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The Free Range electrohippies Project – The 'Research Papers' (Q) Series

Q2. Britain's Secretive Police Force

Version 1, April 2009. Produced by the Free Range electrohippies Project
web: http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/ email: ehippies@fraw.org.uk

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Main Index Introduction Summary		Section 1. 'The Background' Section 2. 'The Process' Section 3. 'NETCU, WECTU and NPOIU' Section 4. "The Era of Economic Change" Section 5. Conclusions

Section 4. "The Era of Economic Change"

Why should the present economic and political consensus be so afraid of the challenge posed to its dominance by environmental protesters? After all, at least before the recent economic crash, do we not live in the best of all possible worlds? With our modern culture, so enamoured of the clearly un-ecological trends that define the modern Consumer Society, what possible worry can the political establishment have about the general public taking the ecological message seriously?

However, what if current trends indicated that the economic well-being of our society – from high levels of personal consumption, to hypermobility [see article/report] and growing material wealth – could possibly come to an end within the next twenty to thirty years? Not the end of human society, but rather the end of consumer culture as we know it today (although to some these might be synonymous). There are various people advocating the thesis that consumer culture and the "Western" way of living will effectively end due to the convergence of different trends in human society, some time between now and 2030. The three most significant factors that will govern our future well-being are:

Resource depletion, especially, in the context of the UK economy, the depletion of our own and the world's energy resources;
Climate change, and the unpredictable impact that this will have on agriculture, the environment and the economy; and
Population growth, which is not a problem so much within itself, but rather that resource depletion and climate change will exacerbate the problems of feeding/meeting the needs of the projected population of the planet within the next fifty years.

Of course, these are all environmental factors; they represent the limits of human ecology and the growth of the human economy. Of the movements in society advocating change the one whose message most closely conforms to both the nature of these problems, and the direction of change that they dictate, are the environmentalists.

If the concepts that underpin the Consumer Society – such as growth, consumption and, linking it all, free trade – are endangered by these trends then it also represents a severe crisis for the political establishment that defends them. If the politicians of Western states are increasingly seeking to manage the perceptions of the public, rather than engaging them in a particular ideological outlook, then the most critical aspect of managing change is to manage the popular agenda. If we are going to experience a global resource crisis of the type that the environmental movement has been speaking of – since Paul Ehrlich' The Population Bomb (1968) and the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth report (1972) – then it's the debate over our environment, especially climate change and resource depletion, that politicians must keep control over. If the perception that politicians are in control and represent the best interests of the public is to be maintained then it is the environmental movement which must – like Al-Qaeda after "11/9" or the nefarious "forces of Communism" during the Cold War – be attacked and vilified as a matter of policy.

Of course, this point of view is merely a speculation. What possible evidence is there that such as crisis will occur in Britain, and what possible evidence is there that these trends will lead to the general public questioning the validity of the present political consensus over the economy and social policy? This is the topic that we will examine in this section.

Britain's energy resources

The UK faces a severe energy-induced economic crisis, far greater than the much publicised "electricity gap" that has been in the media recently, because we're running out of indigenous energy sources – both oil, gas and coal. This is totally unprecedented in the history of Britain since, even before the use of coal was widespread, Britain was largely self-sufficient in both food and firewood (Britain's major resource before the Industrial Revolution). Over the next decade we are moving to a position where not only will we be importing the majority of our energy resources, but for a variety of reasons we'll also be importing the majority of our material resources too. Quite apart from the trends that are happening at the global scale, this inevitable future renders the operation of the economic paradigm that underpins British State wholly unsustainable. This change will not take place over a very long period of time – it's almost certain to occur within the next ten to fifteen years.

The graphs below show, using the government's own data, the problem that is developing within the UK energy economy. Indigenous production of all energy resources is falling. Consequently the level of energy imports is rising and the consequential outflow of money from the national economy is beginning to have a drag on the operation of the economy. This is especially true in relation to our level of debt, which is itself increasingly external because of the low level of savings held by the UK population. For example, about 45% of the lending in the UK in 2008 was financed externally, and the loss of this external lending is what is driving the lack of credit available in the UK.

UK indigenous resource slides

Petroleum
UK Peak Oil graph

Natural Gas
UK Peak Gas graph

Coal

Sources:
Oil – Table 3.1.1, DUKES 2008;
Gas – Table 4.1.1, DUKES 2008;
Coal – Coal 1853 to 2007, BERR 2008.

The economic crisis of the 1970s was due in large part to the rising price of oil which, in the UK, was nearly all imported at that time. The development of North Sea production from the mid-70s onwards not only saved the UK from bankruptcy but, as Andrew Marr outlines at length in his History of Modern Britain, the finance generated by oil and gas during the 1980s (and since that date) was the force which allowed Margaret Thatcher to overhaul the UK economy without regard to the immediate economic impacts (e.g., industrial action such as the Miners' Strike). Now, with declining indigenous production, we are returning to the same trends that appeared in the economic crises of the early 1970s – and we have no such valuable indigenous wealth resource to fall back upon to enable a similarly dramatic transition in the structure of our economy.

From the mid-70s British oil production rose, interrupted only by a short-term shut down of production following the Piper Alpha disaster (see top slide above). Then in 1999, about a decade ahead of a number of forecasts (including the International Energy Agency) oil production in the British sector of the North Sea peaked and went into decline. Natural gas production underwent a similar trend (middle slide above), and again peaked about 6 to 8 years before a number of the government's forecasts. This is why there has been such a rush to build liquefied natural gas importation terminals and a high pressure distribution network because the original completion date for these projects assumed the 2009-2011 peak envisaged by the Government's advisors.

Coal production is more complex. Britain has a myth about having "200 years" of coal reserves; we might have had significant quantities of coal a century or so ago but today the estimates of UK reserves vary between 200 million tonnes (the latest government figure reported to the World Energy Council) to 1,500 million tonnes (used by some coal analysts who include the less economic reserves). With current consumption ranging between 62 (2007) and 67 (2006) million tonnes per year that's only 4 to 23 years of indigenous supply left. If we look at the BERR's long-term data (see bottom slide above) British production peaked in the mid-1920s, and has in fact been following a clear statistical bell curve of production for at least the last 200 years. Consequently, from being one of the world's leading coal exporters one hundred years ago (illustrated by the area shown in green) we are now importing almost two-thirds of our coal consumption. This proportion will increase as we build more coal-fired plants over the next decade and coal consumption once again rises.

