystems as our ancestors, hunter-gatherers, went about their business for a million or more
years. We cannot go back easily to that state because of population growth, for natural ecosystems alone could probably support
no more than a few hundreds of millions of people. Today fossil-fueled systems of agriculture, water supply, and waste disposal
support seven billion people on the planet. Most humans live in environments of concrete, boards, and macadam largely disconnected
from the natural world. Although nature remains very popular in zoos and on television, and lucky youngsters still go camping
with their parents, our population is increasingly disconnected from experiencing real nature or even rural agricultural landscapes,
or from understanding our dependence upon these systems. Food comes from markets, water from faucets, entertainment from electronics
encased in plastic boxes, and so on. But in fact all of these resources and toys and much more are all ultimately derived
from nature, and their provision is usually associated with some degradation of nature and diminishment of natural resources.
In general we do not pay for nature’s goods and services but only for the energy, labor, and equipment to extract them. In
fact we might argue that it is only because we do not pay for these things that we can afford to live at all, or certainly
at the present level of general affluence.
We are sometimes labeled as pessimists, probably because we do believe that the future will have less oil and perhaps less energy than it does now, because we believe that the energy costs of getting whatever fuels we do use will become greater and greater, and because we think these issues will have serious energy impacts. But we do not see this automatically as a bad future, depending on how we deal with it. As boys we each had a wonderful childhood on opposite coasts in the 1950s and 1960s during a period when the U.S. energy use was only 10% or 20% of what it is now. We could go fishing and surfing (respectively) on our bicycles, and had no need for soccer moms driving us around in an SUV. We played sports all the time with neighborhood friends, and went camping and hiking to our heart’s content. There was little of today’s perspective that children must be driven everywhere for protection because we lived in neighborhoods and communities where everyone knew everyone else.
... According to Hall and Klitgaard (2011), one indicator that may be used to describe the evolution of human activities is the amount of energy produced and consumed. For example, the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Night Light Devepment Index (NLDI) [Elvidge et al., 2012] are linked. ...
... Individual and collective practices such as the use of air conditioning, new professional and domestic appliances, or an increase in the number of electric cars, can influence the evolution of electricity production. The variation of electric energy consumption permits to characterize variations in activities [Hall and Klitgaard, 2011;Li et al., 2018;Jones et al., 2015]. ...
Anthropic activities have a significant causal effect on climatic change but climate has also major impact on human societies. Population vulnerability to natural hazards and limited natural resources are deemed problematic, particularly on small tropical islands. Lifestyles and activities are heavily reliant on energy consumption. The relationship between climatic variations and energy consumption must be clearly understood. We demonstrate that it is possible to determine the impact of climate change on energy consumption. In small tropical islands, the relationship between climate and energy consumption is primarily driven by air conditioner electricity consumption during hotter months. Temperatures above 26{\deg}C correlate with increased electricity consumption. Energy consumption is sensitive to: (1) climatic seasonal fluctuations, (2) cyclonic activity, (3) temperature warming over the last 20 years. On small tropical islands, demographic and wealth variations also have a significant impact on energy consumption. The relationship between climate and energy consumption suggests reconsidering the production and consumption of carbon-based energy.
... But our present futures assessment is based around a focus on energy availability and the implications for social complexity that such availability allows. This therefore suggests not a sudden rapid "apocalyptic"-type end to fossil fuel energy sources but rather a more gradual decline contoured by a narrowing energy-availability "envelope" as we inevitably move down the descending side of the empirically derived bell-shaped Hubbert curve which was initially developed to describe oil production (e.g., Hall and Klitgaard 2012). There are some commentators who, perhaps wryly, even look upon the coming decline as an opportunity (e.g., Homer-Dixon 2006;Orlov 2008). ...
... Some have argued that the problem is their low power density -that is, the amount of energy that can be harnessed per unit of land -compared to fossil fuels (MacKay 2013;Smil 2015). Others have focused on their comparatively low net energy or EROI -that is, Energy Return on Energy Invested (Hall and Klitgaard 2011;Prieto and Hall 2013). Both these limitations highlight the importance of redefining "efficiency" in terms of inputs and outputs of natural resources (land and energy, respectively) rather than monetary cost/benefit analysis. ...
