Ron Peterson writes:
> [Nico Paech's] claim that economic growth is primarily due to fossil
> fuel consumption is strange when science and technology have
> advanced the world economy more than fossil fuel consumption.
Marx explained the Industrial Revolution by a quantum leap in
productivity due to the large-scale direct cooperation organized by
the capitalists. Marx overlooked the role of coal. Had England had
to rely on wood and wind power, they would have burned down every last
tree on the island and still not been able to lay the rails of the
railroad network necessary for industrial division of labor. I.e.,
the industrial revolution would have fizzled out had there not been
the so-called fossil fuel bonanza. A good book about this is
E. A. Wrigley's Energy and the English Industrial Revolution
http://www.amazon.com/Energy-English-Industrial-Revolution-Wrigley/dp/0511779615/
Ron also writes:
> Wind power and solar power are becoming very competitive with fossil
> fuel costs and plug-in hybrid automobiles show promise of cutting
> gasoline consumption in half for most consumers.
The problem is not the cost of renewable energy but the time to scale
renewable energy and its necessary infrastructure (transmission,
storage, smart grid) to replace the huge amounts of energy used today.
Green electricity is relatively easy, it is harder to find an
alternative to oil-driven transportation. Furthermore, we should not
overlook the other limitations of this planet other than energy. If
cheap and clean energy were available this would enable a level of
human consumption ravaging the various other global boundaries, such
as food and water (overfishing the oceans), chemical pollution,
species extinction, phosphates. Here is a good TED talk by Rockstroem
about his famous Nature article regarding planetary boundaries:
http://youtu.be/RgqtrlixYR4
Niko Paech makes it crystal clear that continued growth of the world
economy is impossible. There is no such thing as sustainable growth.
Growth that looks sustainable in the rich countries goes at the
expense of people living in the poor countries. Paech also says that
continued growth is not necessary in the affluent countries today. He
compares the need to increase per capital consumption in the rich
countries with a gilded cage.
Hans G Ehrbar
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