To bring these trends together we have used data from the government's Joint Energy Security of Supply (JESS) Committee. This was disbanded after their Seventh report caused such unwelcome ripples in the energy industry. They produced graphs for future electricity and gas supply, and tabulated data for oil and coal (together this represents about 90% of UK energy consumption). To this we've added data for renewable energy and uranium (as we have no suitable indigenous uranium resource) and then graphically 'stacked' the data to give a complete profile of how our energy imports are projected to change between 2005 (the last year of real data in JESS' projection) and 2020. The results of this analysis are shown in the graph below – anything above the '0' line is indigenous production, and anything below the line is imported.

A projection of the UK's future energy imports
UK Energy Imports graph

Over the next decade or so we'll move from importing just 20% of our energy needs to importing over 80%. There is only one other major industrial nation that does this – Japan. However, in contrast to the UK, Japan is a primarily an export-based economy (like Germany, another large energy importer) and so it is able to pay for its energy imports without creating a large imbalance in the value of trade. The only other large industrial economy to import large quantities of energy whilst maintaining a primarily service-based economy is the USA – but the USA only imports around 30% of its total energy supply (in 2007 the US imported two-thirds of its oil, about a sixth of its natural gas, but it's self-sufficient in coal and uranium, and it has a large hydro-power capacity). However the USA, because the Dollar is the reserve currency that most of these resources are traded in, is protected from the economic consequences of a high imports policy because of the global demand for Dollars (but if the world shifted to Euros for trade, which has been happening in a number of markets recently, this would imperil the US economy). Even so, like the UK, energy has been one of the largest growth areas of the USA's trade imbalance over the last decade or so.

Global energy resources

The "peaking" of energy/mineral production is not a theory in the UK – it's a fact. For the rest of the world peaking is still a theory until the global production data demonstrates that a peak has taken place in accordance with the statistical bell curve of production. As yet there is still no official recognition of these trends from the UK government, and officially the stated position is that –

"there is sufficient global capacity to meet our future needs."

Over the last few months statements from officials at the International Energy Agency have significantly amended their global projections on the availability of energy resources, particularly oil, issued in November 2008. Even so, there has still been no movement from the UK government on the issue, and even recent enquiries by journalists have resulted in a similar response –

The government does not feel the need to hold contingency plans specifically for the eventuality of crude oil supplies peaking between now and 2020.

The peaking of gas supplies has been obliquely acknowledged by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and the National Assembly for Wales now has a briefing for its members on peak oil. To date the most significant governmental report is that from the US General Accounting Office on the "crude oil peak" (produced in 2007) which was in part inspired by previous work carried out on behalf of the US Department of Energy in 2005 (the much talked about Hirsch Report). Other commentators have expressed concern about present trends, especially the relationship between the diminishing level of spare production capacity and the influence this has on oil prices, albeit they describe these trends as a "supply crunch".

There are few detailed studies of the peaking of global gas resources, but there are some recent detailed reports from the European Energy Watch Group (EWG) on coal and uranium. These are significant because they dispel the idea that either coal or nuclear can be the fall-back position of energy policy if either oil or gas supply becomes problematic. The EWG's report on coal is significant because it was the first of a number of recent studies to question the stated availability of coal, and it demonstrates some interesting trends – such as the fact that declining coal quality means that although the USA is digging up more coal each year, the value of the energy extracted is not increasing.

There are a number of reports that highlight the small level of uranium resources – only perhaps 60 years of supply at current rates of use – and even the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has reported that if the world went nuclear to reduce carbon emissions –

...known uranium reserves would then last only for about a decade.

In the USA some of the expert bodies that advise policy makers have also looked at the resource issue and foreseen problems in the future. There are a number of reports that have emerged from within the US military that focus on this problem because it has grave implications for the USA, both internally, but more importantly externally, as it affects the ability of the USA to project force around the globe to support its foreign policy (and of course, acquiring energy resources is a significant factor in the USA's foreign policy).

One report from the Strategic Studies Institute notes the importance of oil to the domestic economy –

Absent efforts to reduce American consumption, these new demands will lead to soaring oil prices, inflation, and a loss of America’s trade advantage. Both American consumers and the U.S. Economy are already suffering from the cumulative effect of recent increases in gas prices. Even now, fully one-quarter of the U.S. trade deficit is associated with oil imports. By some estimates, America loses 27,000 jobs for every billion dollars of additional oil imports. American dependence on foreign oil is a drain on our economy and leaves us vulnerable to unstable oil prices set by those without our best interests in mind. One needs only look at the impact of Hurricane Katrina to see how oil and our economy are inextricably linked.

Another report from the US Army War College, looking at the effects of restricted oil supplies on foreign policy, puts the problem even more starkly –

The foregoing analysis demonstrates that our national strategy must identify the nation’s access to adequate supplies of oil as a vital national interest. The dire economic, social, and political consequences associated with a severe reduction in imported oil justifies the use of military action, regardless of world opinion. We must act unilaterally if the circumstances hostilities, generate a tremendous amount of anti-American sentiment, lead to United Nations’ sanctions, and fracture friendships and alliances. But compared to the economic effects of an oil shortage, such risks are acceptable.

A report from the US National Intelligence Council makes similar observations –

[other]

The same principles apply to the UK economy which, as noted in the quote above, has for the last two decades been "reliant on petroleum as a major source of revenue". But as a developed nation Britain in fact faces both sides of the problem – both a shortfall of revenue as we must import more energy, and the problematic shortages that a constraint on importation entail. At present the failure of the government to consider this issue "significant" means that there has been limited official research in this area by British governmental agencies.

Although much of the debate about 'peaking' tends to be related to oil, for the UK economy it's natural gas that's the greatest problem. The amount of oil used in the UK has hardly changed for 30 years and so it's significance has fallen, but about two-fifths of our energy supply is based upon natural gas. Quite apart from the problematic issue of peak oil, peak gas has the potential to completely cripple the UK economy because we are wholly reliant upon it for heat and power – whatever the price we will have to pay to import it if we carry on our present economic policies.

The most controversial aspect of the studies of the production peak in the world's major energy resources is the attempt to combine them – giving a view of what's come to be known as "peak everything". Again, rather like the graphs above for the UK's imports, by combining the various estimates of resource availability, and the mathematical functions that will define their future production, we can produce a very general prediction of what the future availability of energy might be for the next century or so. The graph below is from the book, Energy Beyond Oil. It was produced in 2004, but its results are broadly in agreement with more recent studies of resource availability subsequently produced.

"Peak Everything"
Global 'Peak Everything' graph

Energy and economics

The obvious implication of the above graph is that, from the 2030s onwards, the "modern" human species will have to undergo a contraction of economic activity because there will be physically less energy to support its present mode of existence (in practical terms it's the natural gas peak, not the oil peak, that will define the point of "peak everything"). The physical restrictions on other energy resources, but most importantly the thermodynamic restriction on how energy can be utilised and the relative physical "quality" of energy sources, does not permit the substitution of the "lost" energy from any other source.

