Ecological Economics Energy, Environment and Society JUAN MARTINEZ-ALIER with Klaus Schliipmann Basil BlackwellCopytght © J. Marie Alie 1987 Fis published 1987 Fist poblhed in paperback 1990 Bas Blackwell Lid 108 Gowiey Road, Oxford, OX8 1JF, UK Bas Blackwell, 3 Canbedge Center, Cambridge, Masachusers 02142, USA\ [Al ight served xcept forthe quotation of shore psig fo the purposes of Mitts sd revi, no part ofthis publication may be reproduced, Stored real yc or tamed any form or by ay ans, tone mean “hotecopyng, reardng ot averse, waht the prior pension of the pubis. Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject ro the condition that “i hall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be ent, re-sold, hited out, or otherwise Geculated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding ar cover other ‘han that in whichis published and without a similar condition indading this Condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data [ACIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Cons Cataloging Pubeation Data Maries Ale, oan {Eeolopne|Feconomis, English) Eeslogal economies: ery, environment and soe / Juan Martner Ale with Kins Sipinan om Expanded and rearranged tansation of Lecologune | economia Toles biblopapiea refreces nd inde. ISBN 0-631-17146.0 1 Economie development Environmental aspects, Environmental poli S Natural eeaures. fs Man lofluence Tr schlipman, Klaus. tl Tie pss sraess13 1990 3337 = de 039944 cP Typeset in 10 on 12pt Sabon by Dobbie Typesetting Serve, Tavistock, Devon, England Printed in Great Britain by T. J. Press (Padscow) Led Contents Preface Introduction to the Paperback Edition 1 Introduction Agricultural Energetics The ‘Entropy Law’ and the Economic Process Social-Darwinism and Ecology Ecological and Pecuniary Economics ‘Social Engineering’ and the ‘History of the Future’ 2 ‘Modern’ Agriculture: A Source of Energy? Introduction Ethanol from Sugar Cane ‘The Energy Cost of Modernizing Chinese Agriculture The Energy Balances of Spanish Agriculture (1950s~1970s) Boussingault, Liebig, Guano and Agrarian Chemistry 3. The History of Agricultural Energetics: Podolinsky Introduction One of the Narodniki 4 Eduard Sacher’s Formulation of Podolinsky's Principle 5 Rudolf Clausius: ‘On the Energy Stocks in Nature’ Introduction The Electrical Revolution ‘The Club of Ideologists The Kaiser’s Birthday The Coal Question 6 Patrick Geddes’ Critique of Economics Introduction Ruskin and Geddes ‘An Ecological Critique of Industrial Urbanization 64 73 23 75 7 82 84 89 89) 91 9610 uw 12 13 4 Contents ‘The Carrying Capacity of the Earth, according to Pfaundler 99 Introduction 99 The Energy Cost of Horizontal Transport 102 The Availability of Energy and the Energy Requirements of Humankind 105 Limits to the Growth of Food Production 109 ‘A Simple Account of the Second Law of Thermodynamics 112 Henry Adams’ ‘Law of Acceleration’ in the Use of Energy 117 Introduction 17 Life Against Entropy 121 Bernard Brunhes 124 Soddy’s Critique of the Theory of Economic Growth 127 Introduction 127 What do ‘Capital’ and ‘Investment’ Mean? 129 The Vital and the Laboral Uses of Energy 135 ‘National Income Accounting 137 The First Illusions and Doubts about Nuclear Energy 140 Technocracy, Inc. 144 Lancelot Hogben v. Hayek 149 Methodological Individualism and Inter-generational Allocation 156 Introduction 156 Jevons 160 L. C. Gray, John Ise and American Conservationism 163 Hotelling’s Rule 164 ‘Neo-corporatist and Neo-liberal Macro-economics a7 Externalities 179 Conclusions 181 Max Weber's Chrematistic Critique of Wilhelm Ostwald 183 Ecological Utopianism: Popper-Lynkeus and Ballod-Atlanticus 193 Popper-Lynkeus 193 Ballod-Atlanticus 199 ‘The History of the Future 206 Unified Science and Universal History 206 Neurath’s Naturalrechnung 212 Contents Marxism and Ecology Bogdanov and Bukharin Ecological Anthropology 15 Political Epilogue Introduction Ecological Neo-narodism and Sustainable Develo} sable Development The Social Base of Ecologism: Examples from the Andes Bibliography Index 218 225 228 232 232 234 242 248, 275Preface ‘Since the early 1970s, economists have paid increasing attention to the ecological analysis of economic processes. This was at first focused on the definition of ecological limits to growth, followed by more systematic ‘examination of the pattern of flows of energy and materials in the economy, with emphasis on the inter-generational allocation of energy nd material resources and on the valuation of externalities (which Kapp had already studied in detail). Asin all newly founded branches of science, 0 will it happen in ecological economics: historiographic reviews of its ‘own disciplinary tradition will now begin to appear, such as the present book which traces the history of the relations between economics and human ecology (more precisely, human ecological energetics). One of the first empirical ecological studies, by Mobius in 1877,°was called The Economy of the Oysters. This book, however, does not deal with the application of concepts of economics to the study of nature (Worster, 1977) but, on the contrary, with the ecological approach to the study of human society and economy. ‘We have all roo often heard that histories of sciences attempt sometimes to legitimize new paradigms. But why did ecological (or biophysical) ‘economics, which has old traditions, appear in the 1970s as something new? This book takes back to the mid-nineteenth century the history of a subject, ecological economics, which was generally thought to have come into existence in the 1970s, and the realty of which mainstream economists ‘would still dispute nowadays. Sociologists, historians and perhaps philosophers of science may find something valuable in this attempt at Feconstructing the history of an interdisciplinary current of thought which never found an institutionalized academic niche, However, this book does rot aim at glibly pushing paradigms of economics on and off the stage in response to audience applause, but rather at enguging economists in rational argument about the principles of their science. It will also be useful to some economic historians, environmental sociologists, human geographers Preface x and ecologists, social anthropologists, and also to ecological Marxists a practical envisonmentaling Ss ote soleeal Marxissand This book is an expanded and rearranged version translated most mysell of my Lecologime | fecomeus Hiss dures recone amagades (1984), My friend Klaus Schlipmann wrote some paragraphs ofthe iuoductory chapter apart rom patently insoduing me othe istory of natural sciences, He also wrote a draft for the second pa Chapter 3 (odolinsh’sbcgraph) and mos of chapter Son Class, Tcould not have written the book without his help. Other major sources of inspiration have been J. M. Naredo, who has published a book on the ecological critique of National Income Accounting (Naredo, 1987); R.N. Adams, who kindly sent to me in 1984 the typescript of his new book on energy and society; and Jacques Grinevald, ‘The present version ‘was mostly written at Se Antony's College, Oxford, in 1984, on a grant from the Fundacién Juan March. Other sources of financial support have been che CIRIT (Catalonia) and the Energy Research Group