Debates on technologies for harnessing renewable energies tend to generate a polarized arena in which critical voices are automatically denounced as defenders of fossil energy. This has created a difficult situation for activists and scholars voicing concerns about the comparatively low power density, low net energy, and environmental justice concerns of such technologies. In this paper, we highlight the contradictions and ambivalences underlying Promethean arguments for solar power, which are currently dividing the political left. Through a critical reading of three proponents of classical Marxism, we address the structural coherence and paradoxes of the discourses within which the faith in such "green" technology is mobilized. We illustrate how Promethean visions of solar power tend to suffer from a pervasive ontological separation of human ingenuity and global social metabolism. This raises important questions about the ambiguous and theoretically underdeveloped role of technology in historical materialism, and about how capital, once converted into the material form of technology, becomes exempt from political critique. Rather than accepting such an immaterial and ultimately depoliticized position on technology, we argue that Marxist scholarship should concede that Promethean approaches must be abandoned if we are to effectively address climate change and other challenges of the Anthropocene.
... In the literature on the subject, an understanding of renewable energy is evident in publications [38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. RESs are generally characterized by lower power density levels; their use competes with other processes of the biosphere, and those with higher potential (i.e., wind, solar) are critically affected by their intermittence and variability [14]. ...
Renewable energy sources (RESs) offer key transformative potential from a societal point of view due to their modularity and ability to generate energy at the local level, allowing for the development of grassroots democratic and participatory initiatives. The paper aims to share insights into the processes of creating RES cooperatives in Poland. One of the first cooperatives to be established in the Upper Silesian region in Poland was the energy cooperative (EC) “Our Energy”. This study presents an in-depth empirical analysis of a community-based renewable energy cooperative. The study employed a case study methodology, including a SWOT analysis framework, to describe the research subject and identify its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Key findings indicate that members benefit from stable energy prices and full recovery of the energy produced, and the cooperative is at the forefront of energy-sharing practices that minimize costs through direct transactions with the local municipality. The strategic goals of the EC focus on expanding membership, increasing the number of photovoltaic installations, implementing energy balancing, combating energy poverty, and reducing emissions. Challenges such as financial constraints and a lack of real-time monitoring of energy distribution are acknowledged, and carbon footprint reduction innovations and stakeholder engagement are highlighted as forward-looking approaches. The study highlights the role of cooperatives as a model for community-led sustainable energy initiatives. However, the study acknowledges the limitations of its small sample size, suggesting the need for broader research to understand the impact of collaborative energy on decarbonization. Future research directions are proposed, focusing on the long-term sustainability and socioeconomic impacts of energy cooperatives. This study contributes to the scholarly discourse on renewable energy cooperatives by offering insight into their potential to bridge the gap between energy producers and consumers and support sustainable community development. The main novelty of this paper lies in its detailed examination of a specific renewable energy cooperative, incorporating SWOT analysis, stakeholder perspectives, quantitative assessments, and a forward-thinking approach. This multifaceted analysis contributes to the existing literature on renewable energy initiatives, providing a valuable reference for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in the field.
... PIB mundial y consumo mundial de energía Fuente:Heinberg (2014). PIB per cápita y consumo de energía per cápita para algunos países seleccionados Fuente:Hall y Klitgaard (2012). ...
Este escrito pretende contribuir a la ya larga polémica sobre la importancia de la tasa media de ganancia productiva capitalista en las crisis de este modo de producción. Tras repasar algunos de los puntos centrales sobre los que ha versado el debate, especialmente entre marxistas, el texto se centra sobre todo en la relación entre la tasa y la masa de ganancia. Se utiliza bibliografía explicativa de referencia y se muestran las razones de la caída tendencial de la tasa de ganancia (CTTG), y cómo la masa de ganancia no se puede desligar indefinidamente de esa caída. Esta última, la CTTG, se evidencia como una fuerza de gravedad ineludible en el capitalismo y para el capitalismo, de manera que los intentos de evitarla, contrarrestarla o posponerla terminan por arrastrar al Sistema hacia crisis cada vez mayores, propio de quien se subiera a una montaña cada vez más alta para desafiar tal fuerza de gravedad. Tras repasar algunas de las consecuencias más graves de esos intentos (exacerbada autonomía del capital a interés especulativo parasitario, generación de ganancias ficticias, reparto fiduciario de un anticipado nuevo valor, merma de las condiciones sociales y laborales, guerra y esquilmación de recursos, entre otras) se indica que el resultado lleva tendencialmente a la Crisis del propio Capitalismo.