Within the world of economics this point about the quantity and quality of energy was outlined by two of the significant figures in ecological economics, Charles Hall and Kent Klitgaard –

Thus what all of these "mainstream" production functions fail to emphasize is what every biophysical economist knows to be the truth: it is the energy that does the work of producing wealth, and is essential for its distribution as well, whether that energy is derived from land, labor or capital-assisted fossil fuels. Ayres, Kuemmel and Hall and Ko have shown that the production of wealth in industrial societies is almost perfectly a linear function of the energy use in those societies, and that the correlation gets tighter and tighter when proper corrections are made for the quality of the energy used (e.g. coal vs. electricity) and for the amount of energy actually applied to the process (e.g. electric arc vs. Bessemer furnaces). Much, perhaps most, technology is ultimately about these things.

They go on to summarise the issues that confront us by saying –

Essentially no resources today can be viewed as truly sustainable at present rates of production, consumption, and growth because all are subsidized by cheap petroleum... As the supply of cheap petroleum is exhausted through the increased exploitation of the earth’s highest quality and most accessible energy resources while demand for its products continues to grow, the world will likely be in for some very rough sledding ahead. We as a society must recognize the need for a more biophysically-based economic system, which includes a focus on material things such as land, water, soil, food, timber, other fibers and, most importantly, energy. The economy must focus once again on the most fundamental issues of providing food, clothing, shelter, basic transportation and other necessities. It must come up with real solutions to the critical problems we face (e.g. energy depletion and impacts, soil erosion, over fishing, water management, massive inequity in the distribution of wealth etc.) that have been neglected thus far due to our temporary patch up "solutions" of cheap oil. We must rethink very carefully what any increase in efficiency might bring because of Jevon’s paradox. We must think about the critically-needed international development assistance in entirely new ways, and we cannot allow an unjustified faith in the supposed virtues of neoclassical economics mask where it is used to sanctify the massive neocolonialism sweeping the less developed world. If in fact the grim results of the Limits to Growth do come to pass do we castigate those politicians who for "moral" reasons removed population from the agenda of the United States Government? How about those economists who argued foolishly against that model’s utility or, more generally, a biophysical approach to the Earth’s problems? Do we put them in jail for the lives lost and for encouraging us to make investments in the wrong places?

These seemingly depressing conclusions have been further reinforced by a recent re-evaluation of the "Limits to Growth" hypothesis, published by the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in 2008. The conclusion of the report states –

As shown, the observed historical data for 1970-2000 most closely matches the simulated results of the LtG 'standard run' for almost all outputs reported; this scenario results in a global collapse before the middle of this century"... contemporary issues such as peak oil, climate change and food and water security resonate strongly with the feedback dynamics of 'overshoot and collapse' displayed in the LtG standard scenario.

The issues of "peak everything" or "overshoot and collapse" are of course a complete anathema to the strictures of neo-classical economics. Such options don't exist within their outlook because it is a sceptical hypothesis; accepting the theory would invalidate the core of their growth-led economic philosophy (even though, in any practical examination, this approach does not offend economic philosophy but rather the ideological and political concepts of the growth economy). The failure of the present economic and political system to consider these trends, because it represents a challenge to their present orthodoxy, is a far greater problem than the peaking of energy production itself – and it is in fact the greater challenge that we face. This transition is manageable, but only if we begin adaptation as soon as possible. If our political and business institutions try to maintain their delusion that continued growth is possible then we will be in a far worse position when "peak everything" finally comes.

In the UK we have had over two centuries of industrialised growth, albeit "economic growth" has only been at the heart of political policy for the last fifty years – the first budget that set the policy of growth at the heart of all other considerations was the Conservative Chancellor Rab Butler's budget of 1954. Against a fifty year history where government policy has sought economic growth as the core principle of governance, "producing more", be that renewable or other forms of energy, is a far simpler option than initiating a programme to try and use less. The greater challenge that we face is how we adopt the opposite perspective to present economic policy – and seek to use "less" – as, psychologically, this transition necessitates not just a change of policy but also a fundamental change to the perceived role of the "human animal" within the Earth's finite ecosystem.

Renewable energy cannot substitute for the scale of fossil fuels use

Of course, in the face of these seemingly insurmountable problems for conventional economics, the debate might then switch to energy efficiency or new green technologies, for example, the "Green New Deal", and its promotion by some groups within the environment movement. However, none of the energy efficiency measures of the last 50 years has reduced energy consumption within the economy as a whole; it might, at the micro-economic level, but at the macro-economic level these measures actually spur on growth. In any case, energy efficiency measures are a one-time saving, and due to the unfortunate realities of the Second Law of Thermodynamics energy efficiency is a diminishing return. However, despite such technical limitations, if we look at the present public dialogue it would appear that the media and politicians would rather present infeasible technological solutions rather than address the basic consumption trends that are driving these problems in the first place.

Over the last century we've done many of the "big" efficiency savings, and so set against a growing economy it can provide little in terms of future gains (we'll explain why in the "energy efficiency" sub-section below). Some new technologies might deliver a saving but only against the background of a static or contracting economy. This is because, in nearly all cases, the level of consumption growth exceeds the level of efficiency savings, and so a significant reduction can only be achieved with an impossibly large change in the intensity of use (as outlined in the recent New Scientist special report on growth). Viewing the problem realistically, we will have to significantly cut not just economic growth in the coming years, but also our present levels of consumption, in order to match the level of energy/resource utilisation and the likely levels of resource depletion that will arise of the decade or so following "peak everything". This is because depletion levels are likely to exceed the levels of system-wide efficiency improvement that we can deliver technologically – or to put it more simply, without changing our patterns of living technological measures cannot reduce demand faster than the rate of depletion.

There are various ways in which we can compare energy consumption and growth, but often the results depend upon the indicators that you choose. Some indicators, such as energy intensity, are unrealistic as they exclude the embodied energy of imported/exported goods. The more fundamental problem is that not all types of energy are equal. As part of their application by society some types, or rather qualities, of energy are better than others. During the Twentieth Century, through greater mechanisation, energy was used to replace human labour directly, in the process creating a more dependent link between the use of energy and the growth of the economy. The problem is that the simplistic indicators use by economists, such as energy intensity, do not recognise this transition. Consequently they fail to give a realistic connection between our use of energy in the economy and the depletion of natural resources and our impact on the environment. Some more recent studies of the complexity of the relationship between energy use and the economy highlight this critical trend –

Together these results suggest that accounting for energy quality reveals a relatively strong relationship between energy use and economic output. This runs counter to much of the conventional wisdom that technical improvements and structural change have decoupled energy use from economic performance. To a large degree, technical change and substitution has increased the use of higher quality energy and reduced use of lower quality energy. In economic terms this means that technical change has been ‘embodied’ in the fuels and their associated energy converters. These changes have increased energy efficiency in energy extraction processes, allowed an apparent ‘decoupling’ between energy use and economic output, and increased energy efficiency in the production of output.

