Alfonso Alfaro’s Reviews > Energy and Civilization: A History > Status Update

For appraisals see Smil 2008b MIT Press.

Georgescu-Roegen's was not hopeful: "Perhaps, the destiny of man is to have a short, but fiery, exciting and extravagant life rather than a long, uneventful and vegetative existence.

Societies focusing more on human welfare than on frivolous consumption can achieve a higher quality of life while consuming a fraction of the fuels and electricity by more wasteful nations.

The Limits of Energy Explanations

They have been behind the heavy subsidies that for decades have gone to producers of fossil fuels and nuclear electricity, and now they are behind the new subsidies promoting the constructions of photovoltaics and wind turbines.

By shaping and often vetoing or disabling, government policies and fixing prices, these groups work against the optimized use of all resources, and inevitably they have a notable effect on the development of energy resources and on the efficiency of their use.

Special interest groups have become certainly the most important microparasites in modern affluent countries. They range from various professional associations and labor unions with restricted entries to oligopolistic industrial cartels and lobbies.

Japan's minor coal resources, limited hydroelectric potential, and virtual absence of hydrocarbons force it to be a major energy importer, and in order to reduce its vulnerability to high fuel prices and import interruptions it became one of the world's most efficient users of energy. Its government bureaucracies have promoted state cooperation with industries, technical innovation, and value-added exports.

The Importance of Controls

The consequences go beyond evident obedience as the spreading power of techniques has already made a large part of humanity irrelevant to production processes & only a small part of the labor force is now required (w/the help of computers) to design & produce items destined for global mass consumption. As a result many people are now commonly employed in selling a product rather than designing, improving & making it.