of the IDRC (Ox) led by my fiend Ashok Desi Feorgescu-Roegen remains the leading author in the field of ecological economies His wnt ro Barelon inthe ial stages of my work eh collegial benevolence and interest gave me the push I needed in order to govon with research project which ould nox ary out in the deplorable local libraries. {was bibliographically much helped by happy stays in Belin between 1980 and 1983, for which | am thankful to Marta Girale Dorothea Hartung, Urs and Clarita Milller-Plantenberg, and to the Latin American Institute of the Free University. For help during a frueful visit to the United States 1 am particularly grateful to Martha Ackelsberg, Arnold Bauer, Fred Buttel, Paul Christensen, Bob Costanza, Herman Daly, Loten Goldner, Dick Norgaard and Ben Orlove, My ex-students Maite Cabeza, Antoni Estradé, Carmen Matutes and Emilio Quintana contributed references and ideas at various stages of this work. JoMeA.Introduction to the Paperback Edition ECOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC VALUATION Ecological economists like Georgescu-Roegen and William Kapp as well as their predecessors have explained that the economy, from the ecological point of view, does not have a common standard of measurement. Economists are left without a theory of value. This is the main point of this book, Lack of economic commensurability exists in market economies, and also in centrally planned economies (as Otto Neurath pointed out in the 1920s). Valuations of diachronic externalities such as exhaustion of non-renewable resources, global warming, or radioactive pollution are so arbitrary that they cannot act as the basis for rational environmental policies. On the other hand, policies cannot be based only on an eco- Togical rationality in terms, for instance, of carrying capacity norms or ‘sustainability’. Because of such incommensurability, the economy is inseparable from politics. Ecological Perception and the Environmental Policy Agenda Gunnar Myrdal said at a conference in 1968: ‘I have no doubt that within the next five or ten years we are going to have a popular movement within the rich countries which is going to press Congress and the Administration todo many things for solving environmental problems. But the same will not be true in most, if not all, underdeveloped countries’ (Farvar and ‘Milton, 1972, p. 960). It would appear that Myrdal was right. Ecological awareness seems to be stronger in the north than in the south, and (despite the competition from London) Washington DC is becoming the capital ‘of a new North Atlantic ecological bureaucracy. This is backed by poli- tical power and economic leverage which captures headlines, pays for Introduction to the Paperback Edition xi conferences, and tries to establish a suitable world environmental agenda, impartially recommending ecological ‘adjustment’ programmes to all countries and citizens: ‘the IMF of Ecology’. There has been a political attempt by the wealthy to move the ecological agenda away from the issue of Raubwirtschaft. Thus, in the wake of the Brundtland Report, the study of poverty has become more fashionable (and richly funded) than the study of wealth as the main human threat to the environment. ‘Most people would agree that there has been no ecological Marxism, ‘no ecological anarchism, not even an ecological narodnism, nor an explicitly ecological Gandhian philosophy. Its my contention, however, that, if we look again, we shall find ecological roots and ecological contents in social movements by poor populations, in history as well as at present, and that ecology is potentially a stronger force in the south than in the north, [call Third World egalitarian ecology, ‘ecological narodnism’, but it has also been called ‘ecological socialism’ (Guha, 1988). Although its constituency has been and is extremely large, it is at a disadvantage in terms of defining the international environmental agenda. For instance, the Supreme Court's recent decision in India on damages for Bhopal’s ‘silent spring’ has been quietly accepted, and the complaints in India are not heard in the North Atantic. The reopening of the case, on the grounds that indemnities are far too low, and also because of India’s scandalous inability to bring penal charges against Union Carbide officials, raises the question of how the valuation of externalities depends on geography and social class, but without, in this particular instance, addressing one further question: how damages to distant future generations should be valued now. Ecological awareness is not new in social history. Neither is it new in intellectual history. The ecological critique of economics began a century ago. I call the emerging line of thought ‘ecological economics’. It is represented today by Georgescu-Roegen and a few others. Why ‘ecological economics’, with its fundamental challenge to economics, did not take root in universities is a mystery. Perhaps it was the separation between the natural and the social sciences that ensured that human ecology received 1no widespread recognition among scientists. Why should this be? I suggest that the lack of genetic instructions on human exosomatic consumption of energy and material resources, and the peculiar political, social, and territorial arrangements that human beings make, mean that human ecology is different from the ecology of plants and the ecology of other animals. It is misleading to call this field of study ‘human biology’ (as at Stanford University). Human ecology is both political ecology and ecological economics. It is a type of study which cannot be reduced to the natural sciences, even if t requires a greater input from the natural sciences than orthodox environmental and resource economics.xii Introduction to the Paperback Edition Global Warming as an Imponderable Externality Ecological economics, despite its long history, has had almost no impact ‘on mainstream economics. On the other hand, environmental and resource economics attempted in the 1970s to treat some ecological issues in terms ‘of applied welfare economics (as in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management). This attempt also led to the conclusion that there is no economic commensurability, if questions of uncerainty as well astime-horizon and discount rates are honestly addressed. For economists, ecological awareness threatens to swamp economic values in a sea of externalities whose evaluation by conventional economic methods presents, intractable problems Here is just one example of the marker's essential inability to assess eco- logical damage (or benefits). Arrhenius 1903, p. 171) explained in his text- book on global ecology thatthe Glashauswirkung (greenhouse effect) which helped to keep the earth warm would increase with the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It was estimated in 1937 that fuel combustion had added around 150,000 million tons of carbon dioxide to the air in the previous fifty years, three-quarters of which had remained in the atmosphere, The rate of increase in mean temperature was estimated at 0.005°C. per year: ‘the combustion of fossil fuel . . . is likely to prove beneficial to mankind in several ways, besides the provision of heat and power. For