energy sustainable. It is important to keep priorities straight when the U.S. and other nations around the world face major challenges on matters of economic prosperity and international security. Withdrawing from the Paris accord will allow the United States to focus its attention on more pressing matters, such as finding real solutions to sustainability problems.
2.5 The Energy Crisis
The crisis was scientifically fomented through the advancement of so-called Peak Oil theory that became the driver of many other theories with great impact on economic polices. Peak oil is one of the concept that promotes the notion that global oil reserve is limited and at some point will start to run out, leading to sharp rise in oil price (Speight and Islam, 2016). These fears are based on premises that are not scientific.
2.5.1 Are Natural Resources Finite and Human Needs Infinite?
In economics, the notion of there being infinite need and finite resources is a fundamental premise that is asserted with dogmatic fervor in contemporary economics. In the context of petroleum resources, this notion has to help foment fear that is actually the driver of contemporary economics. This model starts off with the premise that needs must grow continually in order for the economy to thrive. Then, it implies, without looking at the validity of that premise, that there has to be an endless supply of energy to feed it. Because such endless supply contradicts the other premise that natural sources are finite, there arises an inherent contradiction. One such article is written by Mason (2017), who poses this wrong-headed question:
“But what happens to that equation when the net amount of energy we extract from the earth is shrinking? How, then, does an economy grow exponentially forever if the one element it needs more than anything to flourish is contracting with time?”
Then, he primes the audience with the need of a paradigm shift, that would involve challenging all orthodoxies involving the economy, as if to propose a revolution. Next, he creates a prophet out of a neuroscientist, Chris Martenson, who in recent years has turned his attention to the economy, particularly as it relates to dwindling energy resources and growing debt. Note how the premise of ‘dwindling energy resources’ is imbedded in this ‘revolutionary’ concept. How revolutionary is it? He writes:
“He also got rid of most any equity stocks and put his money in gold and silver. He has been labelled a prophet of doom and a survivalist, by some. But more recently, his views have been receiving wider and more serious attention. He has been to Canada to talk to oil and gas investors, of all people. That’s incongruous given his view that we’re pillaging the Earth of its energy resources in the most inefficient and wasteful ways possible.”
Intuitively, it sounds simple – if I use up a certain amount of a finite quantity each year, it will eventually run out. But that tells you that you cannot have constant or increasing resource extraction from a finite resource, it does not tell you anything about what you do with the resources you extract, how productive they are, or whether or not they enable continued economic growth. It is certainly possible to sustain exponential growth infinitely with finite resources, as long as the usage is confined to sustainable or zero-waste operations.
Similarly, all solutions end up proposing to minimize waste and maximize profit – an economic euphemism for Utilitarianism that has been preaching ‘maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain’ at a personal level. There has always been plenty of discussion in economics discourse about manipulating the interest rate, but never about eliminating it. There are plenty of suggestions regarding how to minimize waste, but one never proposes a solution to achieve zero-waste. There are even talks about continuously increasing productivity, but never talk about the fundamental assumption of infinite need and finite resource.
The notion of ‘The Infinite’ has intrigued humanity for a long time. In ancient civilizations, infinity was not a ‘large number’. It was something external to creation. In other words, only a Creator was considered to be infinite, along with many other traits that could not be part of Creation. However, this ‘infinity’ has nothing to do with the unbounded-ness of nature that has no boundary. Even though the ancient Greeks had a similar concept of infinitude, post-Aquinas Europe developed an entirely different take on infinitude, one highlighted recently by Khan and Islam (2016).
In a study published nearly 2 decades ago, Lawrence Lerner, Professor Emeritus in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Chicago, was asked to evaluate how Darwin’s theory of evolution was being taught in each state of the United States (Lerner 2000). In addition to his attempt to find a standard in K-12 teaching, Lerner made some startling revelations. His recommendations created controversy, with many suggesting he was promoting “bad science” in name of “good science.” However, no one singled out another aspect of his finding. He observed that “some Native American tribes consider that their ancestors have lived in the traditional tribal territories forever.” He then equated “forever” with “infinity” and continued his comment stating, “Just as the fundamentalist creationists underestimate the age of the earth by a factor of a million or so, the Black Muslims overestimate by a thousand-fold and the Indians are off by a factor of infinity” (Lerner 2005). This confusion between “forever” and “infinity” is not new in modern European culture. In the words of Albert Einstein, “There are two things that are infinite, human stupidity and the Universe, and I am not so sure about the Universe.” Even though the word “infinity” emerges from a Latin word, infinitas, meaning “unbounded-ness,” for centuries this word has been applied in situations in which it promotes absurd concepts. In Arabic, the equivalent word (la nihāyah) means “never-ending.” In Sanskrit, similar words exist (Aseem, meaning ‘no end’) and those words are never used in mathematical terms as a number. This use of infinity to enumerate something (e.g., infinite number of solutions) is considered to be absurd in other cultures.
Nature is infinite – in the sense of being all-encompassing – within a closed system that nevertheless lacks any boundaries. Somewhat paradoxically, nature as a system is closed in the sense of being self-closing. This self-closure property has two aspects. First, everything in a natural environment is used. Absent anthropogenic interventions, conditions of net waste or net surplus would not persist for any meaningful period of time. Secondly, nature’s closed system operates without benefit of, or dependence upon, any internal or external boundaries. Because of this infinite dimension, we may deem nature – considered in net terms as a system overall – to be perfectly balanced. Of course, within any arbitrarily selected finite time period, any part of a natural system may appear out of balance. However, to look at nature’s system without acknowledging all the subtle dependencies that operate at any given moment introduces a bias that distorts any conclusion that is asserted on the basis of such a narrow approach.
Figure 2.10 shows how the population in more developed countries reached a plateau while that of less-developed countries continued to grow, albeit with a slowed rate. In terms global energy need, this figure presents an interesting divide. In average, the energy consumption per capita of the ‘less-developed countries’ is an order of magnitude less than that of ‘more-developed countries’. In mathematical terms, it means the world has a capacity of sustaining energy needs of the majority of the population even if the population is increased 10-fold. In practical terms, it means that if we could contain the per capita energy consumption, we would have no worries about natural population growth. Indeed, the energy consumption of the ‘more developed countries’ has been contained. In last 20 years, the most populous ‘developed country’, the USA has shown practically constant per capita energy consumption. The USA is an important case as this country personifies global trend in terms of energy consumption. Historically, the USA has set standards for all aspects of technology development and other tangible aspects of civilization for a duration that has been synonymous with petroleum golden era – i.e., whatever it does today is emulated by the rest of the world in years to come. Table 2.5 shows per capita energy consumption (in tons of oil equivalent per year) of the USA in the last
