In the ‘70s and early ‘80s there were two notable economists/thinkers — E.F. Schumacher and Herman Daly — that articulated some enduring truths about energy and community.
Their contention was that fossil fuels are very long-term concentrations of formerly solar energy. Energy from the sun was first captured and transformed to carbon compounds by photosynthesis, then by centuries, millennia, millions of years of gravity, forced underground by weight, by geology, chemically changing into fossil fuels.
Some of the coal and oils were discovered near the ground, then mined. Then more technological means were adopted to discover and mine the more hidden fossil fuels (underground).
Daly’s and Schumacher’s (and many others) contention was that entire mass of fossil fuels on the planet was finite, whether estimated at 100 years, or 500, or 5,000, that that quantity was tiny compared to historical and prospective human life on the planet.
They described fossil fuels as “savings” or “capital”, to be later used for long-term purposes. And, that relatively current solar energy (photosynthesis, passive solar uses) was income (given free by nature).
They described that using savings for one’s routine current needs was irrational, foolish.
Carbon-driven global warming was only one of the consequences of using fossil fuels, a result of taking 100 million years of savings and consuming it in a 500-year period.
Further, with the very cheap energy, we built norms/addictions to private autos, single family energy inefficient homes, global supply/distribution chain, so much so that we can’t simply redesign and reconstruct.
The only way to achieve sustainability is by socially living within our means, using our smarts to design effective transportation, home heating/lighting, industry, electrical generation, food production.
We don’t have a consented design for change to sustainability.
It is inevitably a contentious process. Urban areas really do ecologically colonize rural, in the form of sources of energy (clear-cutting forests for urban electricity, really? or nuclear and fossil plant siting), sources of materials, and locations to deposit waste.
It is inevitably a class issue, in which the really poor can’t heat and transport at all, working people can’t afford to critically retrofit a home/building. Only the wealthy can and they largely don’t bother significantly because of the economics.
It is inevitably a land-use issue, as we sincerely don’t plan for ecologically designed regions, forcing farmers for example in a global economy to choose between losing money on most agriculture, even in the formerly soil rich Connecticut River Valley, or sell out for sprawl development, or large photovoltaic fields.
If Herman Daly and E.F. Schumacher are accurate, that fossil fuels are finite “savings,” then if we are going to endure, we will have to begin building up our savings (a very, very long process), not consuming them.
Richard Witty lives in Greenfield.