In relation to renewable energy sources this is one of the critical points – it's not just the scale of renewable energy that's the issue, it's also the physical quality of those sources compared to the quality of the fossil fuel sources that many advocates of renewable energy wish to replace.

In terms of the development of renewable energy sources, the concentration of effort in many countries is on electricity-producing renewable sources. This is because, in terms of the current largely liberalised energy market, certain renewable energy sources (predominantly wind, tidal, hydro and biomass combustion – although photovoltaic power and concentrating solar power are still limited by market conditions) can be scaled up to a size where they can connect to the grid system and compete in commercial terms (albeit with varying levels of support).

Globally, and in the UK, electricity is only a minor constituent of energy consumption overall – it is heat (especially space heating) and motive power (transport fuels) that dominate the demand for energy globally. The systemic problem with the current conception of renewable energy is that we are not supplanting actual energy demand (as shown earlier) but rather concentrating on those sources that produce an economic return within the present consumption-oriented system. The fact that we focus on one type of energy – electricity – also means that the decisions being taken today are at odds with the efficient use of renewable energy sources. For example, one of the growth areas in the UK's renewable energy sources has been plant biomass, but as the majority of this is being burnt in coal-fired plants at 35% efficiency (or less) this does not represent anywhere near the best possible return on the resource. If burnt on a smaller scale, we could get 70% of the energy embodied in the fuel if we used it in small-scale combined heat and power systems. As a result we could get twice as much renewable energy from the same amount of biomass fuel now burnt in conventional power plants.

This brings us to the next problematic point about the present system – it does not recognise that there is a hierarchy of renewable energy sources. Contrary to the conventional conception of a functional hierarchy, based on the source or technology involved (as is the case with the waste hierarchy), it's a hierarchy based on application. For example: Plant biomass absorbs about 5% of the solar energy shining, per unit area, on a field each year; of the original solar irradiation only about 0.6% is fixed as extractable energy (biomass); using the most efficient methods, we can recover about 40% of this energy as electricity for export to the grid; consequently, we produce about 0.2% of the solar energy that shines on the field each year as electricity. Conversely, if we put a solar hot water panel on a roof we might get 4% to 6% of the solar energy that falls onto the panel each year converted into usable heat. Therefore, in terms of the comparative hierarchy, to heat hot water it's 20 to 30 times more ecologically efficient to use solar thermal heat directly than plant biomass to generate electricity and then heat the water electrically via the grid.

The above example illustrates a rather disturbing fact – when we look at current government policy and industry practice today it's the least ecologically efficient options that are favoured, both in policy and in economic terms. Present energy policy, following on the "growth" model that it underpins, favours large and centralised systems of production that represent the greatest economic efficiency, not the decentralised systems which represent the greatest ecological efficiency. From the use of road vehicles to the production of industrial plastics, we can carry out similar comparative analyses to find the most efficient means to convert the Earth's renewable energy flux into usable energy and materials – but such ideas are not leading the development of renewable energy sources today.

There is a fallacy promoted within the environment movement that humans only use a minute fraction of the energy that falls onto the Earth from the Sun each year. Whilst this may be true statistically, in practical terms only a small fraction of this energy is available for us – the human species – to use. That energy flow must be shared with all other organisms on the planet (i.e., if we utilised all that energy, the Earth would be dark and cold for any non-human life form), and, in reality, the relative amount of energy available is small when we consider the efficiency with which it can be captured (as shown in the biomass/solar hot water example above).

Practically we cannot know how much energy humans might be able to sustainably extract from the environment because such data – including the relative net energy of different options – does not exist. Just as there is an ecological hierarchy of technologies based upon application, there is also a hierarchy of locations where we get the best energy return (the highest net energy/EROEI) compared to others. The current policy of placing most of Britain's wind capacity on mountains or off-shore is an acknowledgement of this principle but, because the net energy varies from location to location, as we progressively develop in less favourable areas the net energy level falls. So as time progresses, much like the level of conventional energy production peaks and falls, so the level of energy production from renewable sources – or rather, the amount that we can incrementally increase production by over a fixed period of time – will fall also.

There are various reports that try and assess the theoretical capacity of renewable energy production in the UK (for example, by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution or CAT). So far none looks systematically at the total level of renewable energy resources in the UK taking into account the various technological and geographical influences upon the net energy of production. In fact it is this difficult issue of the Second Law or exergy efficiency which is the foundation of answering the question, "how much renewable energy is there?"

A Flow Model of the Earth's Energy Cycle
Earth Renewable Energy Flow Model image

The diagram above shows a model of the annual energy flux within the "Earth system". Alongside each flux/reservoir the boxes at the edge illustrate where we can remove energy from this system using various types of renewable energy technology. In reality, whilst these figures show the scale of the natural energy flux, we cannot directly base our resource estimates on these figures. Due to the thermodynamic restrictions the utilisation of the flux entails a significant loss of energy, partly due to the relative inefficiency of collection, but primarily because of the low quality (in comparison to fossil fuels) of renewable energy sources. Each option, because it entails the use of energy to develop and use these resources, also has a net energy (or, energy return on energy invested – also called EROEI, or second law/exergy efficiency) value that, like the present values for fossil fuels, has a large influence on the overall efficiency of energy extraction.

A related issue to the consumption of energy resources is the effect that consumption has on the world flows of financial capital. Presently oil and gas are not just sources of energy – they are sources of wealth that finance the countries producing them. Unlike conventional energy resources, large renewable energy projects do not produce the "pure profit" that conventional investment projects do (some figures I've seen suggest that land-based oil production produced a 10,000% rate of return on investment, when including government royalty payments) – the money must be commercially loaned and, depending upon the rate of risk, interest paid upon the loan. An associated flaw is therefore that within any debt-based system/project you must grow the economy otherwise you can't pay back the debt with interest, but it's precisely this unrestricted growth that is at the root of our present problems (and so in terms of the ecological impacts the levels off-set could be much less, depending upon the type of project, than that created by the project). Conversely, if we opt for systems which are localised, low tech., and locally maintained you have greater flexibility in both design, operation and maintenance. Not just in the systems adopted, but even how they are funded (e.g. a village water supply run on barter between suppliers and providers rather than an externally debt-based venture).

