Editors' Introduction: Transition to a Low‐Energy Future

• Author: Clifford W. Cobb,Bart Hawkins Kreps
• Published date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12349
• Date: 01 May 2020

Editors’ Introduction: Transition to a

Low-Energy Future

By Bart Hawkins kreps and Clifford w. CoBB

Until the spring of 2020, it was possible for many people to picture

the global economy as a well-oiled machine. Some of its flaws were

well known—physical scientists have warned for decades that reli-

ance on fossil fuels threatens the survival of our species, and social

scientists increasingly see income and wealth inequality as threats to

political stability. Yet corporate and political leaders projected con-

tinuing economic growth as both necessary and highly desirable. This

faith in “business as usual” was echoed in mainstream media. Progress

in communications, bioengineering, and nanotechnology promised

a future in which human ingenuity could finally overcome the last

barriers imposed by natural limits.

Like the scratching sound of a needle on a phonograph record,

the COVID-19 pandemic suddenlystopped the music. The fragility of a

complex global supply chain was laid bare as never before. Economies

around the world shrank dramatically, almost overnight, and formerly

radical ideas were suddenly on the lips of national leaders and on the

op-ed pages of prestigious newspapers. The tragedy that hundreds of

thousands experienced in hospitals, and hundreds of millions faced

as they struggled to pay rent or buy groceries, also called into ques-

tion conventional wisdom about politics, economics, and ways of life.

Regardless of what happens in the next year or two, it seems unlikely

that we will return to the same world we left behind.

Work on this collection of articles began almost a year before the

pandemic, guided by the belief that “business as usual” cannot and

will not continue for decades into the future. Our belief that major

changes are coming is founded in two realities. First, our climate is in-

creasingly unstable and will present increasingly severe challenges to

human life even if we immediately embark on a rapid and sustained

reduction of carbon emissions. (This reduction is something that, prior

to the pandemic, we had never achieved in spite of the chorus of

warnings from climatologists. Even at the height of the pandemic,

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 79, No. 3 (May, 2020).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12349

© 2020 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

618 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

many business leaders were determined to reverse as soon as possi-

ble the temporary reduction in fuel use.) Second, the global economy

relies increasingly on energy that is costly in the very basic sense that

it now takes greater investment to extract the energy. As a result, there

is less net energy surplus available to sustain economic growth. We

believe that both these trends are becoming more pronounced as we

move into the 21st century, and our preparations for the future must

take these trends into account.

Urbanization or De-Urbanization?

The proportion of people living in the world’s cities has increased

over the past century, and it is common to simply plot a trend line and

draw conclusions such as “by 2050, 68 percent of the world’s popu-

lation is projected to be urban” (UN-DESA 2019: xix). We see things

differently. There are good reasons to believe that the challenges of

climate instability and high energy costs will slow or even reverse the

trend towards urbanization.

Cities arose in history because the surplus created by agriculture

made it possible for some people to shift from primary production to

the role of artisans, toolmakers, educators, and administrators. Food

production was the first—and is still the most fundamental—energy

sector. Over many centuries, the gradual improvements in food-pro-

duction systems provided a greater net energy surplus, supporting

more complex economies and allowing more people to live and work

with no direct personal connection to food production.

That slow gain in net energy jumped by orders of magnitude when

civilizations learned to use fossil fuels effectively. The massive in-

crease in per capita energy availability supported a vast array of new

industries, creating new products as well as services and supporting

the construction of large cities around the globe. At the same time,

fossil fuels transformed food-provisioning systems. Fossil-fueled en-

gines drastically reduced the need for farm labor; artificial fertilizers

derived from fossil gas allowed dramatic gains in harvests even as soil

resources were being depleted; and fossil-fueled food-processing and

transportation systems allowed food to be shipped rapidly around the

world. Relatively few primary food producers were needed, therefore,

619Editors ’ Introduction

to provide the food consumed by large numbers of urban citizens.

Agricultural areas around the world have lost population, while cities

have swelled.

In recent decades, however, the basis of urban expansion has been

stifled. The production of net energy (net of energy used to produce

it) is in decline, even though gross energy production continues to

climb. It takes more work to get the same amount of usable energy

than it used to. In the United States, fracking is temporarily masking

the larger trend toward costlierenergy because of implicit subsidies,

but fracking yields little net energy and is thus unprofitable.Canada,

likewise, celebrates an illusory energy boom in a massive program

of extracting heavy bitumen from the Alberta tar sands. The sudden

market price plunge of oil during the pandemic highlighted the poor

economic viability of these unconventional resources. But it is equally

important in the long run that easy-to-extract conventional fossil fuels

are steadily depleting. It has been decades since new conventional oil

discoveries have matched current consumption.

Since aggregate economic output is directly related to the avail-

ability of net energy, rising energy costs will force the entire economy

to shrink.In the food-production sector, however, labor will become

relatively less expensive, as energy becomes more expensive. More

people will be employed in primary food production, reversing a

trend of the past 200 years, while rising costs of transportation mean

economic activity will have to be located closer to sources of supply

to reduce transmission losses. We expect this will result in the gradual

decline of urban life and the growth of rural activity.

Climate change will be another important cause of large-scale pop-

ulation shifts. Models of how change will affect regions are imprecise,

but we can predict with some confidence that rainfall is going to

be excessive at some times and places, even as drought conditions

arise in others. Cities that experience repeated hurricanes, floods,

or droughts are likely to lose population over time, particularly as

those events accelerate in frequency and severity. Miami, New York,

Mumbai, Shanghai, and even London could become partially unin-

habitable because of rising sea levels combined with higher storm

crests. The 2019 water crisis in Capetown, South Africa is likely to