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It is mentioned in this post: Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-consumption-are-insepara

It is mentioned in this post: Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-consumption-are-inseparable.html http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-... I don't know a book in English out of my head that explains some inherent features of capitalism. Gail Tverberg does a pretty good job but she does not explain a lot of things, she just assumes that you are aware of some things: "There is No Steady State Economy (except at a very basic level)" http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-state-economy-except-at-a-very-basic-level/ http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-stat... Limits to Growth–At our doorstep, but not recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growth-at-our-doorstep-but-not-recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growt... Partly relevant if you accept: 1. The need of growth in capitalism 2. That growth and energy consumption are interlinked: Galactic-Scale Energy http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e... The was one guy he wrote, I think it was in the HBR if I remember correctly, that he found that the US has more and more industrial output/GDP growth with fewer energy needs. This is not wrong but it is only true because the US outsources energy hungry productions to China. I actually emailed him with some data. Unfortunately he never replied.

philipkglass 6y ago
This is not wrong but it is only true because the US outsources energy hungry productions to China. It's true that the US effectively imports energy via foreign goods, but I don't think that effect accounts for all the decline in US energy consumption per capita. Carbon dioxide emissions are an imperfect but (IMO) good-enough proxy for energy, since the world's energy supply is still dominated by fossil fuels. If the US counted imported goods toward its CO2 emissions, as of 2016 they would be 7.7% higher: https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 Primary energy consumption per capita peaked in the US in 1978: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita?tab=chart&country=USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita?tab... It was down to 79,056 kWh/capita as of 2015, compared to 98,139 kWh/capita in 1978. If you adjust the 2015 number up by 7.7% it's 85,143 kWh/capita -- not down as much, but still down. That's lower than the average for the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s. (And China didn't really become an export powerhouse until after it joined the WTO in 2001.)
- joyj2nd 6y ago
  "It's true that the US effectively imports energy via foreign goods" Not only this. Apple designs IPhones. iPhones are produced in China, some may be shipped to the US, some may be shipped to Europe. If you do this via HK, you basically pay zero Tax on the profits. This leads to: 1. High profitable US tech companies 2. Little tax revenues 3. As a side effect, the US and Europe have a trade deficit with China since an iPhone shipped to the US or Europe appears in the export balance sheet of China. There is a paper, I think from 2007 about this, that calls this "dark matter in accounting" https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878096 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878096 Based on google (it shows me a graph: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+energy+use+per+capita https://www.google.com/search?q=us+energy+use+per+capita ) I would call the per captia consumption basically constant from the 80ies to 2008. After that is is shrinking. Please also see: Is it really possible to decouple GDP Growth from Energy Growth? https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/11/15/is-it-really-possible-to-decouple-gdp-growth-from-energy-growth/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/11/15/is-it-really-possible-... EDIT: Added the link the the dark matter paper
  - philipkglass 6y ago
    I saw Gail Tverberg's writings regularly back in the Oil Drum days. I don't think that she is a credible prognosticator. Like some other people on The Oil Drum, her theme seemed to be that industrial civilization was facing an imminent crisis from energy supply contraction. Did she ever go back and explain why she was so wrong the first time around with predictions like these? https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/what-is-peak-oil/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/what-is-peak-oil/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/is-this-a-false-alarm/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/is-this-a-false-alarm/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/08/06/peak-oil-whats-ahead/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/08/06/peak-oil-whats-ahead/ Did she make more cautious predictions going forward, after making such badly failed predictions 13 years ago? If she did, I didn't see it. It looks like Our Finite World is still a drumbeat of predictions about crises just ahead. If she's eventually correct about a specific prediction it will be a case of the stopped clock showing the correct time by chance. That doesn't mean that I'm unconditionally optimistic about the future. The "Galactic Scale Energy" post is exactly right. The problem is that constraints like "growth can't go on like this for another 1000 years, because of physics" can't provide much guidance for the next 15 years. And predictions from the Peak Oil crowd from 15 years ago about what would happen in 15 years were mostly wrong. My personal take: after the 1960s, people basically stopped inventing more energy-intensive goods and services that could achieve mass market adoption. Jet air travel was the last big energy intensive service to reach the mainstream. The diffusion of energy-intensive lifestyles continued in the United States and is still diffusing throughout the world, so we're rushing toward a global warming disaster faster than ever. But GDP growth per capita in the developed countries has slowed. Energy consumption per capita in the developed countries has stabilized or reversed. Small efficiency improvements in existing technologies accumulate without enough new energy-intensive technologies being invented to push up the per-capita demand from the median American. We are encountering the per capita "limits to growth" in highly developed nations but the limits showed up on the demand side before the supply side. Global warming also -- and unfortunately -- seems unlikely to be curbed by supply-side fuel constraints any time soon, since we don't need any new energy-intensive technologies to blow out the global carbon budget. All we need for that is for the rest of the world's population to try to live like Americans circa 1990.

