Viewpoints
Viewpoints is a blog in which different writers express their views and opinions on current topics. A new blog post is published about once every four weeks.
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Growth may never return
What will happen when cheap fossil fuels run out? We will soon find out. The growth of the world's oil production came to a halt in 2005, and the production of hard coal and natural gas are declining. Nobody knows where we will get enough energy when cheap fossil energy reserves have been used up.
Jussi Laitinen
Annoyingly enough, fossil fuels are simply great sources of energy. Especially oil and hard coal are highly efficient, as well as easy to use, transport and store. Renewable energy sources are much less efficient. You need 500 wind turbines to replace a small coal power plant.
Regardless of problems, future society will undoubtedly be dependent on renewable energy. But the unavoidable transition period has been postponed for too long. Wind and solar energy will not be sufficiently available by the time there is a shortage of fossil energy. The consequences will be world-shaking, because economic growth is directly dependent on the amount of energy available. The world's energy production and GDP rise and fall hand in hand.
Economists belittle the significance of energy because energy represents a rather small share of national budgets, let's say around 10 percent. But if there is a power failure and petrol pumps stop, economies will not decline by 10 percent - they will freeze. Nothing happens without energy, it literally keeps the wheels turning.
Many researchers say that the record price of oil in 2008 was one of the factors which triggered the financial crisis. Some argue that because of the exhaustion of cheap, easily extractable oil the global economy will no longer be able to recover from the crisis it now faces. This is a radical argument, but there is no evidence proving otherwise - no-one has explained how energy production could continue expanding while maintaining the same economic growth as before.
As fossil energy dwindles, the only sensible thing is to make massive investments in renewable energy - expressly because of its shortcomings. Economical use of energy becomes the norm which controls all activities. Moreover, we should quickly begin to think how an economy works if it does not grow. From the environmental perspective, it's exactly what we need. Growth is poison for the climate because growth relies on dirty energy. After a certain limit, economic growth does not increase happiness either. The end of growth is not the end of the world, but we should start preparing for it with no further delay.
The enormous growth spurt that has taken place during the last 250 years is largely attributable to fossil energy. Growth became the status quo and at some point, the idea was born that growth would continue forever. At the same time, the fact that there had hardly been any economic growth before 1750 was forgotten. The end of growth resulting from energy shortage is, in a way, a return to normality.
Jussi Laitinen is a journalist, nonfiction writer and trainer. His latest book (in Finnish 'Valomerkki – Energiapula ja makean elämän loppu') was published in September.