instance, the above-mentioned small increase of mean temperature would be important at the northern margin of cultivation’ (Callendar, 1938, p. 236). The author described himself as ‘steam technologist to the British Electrical and Allied Industries Research ‘Association’, but his paper was received complacently by disinterested, objective scientists belonging to the Royal Meteorological Society of Great Britain, They questioned Callendar's statistics (he urban heat island effect increases temperatures at most meteorological stations) but not the view that increased carbon dioxide would be a positive externality, thereby showing that there is nothing intrinsic to northern latitudes or to high ‘Standards of living that heightens environmental perception. Research on the socio-intellectual history of climatic change (Budyko, 1980) up to the scare in the USA in the summer of 1988 has now (at last) become a subject of interest, and some scientists now take a pessimistic view about the global effects of the increase of CO) in the atmosphere, although the topic is by hno means yet settled among them. Such uncertainty, which is not new at all, is precisely part of my argument. If international environmental policies based on COz budgets are established (either setting compulsory upper limits or taxing emissions over a stated limit), they should include in each country’s budget the Introduction to the Paperback Edition xi accumulated past emissions, if not from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution at least since 1900. It could also be argued that such CO budgets should be set not on a country basis, but on a per caput basis. Alternative ideas (clean slate, country-based CO, budgets) have already been proposed by the North Atlantic ecological establishment. Thus for some the ‘adjustment’ programmes to be recommended by the ‘IMF of Ecology’ focus on reduction of CO, emissions by increasing the fuel- efficiency of their cars; for others, the aim is to burn less wood in the kitchen through improved stoves; and some, the very poor, will presumably contribute by reducing methane emissions by cultivating fewer rice paddies. ‘The history of global warming shows that the ecological critique against mainstream economics is based not simply on the unknowability of the preferences and needs of future generations, and therefore on the arbitrary values at present given to exhaustible resources or to external effects. It is also based (as David Pearce has written) on our uncertainty about the workings of environmental systems which makes the application of externality analysis at best irrelevant and at worst simply wrong-headed. We do not know about many externalities; we are aware of others without always being certain whether they are negative or positive, let alone being, able to give to them a true monetary value, The Doubtful Economics of Nuclear Power Global warming is now being used as an argument for nuclear power (for instance, an editorial in the New York Times, 20 April 1989), but nuclear power also provides good examples of externalities that cannot be valued. Present values must be given to the costs of dismantling power stations in a few decades, and to the costs of keeping radioactive waste under control for thousands of years, and such values depend on the rate of discount chosen. Moreover, there are possible by-products of nuclear power, such as plutonium, which we cannot evaluate. Since the plutonium produced as a by-product of civil nuclear generation may have a military use, it can be given a positive value, thus improving the economics of nuclear power (in the chrematistic sense). This ‘plutonium credit’ was factored into the accounts of the initial British nuclear power stations (Jeffery, 1988). However, plutonium might come to be seen in future as a negative externality, especially if owned by unstable foreign governments. Frederick Soddy, who was a well qualified nuclear scientist, warned against the ‘peaceful’ use of nuclear energy in 1947 because of ‘the virtual impossibility of preventing the use of non-fission products of the pile, suchxiv Introduction to the Paperback Edition as plutonium, for war purposes’ (Soddy, 1947, p. 12). That this worrying issue did not affect public opinion in the West until the 1970s isa testament to the propaganda barrage in favour of ‘atoms for peace’ which began under Eisenhower's administration, Before the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, the environmental dangers of peaceful nuclear power, concerned only a few scientists, some groups in localities directly threatened by nuclear power stations, and a socially powerless ‘lunatic fringe’. ‘Conventional environmental economics, we might conclude, is useless as an instrument of environmental management, because the concept of ‘externalities’ merely hides the inability to put a value on social costs that are shifted to other social groups or to future generations. "The World Bank, which is becoming one of the main institutions in defining the agenda of international managerial ecologism, did not consider loans for nuclear power stations but it seems that it made an exception for a new nuclear power station at Angra dos Reis near Rio de Janeiro (New York Times, 11 March 1989), It would be interesting to see which costs and benefits are factored in, at which rates of discount, but embarrassment both in accountancy and politics would lead the World Bank to disguise any loan for nuclear power inside a large loan for the whole electrical sector, with no specific cost-benefit analysis for Angra dos Reis. ‘The discussion on debt-for-nature swaps in Brazil reveals the difficulties in valuation of other externalities. A proposal for buying four billion dollars’ worth of the Brazilian debt in order to save the Amazonian rain forest was tentatively launched in early 1989 (New York Times, 3 February 1989). This ‘generous’ offer is paltry in the context of Brazil's total external debt, a nominal value of 115 billion dollars. From another perspective, t00, the offer looks mean: under one dollar per inhabitant of the world, ‘once and for all, as the price for preserving the Amazonian rain forest. ‘An annual value of, say, 50 billion dollars could be given to the externalities provided to the rest of humankind by preserving the Amazonian rain forest from private exploitation. However, nobody knows how to give present values to the future benefits of preserving tropical biodiversity. An ecologically conservationist, financially aggressive policy, is becoming part of the platform of the Brazilian Labour Party. Energy and the Economy: A Historical View Human relations with the environment have a history, and the perception of such relations is also historical. Historians could have added environ- mental issues to their research with fewer professional risks than the Introduction to the Paperback Edition xv economists. Ecological awareness is now increasing everywhere, but, ecological historiography is still ints infancy. Ecology should not always. be seen as a long-term problem, the longue durée. The irreversible destruction of fossil fuels is proceeding at a rapid pace. A heightened grcenhouse effect is possibly being felt already, even though most