Another issue that research on our future capacity to produce renewable energy, or in fact energy in general, fails to consider is the issue of resource availability. The conversion of renewable sources into a transportable and diverse range of energy sources shares the same fundamental flaw as the development of conventional energy sources; from hydrogen fuel cells and battery powered vehicles to concentrating solar power and the large power grids required to utilise the energy they produce, the resources required, are running out, especially the rare earth metals which are an essential component of modern electronics and/or energy storage (e.g., the copper–indium–selenium gate PV cell and the restrictions that resource depletion has on the future use of this technology). Some of these essential elements in the production of modern electronic technologies and specialised materials, such as indium or germanium, may have only a decade or two of "viable use" remaining (that is, their price does not make them prohibitively expensive to utilise).

Other estimates of how much renewable energy the UK can utilise assume that we will import significant quantities of renewable energy, as biofuels, electricity or processed raw materials. However, it's this type of resource colonialism that has created many of the problems, from geopolitical instability to environmental damage, and locking ourselves into plans that perpetuate this approach will only make matters worse. In a world where resource depletion and climate change will be potent drivers to create conflict, adding to this by placing our demand for energy and resource upon other nations will not help. The best example of this at present are the proposals for concentrating solar power schemes in North Africa. The problem with initiatives like this is that they fail to tackle or even address the underlying economic drivers of environmental degradation and resource depletion – the growth in human resource consumption. For this reason, instead of assisting change, such proposals often help to perpetuate the delusional views of politicians and the general public on the climate and resource crises, and the extent to which we can address these problems without significantly changing lifestyles.

Climate change

We do not have a carbon problem, or for that matter an energy problem – we have a consumption problem. Whilst governments fail to tackle this essential reality we will never tackle the climate crisis. If we look at the problem historically we see some interesting, and in the context of today's debate perhaps unwelcome, facts.

Global fossil fuel carbon emissions 1751-2005 graph From 1751 (the beginning of The Industrial Revolution) to 2005, the global use of fossil fuels has released around 321 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere (that's the weight of elemental carbon not molecular CO2). Given that it takes 30 to 50 years for that carbon to have an effect on the climate (because we release it at ground level and to have an effect it must migrate throughout the atmosphere) we need to look at emissions before and after 1976 (the data in the slide above runs up to 2005) to judge the impacts today.

Before 1976 the world released 138 billion tonnes; from 1976 until 2005 the world released 183 billion tonnes. In short, 57% of all the carbon released from the use of fossil fuels is "in the post" and there's not a thing we can do about it. We are going to get climate change – much of the recent scientific literature on this subject makes this point clear because climatic positive feedback mechanisms are already coming into operation before the 30-year lag of carbon has taken its full effect. Recent surveys of climate scientists also show a consensus that the present political process, with it's economically based imperatives, will not succeed in avoiding a warming of less than 2°C. The survey results set out the reality of our present situation, where the "factual" view of science does not accord to the "ideological" political outlook –

The issue we are working towards today is not "stopping" climate change but avoiding dangerous climate change – and that is a wholly different set and scale of concerns that are not reflected within the popular debate on climate policy. Present policy in fact create a cognitive dissonance – climate change is presented to the public as a serious problem that imperils humanity but at the same time the Government and the media's policy focus, from plastic bags and low energy bulbs to roof-top wind turbines, in no way matches the scale of that problem. As a result, since the public see no change from the top of a scale to match the perceived crisis, what motivation do they have to change their own patterns of living?

Energy depletion and economic growth

If we look at the trend of global fossil fuel emissions, shown in the graph above, we can see that apart from the obvious exponential increase in emissions it's not a neat curve. There are a number of pronounced "saw teeth" when emissions suddenly fell. Obviously this is the sort of trend we need to adopt in order to reduce emissions but unfortunately (for us as advocates for change, as much for our politicians who need to consider these options) every one of these instances was a global economic recession.

For example, in the years 1929 to 1932 global carbon emissions from fossil fuels fell by 26% – a quarter in just four years! However, from 1980 to 1983 the reduction was only 4% (which is probably a good model for the likely results of the present economic downturn). Even so, the present economic downturn will achieve far more to reduce global carbon emissions than a decade of work on the Kyoto Protocol.

What the data demonstrates is that if we're looking for a real and sharp reduction in carbon emissions then the only way to secure it is through a contraction of the global economy; many academics know this; many environmentalists within the mainstream campaign groups know this, even if they dare not acknowledge it in public; the greater problem for the future of our planet is that, even if most senior politicians are aware of this fact, they dare not publicly accept it because to do so would be the end of the one trend that they hold above all other performance indicators – economic growth.

We recently saw a rather comical example, which illustrates the point made recently in the New Scientist that "politicians dare not limit economic growth", when the Conservative shadow health spokesman, Andrew Lansley, suggested that, "on many counts, recession can be good for us" – and was subsequently put into a 'media quarantine' for a few weeks by the Party's spin doctors as a result.

To illustrate the implications of economic growth in detail let's pick one measure of human development – global carbon emissions. There is good data on carbon emissions going back a few decades, and before this the scale of emissions can be estimated back to the beginning of the industrial revolution (primarily based upon the production and use of fossil fuels, which make up a large proportion of the anthropogenic [human created] emissions). This is the same data as shown in the graph above, but this time we've illustrated the exponential trend as a curve and as a series of boxes to demonstrate the effects of the doubling time function within exponential growth.

The graph below shows the increase in global carbon emissions (in millions of tonnes of carbon per year) from 1850 to 2000. On top of this data are drawn the trends which identify that the growth in emissions has an exponential trend –

An exponential curve – this is a smooth curve drawn through the data to show the average level of the exponential growth trend; and
Boxes to illustrate the doubling time – the dimensions of the boxes show that in equal periods of time (the width of the box) the scale of emissions (the height of the box) doubles.

Carbon emissions, exponential growth and doubling time

Economic growth amplifies the amount of money, and hence consumption and resource use, in the economy. In turn, carbon emissions increase globally in step with the level of global economic growth, and as fossil fuels make up 88% (in 2007) of the global consumption of energy that is powering growth, the level of change will be significant. What is interesting about the change in carbon emissions over this period is that there are two identifiable trends; one running from the 1800s until around 1970 or 1975, and a second (the 'new trend') that emerges after 1975. The change in the historic trend very nearly halved the rate of growth in carbon emissions, and the 'doubling time' doubled as a result. There is a clear reason why the trend changed at this point – the 1973 Oil Crisis (which some call the "First Oil Crisis" in order to differentiate it with present trends in oil prices and production).

