Energy economics vs. energy politics.

• Author: Eytchison, Patrick
• Position: Thinking Economically

A society can be compared over time--or two or more societies can be compared--in terms of energy consumption: total and per capita. Thus, total world energy consumption in 1995 was 344.9 thousand Pj (petajoules). North American energy consumption in the same year was 101.68 thousand Pj, while total African consumption was 12.5 thousand Pj. World per capita energy consumption was 60.97 thousand Gj (gigajoules; 1 million Gj = 1 Pj) while North American per capita consumption was 342.91 Gj. [1] While total world energy use has increased over the past decade, differences between geographic areas have remained essentially the same. Such figures constitute a ground on which progressives generally find it easy to orient.

Traditionally, however, progressives have felt less comfortable with energy politics in a historical dimension, and yet today this may be exactly the direction in which progressive theory and strategy must be shifted if the struggle against corporate globalization is to be won.

For nearly 200 years, progressive politics has been based on an assumption, not always explicitly acknowledged, of continually rising energy input for society as a whole, and more specifically of continually rising fossil fuel input--an assumption which thus far historical experience has confirmed. In fact, global hydrocarbon use by humans increased nearly 800-fold between 1750 and 2000 and about 12-fold during the twentieth century. [2] This increase in energy use has been primarily concentrated in the United States and Europe.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

However, historical global per capita energy consumption tells another, slightly different story. From 1920 to 1945, world per capita energy consumption increased at an average rate of 0.69% per year. From 1945 to 1973, this rate of increase jumped to 3.45% per year, at which point it stalled. Between 1979 and 1999, world energy production increased by 1.34% per year, but world population grew faster. As a result, world per capita energy consumption declined at an average rate of 0.33% annually during these 20 years. [2] This decline reflects the fact that global oil production has been essentially level (when annual ups and downs are smoothed out) since 1979 and can be associated with the fact that world per capita grain production peaked in 1985 and has been slowly falling ever since. [3]

For a century and a half, progressive theory has emphasized unequal distribution within world production. Human...