people in the world have a consumption of exosomatic energy more typical of the period before the Industrial Revolution than of advanced capitalism. ‘The thinning of the ozone layer is taking place at an even faster pace. The European colonization of America (and other overseas territories) became an environmental disaster. The native populations swiftly suffered a demographic collapse worse than the Black Death (Crosby, 1986). Natural resources were destroyed by overexploitation. In Peru, for example, fisheries were destroyed in the 1960s and early 1970s more quickly even than guano deposits had been exported in 1840-80. The study of the use of energy in the economy is the easiest type of ecological history. As we shall see in chapter 8, Henry Adams’ ‘law of acceleration’ in the use of energy had no influence (it was characteristically dismissed by Karl Popper (1944-5) in a footnote to The Poverty of Historicism). Time and again there were modest attempts to provide some figures on the use of energy. Nevertheless, the first academically successful ‘work in this line was Carlo Cipolla’s in 1962, almost one hundred years later. A European Society for Environmental History had its first meetin, in 1988! ° tee In the long discussion about energy and the economy, there have been ‘two mistaken views, and one constructive view. One mistaken view is the ‘energy theory of value’: see Punti 1988, for an argument against this, based on the fact that similar amounts of energy from different sources have different ‘production times’. The second is based on the isomorphism between the equations of mechanics and the equations of economic equilibrium in neoclassical ecoromics after 1870. It was believed that in economic exchange there was an exchange of psychic energy. Winiarski, at the turn of the century, was a spokesman for this absurd view. The third and more constructive view has been taken by a long line of scholars: Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Kenneth Boulding, Frederick Soddy, Patrick Geddes, Josef Popper-Lynkeus, Serhii Podolinsky. The economy should not be seen as a circular or spiral flow of exchange value, a merry- go-round between producers and consumers, but rather as the one-way entropic throughput of energy and materials. The most active economist today in defence of the entropic view of the economy is Herman Daly, ‘a former student of Georgescu-Roegen, but, as the present book shows, this field of study has a long unacknowledged lineage.avi Introduction to the Paperback Edition To see the economy as entropic does not imply in the least ignorance of the anti-entropic properties of life or, in general, of open systems. This point must be made explicitly because of the growth of ‘social-Prigoginism’, the doctrine that human societies (for instance, in Japan, of the European Community, or the city of New York) self-organize in such a way as to make worries about depletion of resources and pollution of the environment redundant (Proops, 1989, p. 62). If one gees beyond the title of Georgescu-Roegen’s book, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971), itis clear that Georgescu-Roegen’s ecological economics would not endorse what I have called ‘social-Prigoninism’ but would not oppose the view that systems receiving energy from outside (such as the earth) may exhibic a steady growth of organization and complexity over time (cf, Grinevald, 1987). Vernadsky (1863-1945) explained, in a section of his book La Géochimie explicitly entitled ‘Energie de la matiére vivante elle principe de Carnot’, that the energetics of life were contrary to the tenergetics de la matiere brute. This had been pointed out by authors such fs the Irish geologist John Joly and the German physicist Felix Auerbach (with his notion of Ektropismus), and one could alresdy find the idea in J. R. Mayer, Helmholtz, and William Thomson (Kelvin). Vernadsky added: “histoire des idées qui concernent lénergétique de la vie .. . nous présente une suite presqu'ininterrompue de penscurs, de savants et de philosophes, arrivant ux mémes idées plus ou moins indépendamment . . . Un savant ukrainien mort jeune, S. Podolinsky, a compris toute la portée de ces idées et a tiché Ue les appliquer & étude des phénoménes économiques”. (Vernadsky, 1924, pp. 334-5) Given the importance of Vernadsky in the science of ecology and also in the current ecological revival in the Soviet Union, this endorsement of Podolinsky’s ecological economics is likely to become famous, in retrospect. Podolinsky (1850-91), though he was a Darwinist, was not a Social Darwinist. As we shall see, he attrituted differences in the use of energy within and between nations not 10 any evolutionary superiority, but rather to the inequality bred by capitalism. For their part, the Social Darwinists, a few years later, applied to human groups Boltemann’s dictum of 1886, ‘the struggle for life is a struggle for available energy’. Nowadays, as was the case one hundred years ago, the ecological point of view has more than one politcel expression. It leads some towards Social Darwinism (Hardin's ‘lifeboat ethics’ iy 4 notorious example), and leads others - the German Greens, for instance, and many Scholars and activists in the Third World - towards espousing international equality Introduction to the Paperback Edition xvii Raubwirtschaft Interest in the ecology of humans could have come from other dsciplin tha commas, ately gegany an hoy. Howe, Ceol istory is new in academia, and nor have European geographers focused On the study ofthe How of energy aad natch it haven seaman tothe extent one might have expected, It could have done so at least since the curn of the century ifthe lead of Bernard and Jean Brunhes had been followed. twill be zemembered that one ofthe chapters of Jean Brunhes’ Géographie humaine developed the notion of Raubivirtschaft which had been introduced by the German geographer and professor at Koenisberg, Emnst Friedrich (b. 1867): ‘it sems particularly strange that characteristic devastation with allies grave consequences should especially accompany civilization, while primitive folk know only milder forms of it (Brunke, 1920; Eng, trans. 