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Fig. 2.5 The long-term fall of energy intensity in Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain from
1800 to 2000, in Mj per dollar (constant 1990 $ at ppp). Source Gales et al. (
2007
, p. 234)
advanced designs of these technologies, this often encouraged a further innovative
adaptation that may increase ef
ciency (see below the comparison between the UK
and Austria in Fig.
2.10
).
These historical series stress again the role played by mechanical, thermal or
chemical useful work provided by increasingly cheaper fossil energy sources in the
contemporary increase of labour productivity and capital deepening. As long as the
initial high energy costs of production, based on biomass converters, could not be
reduced, the capacity of the economy to grow would have been strictly limited.
Increasing competition between all lines of production for the same resource base,
derived from the solar radiation converted and stored in the soil by vegetal land
covers, would lead to a necessary curtailment of growth in a steady state. Wrigley
was to draw this asymptotic assumption by studying demographic tendencies in
pre-industrial societies, and also through a careful reading of Adam Smith and
Thomas Robert Malthus. From an environmental history standpoint, whose foun-
dations were laid by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Rolf Peter Sieferle has adopted a
similar perspective of what he calls the
'
socio-metabolic regime
'
based on an
indirect agrarian control of solar energy.
32
Wrigley
s approaches do
not deny that trade specialization could have greatly helped to optimize the use of
available organic resources. Nonetheless, only through the substitution of
the renewable solar
'
s and Sieferle
'
fl
ow captured in the soil through photosynthesis with the
32
Sieferle (
2001
).
