Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ing mixtures of harmful substances. Cost-benefit studies
of air pollution control remain a matter of scientific
controversy (Lipfert and Morris 1991; Phalen 2002).
Long-term impacts on vegetation (acid rain, nitrogen
enrichment) are also difficult to quantify, and an even
greater challenge is to monetize eventual multifaceted
consequences of relatively rapid global warming.
An even more contentious matter is accounting for
military expenditures attributable to securing energy sup-
plies. Problems of attribution (what shares of outlays
should be charged to continuing military presence or to
military actions?) and of spatial and temporal boundaries
deployed in such accounting have no unequivocal solu-
tions. Should the cost of Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-
1991 be charged entirely against the price of Persian Gulf
oil? If not, what share? On narrow accounting grounds
the war was actually profitable for the United States. To-
tal pledges of $48.3 billion of foreign help were almost
$800 million above the Office of Management and
Budget's estimate of U.S. funding requirements (GAO
1991). In contrast, there is a huge cost of the aftermath
of the 2003 Iraq war and an even more intractable prob-
lem of deciding what part of it should be attributed to
the real post-2003 price of oil.
One conclusion remains clear: rising disposable in-
comes have made all forms of energy relatively inexpen-
sive in all affluent economies and particularly in the
United States. U.S. expenditures for food bought for
home consumption fell from about 25% after WW II to
less than 10% of total outlays by 2003, and household
and transportation energy purchases accounted for nearly
identical and astonishingly low shares of about 2.5%
(USBC 2006). How could there be any strongly elastic
market response, any public clamor for real change, any
determined policies to reduce overall energy consump-
tion when annual household expenditures for electricity
are lower than for purchase of video and audio products,
or when the spending on gasoline is less than half of the
total spent on eating out?
12.2 Energy and Value
Although the mainstream economics has remained
curiously detached from the challenges just described,
ecological economics has done more than just being con-
cerned with energy as a key driver of economic produc-
tion. Since the 1970s a number of attempts have been
made to elevate energy to the dominant standard of
value and to explain economic growth within ecological
and thermodynamic frameworks. The most radical
approach to valuing human affairs in energy terms is to
put thermodynamic considerations in command of eco-
nomics. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971; 1976) was
the most passionate proponent of this radical shift. He
called the second law of thermodynamics ''the most eco-
nomic of all physical laws,'' and argued that civilization's
foremost goal should be to minimize entropic degrada-
tion. This led him to single out accessible material low
entropy as the most critical bioeconomic element.
Inevitably, this position leads to a rejection of steady-
state civilization, a concept promoted by other eco-
economists (Daly 1973) in response to concerns about
continued rapid growth (Meadows et al. 1972). The
only thermodynamically acceptable size of global popula-
tion is one supportable by purely solar agriculture. This
implies sizable reduction of the current population total
because such a large share of humanity exists due to
high fossil energy subsidies (see chapter 10). An en-
tropically guided civilization would require declining
population willing to live by a new ethics. What are
the chances of constraining (or largely eliminating) the