1978, p. 331). A study of ecological geography could have been born in French universities out of these reflections by such a prominent geographer as Jean Brunhes. Geographers had nothing to lose and much to gain professionally by becoming human ecologists and environ- ‘mental managers, but a notion like Raubuwirtschaft would not have been politically popular in colonialist Europe, particularly in colonialist France ‘After giving examples of Raubwirtschaft (see also Raumolin, 1984), Brunhes mentioned the book by his brother Bernard Brunhes, La Dégradation de l’Energie (1908). Bernard Brunhes, who died young, was the director of the meteorological observatory at Puy de Dome, in central France. He studied the flow of energy and also land erosion, He blamed deforestation on the privatization of common lands~ the ‘tragedy of the enclosures’ rather than the ‘tragedy of the commons’ - because private owners (by contrast ro managers of communal lands) carry only the short- term costs of land degradation. ‘The long-term costs (relevant for deforestation and land erosion) are of less concern to private owners with shorter time-horizons and higher implicit discount rates than those of communal managers, Benard Brunhes quoted Proudhon’s views on private property, which was really strong stuff. Carl Sauer, an American geographer influenced by George Perkins Marsh, also asked: ‘Must we not admit that much of what we call production is extraction? He did not use the notion of Raubwirtschaft (Sauer, 1956) The Growth of Ecological Social Since the economy is entropi become exh: ic, resources become exhausted and waste is produced. Ecological economics questions the ability of the market to valuexviii Introduction to the Paperback Edition such effects accurately, without necessarily being pessimistic on econ- ‘omic growth, Ecological economics merely demonstrates that growth cannot be predicted by purely economic models from which the flow fof energy and materials is excluded. The ecological critique points Out that the economy involves allocations (of waste, of diminished resources) to the future. Since future generations have no say in this, the economy cannot be explained on the basis of individual choices and preferences. Because of this, ecological economics is inimicalto orthodox economics, It is allied to political economy, ot institutionalist economics. Could ecological economics also develop close links with Marxian economics? Since Marx and Engels were sceptical about the benefits of the marker's invisible hand, they should have had no parti pris against secing the feconomic process in the ight of the entropy law. Engels’ dismissal in 1882 bf Podolinsky’s ecological economics missed a good chance for developing fan ecological Marxism, Podolinsky’s work should clearly be the starting point for the growth of an ecological socialism. Such ecologeal socialism is still of more than academic interest in India and Latin America. In Marxian circles, with one hundred years’ delay, thereis a growing interest in an ecological Marxism, which comprises both the theory of ‘economic crises and the history of social movements. Marxist economics thas traditionally seen a contradiction between the overproduction of capital in the capitalist, metropolitan countries, and the deficiency in buying power from their own domestic exploited working class, or from the external, exploited economies, In ecological Marxism, one would focus not on the overproduction of capital but on the impairment or destruction of the conditions for the reproduction of capital. Up to now, Marxist economics, to the extent that it has dealt with natural resources, has taken a Ricardian view. In the 1970s it was argued that the increase in the price of oil could be analysed in terms similar to those applied to the increase in agricultural prices required t cover costs in marginal land. These were developed from the Ricardian theory of differential rent, plus an element of monopoly (as in Marx's ‘absolute rent’). The resulting increase in rents relative to profits ‘would alter the pattern between consumption and savings (and investment) yo as to slow down the accumulation of capital. We know, however, that Gil prices came down in the 1980s, and nevertheless there was less oil left in nature in the 1980s than in the 1970s. The point is that in Ricardo’s theory of rent, the ‘production price’ of agricultural produce in marginal land must cover the cost of production, including profit, without rent, while the corresponding ‘production price’ of an exhaustible resource must Simply cover the cost of extraction, plus profit, at the margin. Oil is not produced; it is extracted. 7 — Introduction to the Paperback Edition xix _Marmatted ith Libis argumenin vou of salle agiculere ecause it would be more conducive tothe recycling of nutrients, and Shared Licbiy’s enthusiasm for the new chemical eines Head ace however, discuss whether agricultural prices should pay for current production costs as well as secure the long-term fertility of the land. In donserestion means not une tel The reproduction ov sepaceet of fsa ols nna ssred by high price, tnoughconseresvon ght the helped by high prices. Marxian (or Sraffian) schemes of "simple reproduction’ have not yet taken into account the exhaustbilty of resources, and othe irreversible environmental effects (Christensen, 1989, 9.34), In Maraian economics, coogi costs need 0 be transformed eumlation a anged by a eclopal Mansa sheoryof cae et Lal 5 sn ecological Marxist theory of crisis, (ef. Le 1586; O'Connr, 1988} ieolows hat theeclogcal igus ese vad against such ecological Marxism, precisely because social costs, and the needs of future generations, are usually not reflected in prices. They remain external to the market. There can be increasing ecological destruction for a long time, without this having a reflection in capitalist crisis. Now, however, it has been argued that new social movements are the agencies which increase private monetary capitalist costs, bringing them nearer to social costs (Leff, 1986; O'Connor, 1988). ‘This is a nice argument, because it brings together objective and subjective factors, in a very Marxist way. This is also the line taken by the new socio-ecological history in India. Ramachandra Guha's work on the ecological bases of ayzran protests provides an explanation of the remot ons of the ipko movement and other similar movements from the time of British domination to the 1970s, Of course ecological perceptions in history will not be expressed by the ators themselves in terms, familar to ecologists, of flows of energy and materia, of exhauileesourees and pollution. his is the language of scientists, and also of some ecological movements (euch 5. par of he German Greens) ba itis cern ot the langage used in history. Nor is it at present used by other known ecological movements, which have tried to keep natural resources out of the generalized market sytem, whch have sea ‘moral economy’ GE. Thompson's ee) and herr an coll esnamy, in oposton If the development of capitalism is understood in terms of increased Raubwirtschaft inorder to support the living standards of the rich, then many social movements of the poor against the rich will be seen to have an ecological content and even perhaps an ecological idiom. Social movements, even if they cannot keep natural resources out of thex Introduction to the Paperback Edition rol, will at least force rematistic economy and under communal control, corer esnatize some externalities (O'Connor, 1988). They will do So'by struggling over workplace health and safety, toxic waste disposal, water availabilty in urban areas, conservation of forests by native peoples inst paper factories or hydroelectric dams ot catle ranches, and by seeking higher prices for exhaustible resources from the Third World: Such Social movements, where allowed to exist by state authorities, would sti hardly give a voice to future generations. Ecology and the Debate on Economic Calculus in Socialist Economies Since environmental concerns show the weakness of the markeseconom) hould have figured inthe debates on economic planning, in a Centra Eovpean contest ofthe lite nines century ad ur 19305. However, ecological issues were absent from ‘The Ministry of Production in a Collectivist State’, an