To deliver low-carbon transitions, we must understand the dynamics of capital. To this end, I develop a theory of energy-capital relations by reading Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations from an energy-analysis perspective. I argue that, for Smith, capital is any resource used to support production with the intention of generating profits through market exchange. In The Wealth of Nations, capital enables access to new sources of energy and increases energy efficiency. This theory of energy-capital relations explains trends seen in historical energy data: because it is profit driven, capital does not save energy, it redirects it to new uses. This suggests that low-carbon investment can only enable a low-carbon transition if coupled to a systematic challenge to the profit drive. JEL Classification: B12, O44, P18, Q43, Q57
Mauricio Lima (Montevideo, 1961) es profesor del departamento de Ecología de la Pontificia Universidad Católica. Ha desarrollado su carrera académica en Chile, donde se ha especializado en la dinámica de poblaciones de diferentes tipos de organismos. Desde hace décadas estudia las fluctuaciones en el tamaño de las poblaciones de animales y su relación con el cambio global. En los últimos diez años su trabajo se ha enfocado en entender la dinámica de las sociedades, en particular los procesos que gatillan los colapsos demográficos en las sociedades agrícolas del pasado. De expansiones y retiradas El viaje poblacional de Homo sapiens MAURICIO LIMA El viaje poblacional de Homo sapiens De expansiones y retiradas MAURICIO LIMA Ilustraciones: Diego Becas En el viaje poblacional que ha realizado Homo sapiens durante los últimos 250.000 años siempre rigió una ley: crecer, estancarse y decrecer. Durante los últimos siglos, y gracias a combustibles fósiles como el petróleo, nuestra civilización ha crecido como nunca antes. En 200 años se multiplicó por diez el número de habitantes y por casi veinte el consumo per cápita de energía. El costo que pagamos por ello es demasiado alto: la estabilidad de la Tierra corre grave peligro. ¿Es posible alcanzar un desarrollo sostenible o la única alternativa será limitar el crecimiento? De expansiones y retiradas nos invita a un recorrido por la historia poblacional de nuestra especie, intentando encontrar alternativas para este gran desafío que acorrala a la humanidad.
Iron powder, classified as a metal, serves as a versatile energy carrier and stands as a compelling alternative to traditional fossil fuels. Its appeal lies in its remarkable abundance and wide availability, attributes that position it favorably as a sustainable energy source. Notably, iron-based fuels are characterized by their environmentally benign nature, thus constituting a valuable contribution to the realization of a carbon–neutral future. Given the ongoing concerns surrounding climate change, largely attributed to the combustion of fossil fuels and the subsequent emission of carbon dioxide, iron, with its substantial reserves, emerges as a prospective candidate to address the escalating global energy demands. Owing to its exceptional energy density, iron-based fuel holds the capacity to serve multifarious purposes, encompassing the generation of heat, electricity, and the propulsion of energy facilities and vehicular fleets. The noteworthy energy density of iron renders it an indispensable resource across a spectrum of industries and tools, allowing it to function as a reservoir of considerable potential. Iron powder exhibits the capacity to react with air and water, culminating in the production of both heat and electricity through the conversion of its inherent energy. Within the combustion of each iron particle, this chemical carrier behaves akin to a microreactor emitting heat, with the combustion rate of these particles remaining impervious to the ignition time. Furthermore, the combustion by-products of iron powder can be recycled and seamlessly integrated into clean energy technologies, minimizing carbon emissions. This comprehensive review seeks to provide a thorough assessment of renewable iron-based energy carrier. It will encompass an exploration of our current understanding of these fuels, including their reactivity with atmospheric air and the ignition mechanisms responsible for unleashing the flames of this promising energy source. While iron fuel, in its classification as a metal fuel, holds immense promise for the future energy landscape, its true environmental impact and the overall efficiency of the energy cycle remain subjects of ongoing study. This paper also examined both the practical applications and fundamental aspects of combustion involving iron powders, aiming to establish a comprehensive foundation essential for evaluating prospective metal engine technologies. Anticipated outcomes project energy and power densities of envisioned metal-fueled zero-carbon heat engines to approximate those of existing fossil-fuel-based combustion engines. This compelling similarity positions such engines as an enticing technological prospect for an impending era characterized by low-carbon imperatives.
