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This means that each worker has a great deal of capital (hence, energy) with
which to work and thus appears to be highly productive. Even though we
enjoy higher wages, this trend ends up being energy wasteful and employs
progressively fewer people.
For a future that promises to be marked by energy shortages and chronic
unemployment, this current trajectory borders on insanity. The implica-
tions of this questionable and highly unstable situation are explored in more
depth, in conjunction with the critiques of pure economic theory, elsewhere
in this topic.
There are many profound, economic implications of this seminal chap-
ter, and we have only begun to touch on them. Many others are explored
throughout the topic. Sufice it to say at this point that the realities and usage
patterns of energy are at the heart of both the economic and environmental
challenges we currently face. No resource is more fundamental to operating a
healthy economy or maintaining a livable environment than energy. Energy
conversion is the necessary starting point for both economic activity and
environmental sustainability. Both production and pollution begin with the
garnering and conversion of energy. There is no hope for a transition, smooth
or otherwise, to either socioeconomic or social-environmental sustainability
without wise and thoughtful responses to our self-created energy dilemma.
Endnotes
1. Rod Swenson. Emergent Evolution and the Global Attractor: The Evolutionary
Epistemology of Entropy Production Maximization. Proceedings of the 33rd
Annual Meeting of The International Society for the Systems Sciences , P. Leddington
(ed). 33(3):46-53. 1989; Rod Swenson. Order, Evolution, and Natural Law:
Fundamental Relations in Complex System Theory. In: Cybernetics and Applied
Systems , C. Negoita (ed.), 125-148. New York: Marcel Dekker. 1991.
2. Rod Swenson and Michael T. Turvey. Thermodynamic reasons for perception-
action cycles. Ecological Psychology 3 (1991):317-348.
 
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