article by Enrico Barone of Padua, and fro ecuene contebutions. Notable exceptions 0 this neglect care com Popper-Lynkeus (1838-1921), Ballod-Atlanticus (1864-1933), Ov Neurath (1882-1945), and William Kapp (1910-76), Only very secenly was the conflict berween ecology and economics discussed in as Europe. Graf (1984) provides a good analysis and bibliography. “The current ant-bureaucratic, democratic crusade in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union should not lead to a glorification of the ma Solution to ecological problems. The market cannot count ong ecological damage. This vas clearly stated by William Kapp, who tated his career with a doctoral thesis in Geneva on the valuation of externaliies (Leipert & Steppacher, 1987). This thesis was meant asa conteibution to the debate of the 1920s and 1930s on economic rationality in a soc economy. Towards the end of his life, Kapp wrote: at of our environment « fact ofthe mater is that both disruption an improvement rm Theta of ech have tment heterogeneous ngiem eles and ithch, moreover, are dedsions made by one generation with consequences to Be borne by the next, To place a monetary value on and apply a dicount ate 1 re ite or dsutite in oder to express their present capialized value # gees : Tani, but it does not get us out ofthe dilemma 1 cho andthe Fact tat we take 2s with human health and survival: Foe aes a inchned to consider the atempr at measuring social cost oc enelis simply in terms of monetary or market values a doomed to ale Free petty and socal benefits have ro be considered as extea-market phenomena; give us a precise monetary calcul Introduction to the Paperback Edition vei ‘cannot be compared quantitatively among themselves and with eich other, not even in principle. (Kapp, 1970; repr. 1983, p. 49) This very same view on the lack of economic commensurability had been expressed by Otto Neurath’s concept of a Naturalrechnung. The reception of Neurath’s idea by market economists was predictable. Hayek wrote that Neurath’s proposal that all calculations of the central planning authorities should and could be carried out in natura showed that Neurath was totally oblivious to the insuperable difficulties which the absence of value calculations would put in the way of any rational ecanomic use of the resources (Hayek, 1935, pp. 30-1). Hayek too, was quite oblivious to the problems of resource depletion and pollution, as were almost all participants in the debate on economic rationality under socialism, on both sides of the divide. His glorification of the market principle and of individualism led him to dismiss authors who developed a critique of economics from the ecological point of view - such as Frederick Soddy, Lancelot Hogben, Lewis Mumford, and also Otto Neurath - as totalitarian social engineers (Hayek, 1952). Hundred of teachers of comparative economic systems have taught the debate on economic calculus in a socialist economy, perhaps praising Lange’s and Taylor's market socialist solution to Max Weber's, Ludwig von Mises’ and Hayek’s objections, without realizing that the debate should have included a discussion on the intergenerational allocation of exhaustible resources. This is a different matter from discussing whether coal or oil should be priced according to ‘marginal cost of extraction instead of average cost, as if this would ensure an optimal intergenerational allocation. It is a further example of what Ravetz calls ‘socially constructed ignorance’. Neurath, inspired by Popper-Lynkeus and by Ballod-Atlanticus, was aware that the market could not give values to intergenerational effects. In his writings on a socialist economy, starting in 1919, he gave the following example: two capitalist factories, achieving the same production (one with 200 workers and 100 tons of coal, the other with 300 workers and only 40 tons of coal) would compete in the market, and those using a more ‘economic’ process would achieve an advantage. ‘Economic’ is used here in its chrematistic sense, and not in its ‘human-ecological’ sense. In a socialist economy, in order to compare two economic plans, both of them achieving the same result, one using ess coal and more human labour, the other using more coal and less human labour, we would have to give a present value to future needs for coal. We need a political decision, therefore, on a rate of discount and on the timehorizon. We must also guess the evolution of technology, including estimates for global warming, acid rain, and radioactive pollution, which Neurath could have mentioned.xxii Introduction to the Faperback Edition Because of this heterogeneity, 2 decision on which plan to implement could not be reached on the basis of a common unit of measurement. thaments of the economy were not commensurable, hence the need for ‘a Naturalrechnung. One can see why Neurath became Hayek's béte noire but even from the opposite political trench to Hayek's, Neurath got no praise. A critic remarked that Neurath’s seeptism about economic planning Jed him to think ‘auf so primitive chiliastische Weise’ (in such a primitive chiligstic manner) that he was im Utopismus stecken geblieben!” (stuck fast in utopianism) (Weil, 1926, p. 457). (Sato Neath Snot only a dissident economist and a political radical, ‘active in the revolution in Munich in 1919, but a major analytical philosopher ofthe Vienna Circe, the manifesto of which be wrote himself Most of Neurath’s writings on socialist economics are available only in Geeman (there are bibliographies in Weissel, 1976, and in Stadler, 1982), and William Kapp's thesis written in the mid 1930s has been practically Unknown, More accessible, however, is Kapp's later discussion, in plain English, of the social costs and social benefits of economic development: sve are dealing with essentially heterogeneous magnitudes and quantities for which there can be no common denominator, .. 2 commensurability which simply does not exist’ (1965, 1983 ed. p, 37). Here, environmental ‘economics is not seen as a minor complement to welfare economics, dealing swith sporadic, exceptional cises of market failure. On the contrary, Kapp Teopens one of the major polemics of our age, by pointing out that the Tnarket economy cannot by itself provide a guide for a rational inter- femporal allocation of resources and waste. This does not imply, however, that the minister of production of a collectivist state would be able to rely on an ecological rationality. The question is rather: who should decide environmental and economic policies, and how? ‘The Limits of Ecological Rationality ‘Throughout this Introduction I have argued against an environmental potiey based on the conceptual apparatus of economics, and inthis section Twould like to point out some limitations of a purely ecological approach, shall consider, as a specific example, the failure of the notion of carrying capacity as an instrument of ecological and population policy. ‘Carrying capacity’ refers in ecology to the maximum population of a given species which can be supported indefinitely in a given territory, Without a degradation of the resource base that would diminish the maximum population in the future, The area of cropland per person in Europe is low compared with the