Methodological Overview - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 14

After all, the tasks of developing new sources of energy or technologies—
and certainly the restructuring of an entire world economy—are obviously
and unquestionably long-term propositions. It is entirely plausible that the
price shocks, which began in the 1970s, could be interpreted as a forward-
thinking, market-driven response to the onset of an era marked by increasing
absolute scarcity of a vitally critical resource. This would have been a wise
and helpful conclusion, and in fact just the sort of signal that a responsive
pricing system is supposed to send. But this was not the collective interpre-
tation—very possibly because very few wanted that to be the interpretation.
The perceptions of and the implications for the short-term, vested interests
were simply too numerous and too strong.
Consequently, the industrialized nations have indulged in an energy binge
justified by more than three decades of political denial. The party has con-
tinued, marked by stubborn adherence to the premise that continued eco-
nomic growth will somehow overcome the specter of absolute scarcity of
air, land, water, and critical energy resources. Meanwhile, the flexibility for
real-time adaptation is rapidly shrinking. Moreover, recent events in both
the economic and environmental spheres clearly indicate that the necessary
adjustments will be much more painful than they would have been had we
heeded the initial “Limits to Growth” warning bells.
Regardless of the details of how Oil Shock occurred, or perhaps was engi-
neered, the message conveyed by it and other environmentally related phe-
nomena should have been clear: We may very possibly face a future wherein
many natural resources—especially the marquee resource of petroleum—
are in increasingly short supply. Technology can move the problem around,
and shift the carrying-capacity stress to other resource systems, but it can-
not simultaneously relieve pressure on all resources. Indeed, the trade-off of
removing stress on one resource has the effect of inexorably increasing the
stress on others.
Consider the following “vignettes” that are typical of what was often heard
and said at the time, to which we have added editorial comments:
• If oil is in short supply, we should use more coal. This causes acid rain,
causes global climate change, and puts pressure on water supplies
and clean air, which ultimately pollutes the entire globe.
• If food supplies are in question, we could bring more marginal lands into
production and farm more chemically and intensively. This threatens
biodiversity, puts more pressure on forests, nonagricultural lands,
water, and fossil fuel supplies used for fertilizer and pesticides, to
say nothing of acidifying the world's oceans.
• If acid rain due to combustion of coal and other fossil fuels threatens lakes
and forests, we should develop new cleaner technologies and introduce
new cleaner energy sources on a massive scale. Of course, this invokes
new and complex technologies, possibly with long lead times for