Before 1973 oil prices had been historically very low, averaging $13.81/barrel over the fifty years from 1924 to 1973, and $12.77/barrel in the boom period between 1949 and 1973. Over the twenty-five years from 1974 to 1998 (before the current upswing in prices) oil prices averaged $42.58/barrel – over three times higher. What happened to break the trend in emissions shown in the graph above was the sudden change in the average oil price, and the economic recession/high inflation this brought with it, and the knock-on effect this had on general energy/materials consumption. In the parlance of energy economists, high prices generated demand destruction – for many people oil was too expensive to burn in the same quantities as before. As we saw prices rise recently, from 2004 to 2008, up to and beyond the historic high prices seen in 1980, we also saw a fall in energy consumption in the western economies, followed by a break in the trend of increasing global carbon emissions, as global growth stalled and went into recession.

The relationship between economic growth and the wider environment is also interesting because, by and large, modern neo-classical economists can't fully explain where growth comes from. The standard view of growth (from Adam Smith and Marx until the late 20th Century) was that it is generated by applying capital (money) and labour (people) to produce profits. It was thought (under the Cobb-Douglas production model) that every 1% of additional labour produced 0.7% of growth, and every 1% of additional capital produced another 0.3% of growth. In the 1950s, the US economist Robert Solow found was that this view could only explain about a third of the observed growth in the economy – something else, not identified in the Cobb-Douglas model (and later called the Solow residual) was driving growth.

More recent research by a German group led by Professor Reiner Kümmel, and other work by the American Professor Robert Ayres, have largely identified the source of this residual growth: The majority of the value of growth is due to the actual increase in the level of energy consumption within the economy (where each 1% of energy growth produces around 0.5% of economic growth). Another significant contribution is made by improving the levels of energy efficiency, because improving the utilisation of energy in the economy overall has the effect of increasing productivity because it allows more work to be done with the same amount of energy, and this adds around another 0.2% for each 1% of average economic growth.

This seemingly miraculous role of energy in the economy makes sense because, in terms of thermodynamics, burning energy allows you to do/make more "stuff". In fact, one of the key trends of the Technological Revolution has been the replacement of human labour with machines, and so we should expect that energy utilisation would have an impact upon growth in lieu of the value of human labour identified in the early industrial economy. For example the energy contained in one barrel of oil (or an equivalent 1,551 kilo-Watt-hours of electricity, 14 cubic metres of natural gas, or 215 kilos of coal) represents the equivalent of 25,000 hours of human labour – that's 12 people working 40 hours a week for an entire year. Increasing the level of energy in the economy represents the equivalent of adding more labour to the economy, but at a vastly cheaper rate than real human labour. For the energy value of one barrel of oil, which currently costs about £35.80 (at roughly $53 per barrel and an exchange rate of £1:$1.48), the equivalent amount of human labour, assuming a low rate of pay (£5.73/hour, equivalent to the minimum wage rate), is worth £143,250. Oil-as-labour is four thousand times cheaper, and hence more productive, than direct human labour! Of course, as oil prices rise, the "equivalent labour value" of oil drops, and thus in economic terms the economy is becoming "less productive" and growth reduces. As price of that energy rises it represents a drag on the economy because it increases production costs as productivity falls, which stokes inflation and in turn will drive labour costs, and overall these trends reduce the level of growth. This is the "new trend" effect that we can see illustrated in the graph above.

As unit costs rose following the 1973 oil crisis, inflation rose, and so profits fell and in turn this reduced the real value of economic growth across the economy. As these changes were internalised within the economic system over the decade or so that followed – and arguably the early 80s recession that was the readjustment that internalised the new energy prices – so the economy recovered and began to grow strongly again. Recently we've seen the same clear evidence that the present economic crisis was not ultimately due to "sub-prime mortgages", but rather the rise in oil prices and other resource costs. Other projections show that, once the world begins to grow again at the end of the present recession, oil prices could rise once more and repeat the recession cycle far more quickly than governments might anticipate as part of the usual "business cycle" –

The $140/barrel price in the summer of 2008 and the $60/barrel in November of 2008 could not both be consistent with the same calculation of a scarcity rent warranted by long-term fundamentals. Notwithstanding, the algebra of compound growth suggests that if demand growth resumes in China and other countries at its previous rate, the date at which the scarcity rent will start to make an important contribution to the price, if not here already, cannot be far away.

The high energy prices of the last three years have once again generated an economic recession, and although it might be blamed upon the "sub-prime crisis", to a large extent the sub-prime issue was initiated by high fuel and food prices hitting the domestic budget of those who held sub-prime mortgages.

Energy efficiency and renewable energy

Of course, whenever the issues of carbon emissions or energy shortages are mentioned, there are always two ideas that are at the somewhere near the top of the list of solutions: renewable energy and improving energy efficiency. In fact, whenever the issue of carbon emissions or energy consumption is raised Government ministers will always make a great play of how new renewable energy sources, or energy efficiency schemes, will solve our problems. Again, relating to the "reality of the political debate" issue raised at the end of the Sections 1 and 3, there is no clear proof that these "solutions" will have the significant impact proposed.

In physical terms we don't use energy, we merely degrade its quality – and once degraded we can never recover that 'quality' again. Under the Second Law of Thermodynamics although the amount of energy that goes into any system equals that coming out, the energy that comes out is of a lower quality and so is less useful. For example, a stream always flows down hill; we could pump the water back up the hill again but the inefficiency of the pumps and the production of energy to run the pumps means that we'll use more energy to send the water back up the hill than was released when it came down.

The practical implication of this law is that efficiency savings are limited, but more significantly because the effect of the Second Law on efficiency is a curve not a straight line, it's easy to save a certain amount of energy, but each time we try and save the same amount again it gets progressively harder. The application of the Second Law is directly related to the value and role of energy or ecological efficiency on the growth debate (or "exergy efficiency", as referenced earlier). The standard response of many experts in the energy and environment debate is that in response to rising energy prices, or energy shortages, efficiency savings can deliver meaningful benefits for the environment and society. In reality, many studies indicate that this is not always the case, and instead we have to look at the total energy flows that support society and how changes in consumption affect consumption overall. Contrary to the position of many in the energy and environment debate, the available evidence from the last one hundred and fifty years is that against the background of a growing economy, energy efficiency does not produce the scale of savings that are anticipated.

This may seem paradoxical, but if you think about the origins of economic growth described earlier then it makes sense. Energy efficiency increases growth; growth increases consumption; therefore greater energy efficiency increases consumption. The only time that energy efficiency would work would be if the economy was continually contracting. This principle was first noted in the middle of the Nineteenth Century by William Jevon, and was later called Jevon's Paradox. He found that as steam engines became more efficient Britain burnt more coal. This was because more efficient steam engines produced a greater financial return, so more steam engines were bought and thus coal consumption increased overall. In the 1960s, economists discovered a similar principle in the economy in general called the rebound effect. For example, people invest in energy efficiency measures in the home and save money. That money is then re-spent in the economy, so creating more consumption and increasing the consumption of materials and resources overall (e.g., someone puts low energy light bulbs into their home and then flies on Easyjet with the money saved).