world average. In the Netherlands, Introduction to the Paperback Edition wexii Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the United Kingdom, that ratio is lower than in Haiti, and the European population draws upon cexhaustible energy and material resources, not only for industry but even for agriculture. Here ecology and economics again come into conflict in the definition of degradation of the resource base. Economists would claim that use of resources, even if they are not produced but merely extracted, is not necessarily economic degradation, Before they are exhausted, new resources will be substituted. A strict conservationist posture, which would give equal values to future and present consumption, would perhaps lead to resources being left unused when techniques change. Economists would also point out that, although there is no guarantee of such technical substitutions, nevertheless resources should be used now, because the (assumed) growth of the economy makes future consumption at the margin Jess valuable than today’s consumption. The ecologists may point out with reason that the economists have no strong arguments for imposing a particular rate of discount, and ecologists could even argue for a negative rate of discount, Nevertheless, because of uncertainties about future technical changes, a so-called ecological rationality is not an indisputably better base for policy than the usual economic rationality. ‘Attempts to use the notion of carrying capacity (for poor countries only) as.a basis for policies of sustainable development are made by respectable ternational agencies and the multilateral lending banks. Why not ask ‘whether the EC has exceeded its carrying capacity, and whether its pattern of development is sustainable? Moreover, in several European countries there is a policy which favours the increase or at least the maintenance ofthe present population, The meansto this would be not migration but, on the contrary, a higher birth rate, so as to produce babies of good European stock. Such a policy could be disastrous if the ozone layer thins out, since white people are more likely to develop skin cancer. It carries implicit assumptions either of decoupling growth from the use of energy and materials by increased efficiencies and recycling, or of a continuing ability to extract energy and materials at a cheap price from overseas countries in the characteristic European pattern of Raubuwirtschaft. Such assumptions right be quite correct. On 10 March 1989 there was an accident in the Mediterranean similar to those which sometimes happen between Santo Domingo (and Haiti) and the United States. Ten Moroccan would-be immigrants died at sea while attempting to reach Spain. The right to choose one’s place of habitation on earth remains the most elusive of human rights. On the same day, by chance, it was announced that Spain, in keeping with the notion of a fortress Europe’ (perhaps a ‘lifeboat Europe’, in Hardin’s sense),xxiv Introduction to the Paperback Edition will require visas for all Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian travellers, and also for Latin Americans, after March 1990. A government official, in his role as a sort of Maxwell's demon, explained that Spain has a long coast near ‘paises con problemas demograficos’ (countries with demo- graphic problems) (E! Pais Semanal, 13 March 1989, p. 14). It would seer Morocco has problemas demograficos, and Italy or the Netherlands ‘or Catalonia have no problemas demogréficos. Migration, and the prohibition of migration, are seen not as a function of the difference in standard of living but as the consequence of the pressure of population ‘on resources in the south. Nevertheless, when Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece were emigration countries, not so long ago, their population densities, perhaps with the exception of Portugal, were lower than today. Earlier, Germany and Britain were sending large numbers of migrants overseas when their population densities were lower than they are today. ‘Migration usually is a result of pull factors, and in any case carrying capacity can be increased, if not from domestic resources, then by energy and materials subsidies from outside. Inside state frontiers, where there is usually freedom to migrate, migrants leave regions which are far from reaching the limit of carrying capacity, such as Western Andalusia in the 1960s, a region of great agricultural surplus. Across states, frontier police stop migrants who come from territories where they are not necessarily starving, but where there is a comparatively low level of consumption of energy and materials. Migration will be stopped only by the threat of violence, (or by greater equality in living standards. Such equality may be equalization achieved more surely by global redistribution than by overall economic growth Seates, frontiers, and policemen are social, historical products. Hence, the Maxwell's demons analogy, since Maxwell's demons were unnatural beings, who were supposed to be able to maintain, or even increase, the difference in temperature between communicating gases by sorting out high-speed and low-speed molecules. Ecologists are quite good at explaining the movements of birds and fish, but today they are unable to explain. the geographical distribution of the human population. The territorial political units where environmental policy is made and applied have no ‘ecological logic, and they are adept at shifting social costs out of their borders. Thus, arguments based on carrying capacities and the sustainability of development are blatantly ideological in their selective application. A Political Conclusion In this new Introduction, as in the rest of the book, some old and new: questions in ecological economies are presented. ‘Externalities’ is a word Introduction to the Paperback Edition xxv ‘which describes the shifting of uncertain social costs, or possibly benefits, to other social groups, whether ‘foreigners’ or not, or to future generations. ‘The conclusion has been reached that because of big, diachronic, imponderable externalities, economic commensurability does not exist separately from a society’s moral evaluation of the rights of other social groups. These groups include future generations, so that views, whether pessimistic or optimistic, regarding future technical changes enter the equation. Moral values and views on technical change are perhaps not class-specific, nor gender-specific, nor age-specific, but they are not disribured inthe word at random. Fortunately, they are historical: they change. ‘On the other hand, attempts to base policy decisions on an ecological rationality rather than on economics are bound to fail. In reality trade- offs are involved which require the assignation of values to alternative results and costs, and ecology cannot provide such a system of valuation. Lack of commensurability surfaces again. ‘An economic rationale, based either on the market or on central planning, and which takes into account ecological side-effects and uncertainties is impossible. It is equally impossible to decide human affairs purely according to ecological planning, This leads to favouring the politicization of the economy. In other