philipkglass 6y ago

This is not wrong but it is only true because the US outsources energy hungry productions to China. It's true that the US effectively imports energy via foreign goods, but I don't think that effect accounts for all the decline in US energy consumption per capita. Carbon dioxide emissions are an imperfect but (IMO) good-enough proxy for energy, since the world's energy supply is still dominated by fossil fuels. If the US counted imported goods toward its CO2 emissions, as of 2016 they would be 7.7% higher: https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 Primary energy consumption per capita peaked in the US in 1978: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita?tab=chart&country=USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita?tab... It was down to 79,056 kWh/capita as of 2015, compared to 98,139 kWh/capita in 1978. If you adjust the 2015 number up by 7.7% it's 85,143 kWh/capita -- not down as much, but still down. That's lower than the average for the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s. (And China didn't really become an export powerhouse until after it joined the WTO in 2001.)

joyj2nd 6y ago
"It's true that the US effectively imports energy via foreign goods" Not only this. Apple designs IPhones. iPhones are produced in China, some may be shipped to the US, some may be shipped to Europe. If you do this via HK, you basically pay zero Tax on the profits. This leads to: 1. High profitable US tech companies 2. Little tax revenues 3. As a side effect, the US and Europe have a trade deficit with China since an iPhone shipped to the US or Europe appears in the export balance sheet of China. There is a paper, I think from 2007 about this, that calls this "dark matter in accounting" https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878096 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878096 Based on google (it shows me a graph: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+energy+use+per+capita https://www.google.com/search?q=us+energy+use+per+capita ) I would call the per captia consumption basically constant from the 80ies to 2008. After that is is shrinking. Please also see: Is it really possible to decouple GDP Growth from Energy Growth? https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/11/15/is-it-really-possible-to-decouple-gdp-growth-from-energy-growth/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/11/15/is-it-really-possible-... EDIT: Added the link the the dark matter paper
- philipkglass 6y ago
  I saw Gail Tverberg's writings regularly back in the Oil Drum days. I don't think that she is a credible prognosticator. Like some other people on The Oil Drum, her theme seemed to be that industrial civilization was facing an imminent crisis from energy supply contraction. Did she ever go back and explain why she was so wrong the first time around with predictions like these? https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/what-is-peak-oil/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/what-is-peak-oil/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/is-this-a-false-alarm/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/is-this-a-false-alarm/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/08/06/peak-oil-whats-ahead/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/08/06/peak-oil-whats-ahead/ Did she make more cautious predictions going forward, after making such badly failed predictions 13 years ago? If she did, I didn't see it. It looks like Our Finite World is still a drumbeat of predictions about crises just ahead. If she's eventually correct about a specific prediction it will be a case of the stopped clock showing the correct time by chance. That doesn't mean that I'm unconditionally optimistic about the future. The "Galactic Scale Energy" post is exactly right. The problem is that constraints like "growth can't go on like this for another 1000 years, because of physics" can't provide much guidance for the next 15 years. And predictions from the Peak Oil crowd from 15 years ago about what would happen in 15 years were mostly wrong. My personal take: after the 1960s, people basically stopped inventing more energy-intensive goods and services that could achieve mass market adoption. Jet air travel was the last big energy intensive service to reach the mainstream. The diffusion of energy-intensive lifestyles continued in the United States and is still diffusing throughout the world, so we're rushing toward a global warming disaster faster than ever. But GDP growth per capita in the developed countries has slowed. Energy consumption per capita in the developed countries has stabilized or reversed. Small efficiency improvements in existing technologies accumulate without enough new energy-intensive technologies being invented to push up the per-capita demand from the median American. We are encountering the per capita "limits to growth" in highly developed nations but the limits showed up on the demand side before the supply side. Global warming also -- and unfortunately -- seems unlikely to be curbed by supply-side fuel constraints any time soon, since we don't need any new energy-intensive technologies to blow out the global carbon budget. All we need for that is for the rest of the world's population to try to live like Americans circa 1990.