The latest iteration of this concept is known as the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate. It uses various examples to show that whilst isolated actions might save resources (the micro-economic level) when translated to the economy as a whole (the macro-economic level) they create greater demand. For example, the use of larger aircraft was supposed to reduce the number of aircraft flights, but the lower operating costs increased the total number of people travelling, resulting in more, larger aircraft in use. Studies have also shown that increasing the energy efficiency of social housing, in order to improve the lives of the residents, rarely has the impacts predicted because those who can't afford energy tend to use more when they can. This is a subject of much debate because its implications are so damaging to the present position of both governments and many in the mainstream environmental groups.

There are many examples of the efficiency paradox (in relation to both efficiency improvements and the change in levels of consumption) – a variety of sources are listed below giving more detail of the debate. In the Free Range Network's "Less is a Four Letter Word" presentation we cite three of the simplest:

Over the last 12 years we've increased recycling by a factor of 5 by weight, and this has only increased the proportion of waste recycled by a factor of 4½ (from 7% to 31% of the total), but the amount going to final disposal (landfill or incineration) has only fallen by 11%. This is because, against the background of a strong growth in waste production during the 1990s, waste recycling barely kept up with the growth in household waste.
It's a similar situation with carbon emissions. The government uses a measure called carbon intensity – the carbon emitted for each £1 in the economy. In line with the encouragement of government, carbon intensity has fallen by nearly a third as more efficient processes are used by society, but because the economy grew 39% in the interim period the overall reduction is only 4%.
Finally cars have become more efficient to run in the UK, but, in part as a result of cheaper motoring, we now drive more cars further so the overall effect is still an increase of half a million tonnes of road fuel.

Looking at the issue of total carbon emissions and the relation to the carbon density (how much carbon is created by their production, use and disposal), the efficiency measures can also have a spurious impact. This is because efficiency measures create cost savings, and these savings will in turn be re-spent within the economy, but as these savings are likely to be re-spent on items – from food to foreign holidays – which are more carbon dense than direct energy consumption the overall effect is to promote an increase in consumption and carbon emissions. This is one of the significant flaws of the present eco-efficiency debate – it concentrates on micro-economic effects which, as we would expect, are wholly positive, when in fact the aggregate impact of these changes at the macro-economic level is at best negligible, or at worst negative.

Increase in Renewable and Fossil Fuel Energy in the UK, 1990 to 2007
Year	Annual increase/decrease in –
Year	Total renewable	"True" renewable	"Iconic" renewable	Fossil fuels
1991	-0.4	-1.6	-1.6	180
1992	7.6	4.9	4.2	-167.5
1993	9.8	8.2	6.8	16.7
1994	17.9	13.7	12.9	-129.8
1995	2.8	2	2	25.1
1996	-2.3	-4.7	-4.6	460.5
1997	7.5	3.4	3.4	-196.8
1998	8.7	1.1	0.8	169.1
1999	8.7	1.5	-1.9	21.5
2000	1	-6	-7.5	243.9
2001	5.1	-0.9	-4.7	64.8
2002	11.6	7.6	4	-245.7
2003	10.3	1	-4.6	109.4
2004	26.2	16.9	11.2	99.9
2005	28.4	24.6	3.4	6.6
2006	13.2	9.2	9.6	-58.3
2007	16.8	13	15.7	-135.1
Average	10.2	5.5	2.9	27.3
Ratio	1:2.7	1:4.9	1:9.3
All figures are in peta-Joules (PJ)

The same is true of renewable energy sources – again because, returning to the argument of the source of economic growth above, adding energy to the economy increases growth. Today there is no proof that the development of any large renewable energy systems in Britain has ever led to a physical reduction in the use of fossil fuels, and, given the current economic realities of the UK economy, they will never be able to. Let's look at the historic data on the annual increase in both renewable energy and fossil fuel use. Rather than look at the use in any one year it's more meaningful to look at the average change in the scale of energy usage because this illustrates both the direction of policy and changing trends within the economy.

The problem we have is that the government's definition of "renewable energy" is flawed as it includes landfill gas and waste incineration which, on a net basis, are actually carbon sources not sinks. Even some seemingly 'renewable' sources of energy, such as the present use of biomass in coal-fired power plants, are flawed because of their inefficient utilisation compared to the best available techniques for utilising this material. For this reason the data on the UK's production of renewable energy has been sub-divided into the following categories –

'Total' renewable – the government's raw data on UK renewable energy production;
'True' renewable – the government's data less incineration and landfill gas; and
'Iconic' renewable – the 'true' data less plant and animal biomass.

The data for this analysis is taken from the Digest of UK Energy Statistics 2008 – Table 7.1.1 for renewable energy sources and Table 1.1.1 for fossil fuels. This information is reproduced in the table on the right in order to illustrate the annual increase (or decrease) in the levels of energy growth within the three renewable categories and of the fossil fuels. The penultimate line in the table gives a figure for the average annual change over the period, and the final line shows the comparative level of change as a ratio of the increase in renewable energy to fossil fuels (by dividing the average change in fossil fuel use by the various categories of renewable energy).

What this data shows is that at no time over the period from 1990 to 2007 has the average increase in renewable energy sources exceeded the average increase in the use of fossil fuel sources. At best, for every 1 unit of new renewable energy (using the 'total' definition) fossil fuel use increases by a factor of 2.7; disregarding the contribution of landfill gas and waste incineration, because they are a net carbon source, we find that each 1 unit of 'true' renewable energy was outweighed by an increase of 4.9 units of fossil fuel; and finally, excluding plant and animal biomass as well, because of their highly questionable utilisation, 1 unit of the most iconic renewable energy (wind, hydro, geothermal and wood) was far outweighed by 9.3 units of new fossil fuel usage.

The available data on energy trends in the UK leads us to only one possible conclusion – this might be an unwelcome one for those promoting renewable energy, but it suggests that perhaps their strategy is flawed: the evidence of the last seventeen years suggest that none of the renewable energy technologies deployed in the UK have ever displaced fossil fuels because the average annual increase in fossil fuel use has always been a number of times greater than the average annual increase in renewable energy sources.

Pulling this together – the process of transition

We face major challenges to the future existence of our species. Climate change is only one of them, but if we act as if it is the primary challenge then we will collectively fail. To promote a more positive future we must find a solution that solves the climate, energy and resource issues simultaneously. Presently there is only one concept that can pull the present trends in a direction that addresses these problems – a managed contraction of the economy, and as a result a significant reduction in personal consumption.