Bez energije nema ni gospodarskog rasta. Stoga je za neometan razvoj gospodarstva nužno osigurati dovoljne količine energije po pristupačnim cijenama. Sve učestalije energetske krize determiniranjem dostupnosti i cijena energenata snažno utječu na potrebu implementacije energetskih i ekonomskih mjera i politika koje će omogućiti neometan razvoj gospodarstava. U navedenim okvirima, zadaća je znanstvenika ponuditi nositeljima politika jasan teorijski i empirijski koncept odnosa energije i gospodarskog rasta kako bi se usvojile energetske politike koje će minimizirati ranjivost gospodarstava i omogućiti održivi gospodarski rast i međunarodnu konkurentnost. Cilj ovoga istraživanja upravo je ukazati na proturječnosti ekonomske teorije i postojećih empirijskih istraživanja međuovisnosti energije i gospodarskog rasta. Dok teorije rasta u potpunosti zanemaruju ili, u najbolju ruku, marginaliziraju ulogu energije, istraživanja uzročnosti gospodarskog rasta i potrošnje energije sve su brojnija iako, još uvijek, inkonkluzivna. Političke implikacije postojećih istraživanja stoje na klimavim nogama te bi se trebale uzeti s velikom dozom opreza. Jedino robusni i konzistentni rezultati istraživanja mogu poslužiti kao čvrsta baza donošenju adekvatnih i pravodobnih mjera ekonomske i energetske politike. Iako je dostupnost podataka jedno od ključnih ograničenja postojećih istraživanja, autori bi u svojim budućim istraživanjima trebali uvažavati multivarijantni okvir, primarno uvažavanjem cijena energije u modelima, te iskoristiti napredne ekonometrijske tehnike.
This paper examines the week-long U.S. bank holiday of 1933, in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded to a banking panic by closing all of the banks and promising that the government would review them and reopen only those that were solvent. When the banks reopened the panic was over, as deposits far outstripped withdrawals. This paper provides a detailed look at the bank holiday, with a focus on the review and selective reopening of the banks. It also tries to assess the relative importance of the bank review in rejuvenating public confidence and hence in the overall success of the bank holiday.
Vaclav Smil discusses the energy crisis facing the world, with crude oil being the main concern of all the countries. The first decade of the 21st century changed all that, with constant fears of an imminent peak of global oil extraction in some versions amounting to nothing less than lights out for western civilization, catastrophic consequences of fossil fuel-induced global warming and a grand unraveling of the post-WW II world order. After 1985 the United States froze any further improvements in its corporate automobile fuel efficiency (CAFE), encouraged a massive diffusion of exceptionally inefficient SUVs and, at the same time, failed to follow the rest of modernizing world in building fast train links. China has traveled further, and faster, along this road than any other modernizing nation. The scale of the required transition is immense.
Deals mainly with the study of energy flow; a unifying principle in ecological analysis and in the analysis of the economy from an ecological viewpoint. Each chapter considers at least one author, natural scientist or economist, who examined the relations between economics and the study of the flow of energy in human societies, and who wrote in the period between 1865 and the 1940's. Ecological economics questions the rationality of both the market and the planned economy as a means of allocating scarce resources. Alternative theories of value and distribution of exhaustible resources are discussed. -P.Davies