Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ability of energy, substitution of labor by mechanical,
prime movers, and increased efficiency of energy conver-
sions to cultural progress. And the extension of Lotka's
principle of maximized energy flows to human affairs
would mean that the most competitive societies would
strive for the highest possible energy fluxes.
Historical perspectives cast doubts on the validity
of the maximized power stratagem in civilization. Expan-
sions of empires may be seen as perfect examples of
the striving for maximized power flows, but societies
commanding prodigious energy flows—be it late im-
perial Rome or the early-twenty-first-century United
States—are limited by their very reach and complexity.
They depend on energy and material imports, are vul-
nerable to internal malaise, and display social drift and
the loss of direction that is incompatible with the re-
sources at their command. And even at the peak of
their physical powers these high-energy societies may
not be able to deal with assailants (be they Germanic
tribes, Vietnamese peasants, or Islamic terrorists) whose
determination more than makes up for their low-energy
status.
Higher energy use does not guarantee anything except
greater environmental burdens. Higher energy use does
not make a country more secure. The Soviet case, with
nearly doubled post-WW II per capita energy use but
with a crippling share channeled into armaments, was
perhaps the most striking example during the latter half
of the twentieth century. Enormous energy use could
not prevent economic prostration, a fundamental reap-
praisal of the Soviet strategic posture, and Mikhail Gor-
bachev's initiation of long-overdue changes. All of this
was too little too late, and by 1991 the Soviet empire,
at
Ever higher energy use is not the precondition for
greater economic prosperity. Higher energy use in farm-
ing does not guarantee prosperous agriculture. Increased
energy subsidies may be used with very poor efficiency in
irrigation and fertilization, may support unhealthy diets
leading to obesity, or may be responsible for severe envi-
ronmental degradation incompatible with permanent
farming (higher soil erosion, irrigation-induced saliniza-
tion, pesticide residues). Higher energy use in industry
does not lead automatically to modernization in poor
nations. Stalinist USSR and Maoist China are examples
of misallocation of energies into inefficient, militarized
economies.
Higher energy use does not bring greater cultural
flowering. If this self-evident fact needs illustrating, it is
enough to juxtapose the Greek urban civilization of 450
B
.
C
.
E
. with today's Athens, or Florence of the late fif-
teenth century with Los Angeles of the early twenty-first
century. In both comparisons there is a difference of 1
OM in per capita use of primary energy and an immea-
surably large inverse disparity in terms of respective cul-
tural legacies. Higher energy use beyond the desirable
annual energy consumption minima does not create a su-
perior quality of life. Higher energy flows actually erode
quality of life, first for populations that are immediately
affected by extraction or conversion of energies, eventu-
ally for everyone through worrisome global environmen-
tal changes.
Higher energy use does not promote social stability.
Just the reverse is true: it tends to be accompanied by
greater social disintegration, demoralization, and malaise.
None of the social dysfunctions—the abuse of children
and women, violent crime, widespread alcohol and drug
use—has ebbed in affluent societies, and many of
them have only grown worse. Higher energy use does
that
time the world's
largest energy producer,
disintegrated.