Food is the most critical resource. Although we might talk of the importance of oil or gas or coal, it is food that is the human species' most precious energy resource. A report from the US National Intelligence Council highlights the relationship between energy, food and climate change, and the problems that are likely to arise over the next few decades –

As outlined above, we need to use about four-fifths less energy within 30 to 50 years. Given the need to internalise the depletion of non-energy resources into the transition process, any plan will have to be based upon meeting essential needs through basic technologies, and of course that means that people must become more involved in providing the things that support their lives.

As the Free Range Network state in our presentations, 50 years of consumerism have de-skilled Britain citizens relative to their grandparents. The essential component of living with less energy and resources is not gadgets, it's practical skills. For example, if you can cook your own food from local, seasonal, raw ingredients, that represents a significant reduction in energy consumption compared to the "modern" diet; Swedish research suggests the difference of this approach, taking existing trends within Sweden, could be a factor of four difference in total energy consumption within the average diet).

The difficulty is that "gadgetising" our response to environmental and economic problems is far sexier than achieving real change in our own lives: firstly there's the "new toy" issue – buying something that allows you to carry on your present lifestyle without change is far easier than having to actually change how you do something; secondly, and more significantly, buying a gadget, be that a wind-up radio or (through your energy bill) a wind turbine externalises the problem – you personally do not have to be the agent for change because you shift responsibility to some other agency who acts to provide a solution on your behalf. This involves far more than just economics or consumerism; as outlined by Theodore Roszak in an essay published in the anthology, Ecopsychology –

We can read out transactions with the natural environment – the way we use or abuse the planet – as projections of unconscious needs and desires, in much the same way we can read dreams or hallucinations to learn much about our deep motivations, fears and hatreds. In fact, our wishful, wilful imprint upon the natural environment may reveal our collective state of soul more tellingly than the dreams we wake from and shake off, knowing them to be unreal. Far more consequential are the dreams that we take with us out into the world each day and maniacally set about making "real" – in steel and concrete, in flesh and blood, out of the resources torn from the substance of the planet. Precisely because we have acquired the power to work our will upon the environment, the planet has become like that blank psychiatric screen on which the neurotic unconscious projects its fantasies.

The fact is that to turn around the present consumption trend we have to stop the outsourcing of responsibility for our personal ecological footprint – be that through asking "Government" to solve the problem, or by deflecting the need for change by promoting different options for existing consumption patterns (e.g., "green" or "sustainable consumption"). Consumption is the problem – adopting different methods of consumption will not change the overall outcome of the system as a whole. Also, if we look at the weight of the impacts of consumption overall, and given that the largest proportion of the impacts of consumption are as a result of the supply chain, not direct use, seeking direct local solutions to our needs will enable the impacts to be more easily managed because they will be a local problem that people can see and directly relate to their personal choices.

In his recent book, The Politics of Climate Change, Anthony Giddens proposes various solutions to the problems of climate change, and he acknowledges issues such as peak oil and resource depletion too. Giddens was very influential during the 1990s in framing the "Third Way" philosophy that influenced Tony Blair and New Labour – in that sense we can look on his words as representing the status quo that exists within mainstream politics today. However, his approach is essentially that climate change is too important to be left to the environmentalists, and instead he advocates the promotion of "political and economic convergence wherever possible" to counteract the influence of "the Greens" and their "mystical reverence of nature" (historically some have called the union of political and economic power 'fascism', and quite where the public fit into Giddens' ideas, in any way other than consumers, is not explicitly clear).

Despite his support for mainstream solutions, in the 'Afterword' Giddens summarises the issues we face today as follows –

In the shape of the controversy between optimists and the doomsday thinkers, the debate continues today and is unresolved. Our civilisation could self-destruct – no doubt about it – and with awesome consequences, given its global reach. Doomsday is no longer a religious concept, a day of spiritual reckoning, but a possibility imminent in our society and economy. If unchecked, climate change alone could produce enormous human suffering. So also could the drying up of the energy resources upon which so many of our capacities are built. There remains the possibility of large-scale conflicts, perhaps involving the use of weapons of mass destruction. Each could intersect with the others...

In Giddens' interpretation, there is a serious problem that the markets need to address, but in this process those within the environmental movement who have "argued against further economic growth on the grounds that it is too damaging" must be marginalised. This might sound familiar – essentially it's the policy on "domestic extremism" that we see portrayed by NETCU, WECTU and NPOIU.

In our appreciation of these issues we must take a wholly opposing position: We have to stop being "reasonable" in our actions and instead challenge the "reason" of those who advocate perpetuating the current economic growth paradigm, in any form (green or otherwise), for it has no basis in reality. We must work directly for the outcomes we know must be adopted if we are to avoid the inevitable outcome of the present economic and political policy of growth and consumption. Practically this means that the mainstream of the environmental lobby has to stop vacillating about the "need for change"; unless they start strategically "annoying the system", by making that system justify itself according to the evidential standards it claims to represent, then they might as well not bother as what they are likely to achieve will not make a significant enough difference to avoid the obvious outcome. The fundamental truth of this process to date is that you cannot have a reasonable, consensus-based dialogue when government and the economic lobby will not negotiate on the fundamental trend that's driving the environmental crisis – growth. We have to move beyond this and take charge of the agenda by influencing the public directly.

There is no way that the current level of demand can be sustained in the near future, and to ignore this point defies the current weight of evidence that supports this conclusion (we believe that the "peak everything" or "anti-growth" issue is currently in the position where climate change was in the mid-80s). Once we have a confirmation of a global peak in oil production (even Fatih Birol of the IEA is now placing the 'supply crunch' just a decade or so away) then the economy will stagnate because oil and gas are not just energy sources; the finance produced by their production and sale fuels the global financial economy. Environmentalists must promote the only practical outcome of what the trends tell us, and the fundamental truth for how we must transform our lifestyles to address these problems; in the future we'll have to get by with less – full stop, end of paragraph.

As environmentalists we must use our talents to highlight the reality of the present economic model and the trends that flow from it; essentially, that a major shift in our ability to consume must take place because there is simply no other option – it is inevitable: Within a century, definitely; within fifty years, quite likely; within twenty years, perhaps. Even reducing the time-scale to the next decade, for UK citizens the transition from consuming mostly indigenous energy resources to relying on almost entirely imported energy resources is going to have a significant effect of the structure and well-being of the UK economy. To summarise, the human species needn't go to a self-imposed hell on Earth, only the current form of the globalised human economy.

Go back to Section 3. 'NETCU, WECTU and NPOIU' or goto to Section 5. 'Conclusions'

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Main Index Introduction Summary		Section 1. 'The Background' Section 2. 'The Process' Section 3. 'NETCU, WECTU and NPOIU' Section 4. "The Era of Economic Change" Section 5. Conclusions

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