Homework 4 Week 2

The first of the two articles discusses Jevon's Law, in which a new, more efficient type of machinery is created in order to reduce fuel consumption. This is paradoxical however, because it has led many times in the past to increased fuel consumption overall because the new technology is more applicable than the last. It can be more wide spread and implemented in new situations, which is why more fuel is consumed. This paradox can be seen very clearly in the production of jet engines, computers, and coal-fired power plants. In all three, production became much cheaper, which in turn allowed much more of the given item to be produced. Jevon predicted eventual economic instability, possibly even collapse as we become increasingly dependent upon coal and other resources that will run out. He stated that the easier and more efficiently we can extract work from a resource, the more profit can be made off it, and the useful it becomes to us. He also stated the reverse, that the more work be put into obtaining a resource, the less it's actually useful to us. His theory can be applied today, with oil. We may not ever run out of oil, because it will be so expensive and unprofitable to extract, transport, and distribute it after a certain point. The article mentions that we may have already reached the turning point, and oil may no longer a worthwhile resource for the world. True, the world can't reasonably sustain $100 a barrel oil prices, but on the other hand, it's hard to break an addiction. Junkies will go to great lengths for a fix.

The second article is less prophetic, and more metaphorical. It compares the economy we as humans have created to the static ebb and flow of the earth. It argues that in order to remain function as a species, we must maintain steady-state economy. This doesn't mean a stagnant economy, but instead one focused on improvement of its existing parts, not the creation of new parts. We've lived in a growth economy for the past 200 years, so making this shift is likely to be rather jolting. The approach to assisting the poor and needy in this plan is "the rich should reduce their throughput growth to free up resources and ecological space for use by the poor, while focusing their domestic efforts on development, technical and social improvements, that can be freely shared with poor countries." This seems a thoughtful and well formed solution that would in fact help. The author alludes the differences between a growth economy and steady-state economy to the differences between a helicopter and an airplane. An airplane, a growth economy, cannot hover, it would crash. It can only blindly go forward. A helicopter, a steady-state economy, on the other hand, can hover up and down, or fly backwards and forwards. His clever metaphor serves to show that a steady-state economy is an entirely different thing than a growth economy, and that we should focus more on improving what we already have, instead of making new things.

Both articles are rather prophetic in a way. They're saying, "look, here's the solution, dangling in front of you" and we just do nothing. I've seen this in other things too, it just seems to be part of human nature. Why aren't these theories gaining more notoriety?

I agree with the first article that we've past the point of no return. It seems we've hooked on oil and the only way to cure the addiction will be coming clean the hard way. Can you conceive a sort of oil rehab that would ween us all off oil and onto more usable resources?

What's likely to be the next cheap, economic resource we can burn through if we've already used up oil?