words, I conclude that the economy and the ecology of humans are embedded in politics. This in turn raises the question: which are to be the territorial units and the procedures for decision-making? Many conferences have tried recently to define environ- mental agendas, which would be the pre-requisite for environmental decision-making. Such conferences have unequal representation. They certainly lack representation from future generations. Most probably they also fail to reflect the interests of the three or four billion poorest members.1 Introduction Ecology studies the flow of energy and the cycles of materials in ecosystems. Although Georgescu-Roegen’s views against the ‘energetic dogma’ are accepted here, and although human ecologists and ecological anthropologists no longer suffer from calorific obsessions, this book deals mainly with the study of energy flow, a useful unifying principle in ecological analysis and also in the analysis of the economy from the ecological point of view. Economics is the study of the human allocation of scarce resources to alternative ends, a definition with which (tactically, so to speak) we have no quarrel. The evaluation of the use of energy in the economy seems perhaps a recent preoccupation, which some readers would trace back to the ‘energy crisis’ of 1973, and other readers better informed - would associate with Georgescu-Roegen’s The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971) which heralded a conceptual overturn in economics. There is in fact a long history of interaction between human ecological energetics and economics. ‘This history remains to be written. Each chapter of this book considers at least one author who did some work on the relations between economics and the study of the flow of energy in human societies. Therefore, the part of economics of particular interest is the economics of exhaustible resources, and the part of human ecology considered in this book is ecological energetics. What the book loses in amplitude, it gains in sharpness of focus. Human ecology is wider than the study of energy flow. The point has been made with great force by Alfred Crosby (1986), who studied the expansion of European plants, animals, humans and, not least, diseases such as smallpox and measles throughout the world. This book places a somewhat one-sided attention on exhaustible sources of energy, and not so much on the ecological effects of increased energy use, such as the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, nor on the availability of materials and on pollution effects arising from the use of such materials2 Introduction This limitation is in part a matter of convenience, since it is easy to seek ‘out the writers who have counted calories. In any case, as the reader shall see, not much is lost analytically by focusing on the use of energy as the central point in ecological economics. The period covered in this book is, roughly, that herween Jevans’ The Coal Question (1865) and the 1940s. It seems appropriate to start at a time when the laws of thermodynamics had been established. The physiocrats, Smith, Malthus and Ricardo, should not therefore be blamed for disregarding the use of energy in the economy. It is more difficult to choose a date for the conclusion of the history of ecological economics. The best-known early attempt to work out the economic theory of exhaustible resources was made by Hotelling (1931), and this could be taken to be the culmination of the dialogue between natural scientists and. economists, because economists had finally agreed that some resources ‘were exhaustible, although this fact would still take a long time to appear in the textbooks. The economic theory of exhaustible resources took into account the physical characteristics of this type of resource. The 1930s could be a convenient ending point also on the grounds that ‘short run’ problems associated with ‘excess capacity’ came to dominate in macro- economics, and therefore the question of whether the availability of resources would stop economic growth was not on the agenda. However, Keynesian economics, starting with Harrod (1939), became also an economics of long-run growth, the categories of which (national income, investment, consumption, incremental capital/output ratio) paid no attention whatever to physical realities, as John Ise pointed out as carly as 1950 (pp. 415-16). By choosing the 1940s as the final period I have been able to consider Hayek’s extremely derogatory views on some of the writers under study. But there is no end in sight to the ecological critique of economic theory, to which this book makes a further contribution by resurrecting the arguments of half-forgotten authors ‘One could in addition take Georgescu-Roegen’s The Entropy Law and the Economic Process as a final point, and see this present book as a history of his precursors, about most of whom he did not know - in itself a fact not attributable to sloppy standards of scholarship in such a careful author, but to the lack of social atmosphere before 1973, inside or outside the academic world, for the formation of a school of ecological economics. That there was no concerted action to create a school of ecological economics is made clear by Boulding’s inane critique of Georgescu-Roegen (Boulding, 1972). Courses on the ‘economics of natural resources’, ‘energy economics’, and the like, have been introduced in many universities, and the study of Introduction 3 the substantial contributions by some natural scientists and a few economists inthe period between 1865 and the 1940s ought to provide a background to such courses. One of the most immediate applications of this book, then, will be in the teaching of economics, helping to shape the field of ecological economics. This book should also be useful in courses on human ecology, ecological anthropology, and human geography, because in it is presente¢ the earliest work on the flow of energy in human societies, which ecologists have ignored. One of my most persistent questions is why the recognition of the school of ecological economics which has objectively existed since the 1880s, is unacknowledged even by its own members. ‘Thus, this book may help to foster the growing awareness among scientists of the origins of their disciplines and also of the ideological uses to which natural sciences are put. The main themes and authors will now be introduced. Agricultural Energetics Applied work on the economics of energy use did not become a branch of economics until very recently. The best work was still being done, not ‘only in the period covered by this book, but also in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, by non-economists (Cottrell, 1955; Rappaport, 1967; Odum, H., 1971; Pimentel, 1973; Leach, 1976; Chapman, 1975; Foley, 1981). One striking finding of energy analysis was that the efficiency of modern agriculture was less than that of traditional agriculture. This will be considered in the next chapter, again with some attention being paid to questions of measurement, But, in principle, energy analysis and conventional economic analysis seem to give contradictory judgements of the same process. The productivity of agriculture has not increased, but decreased, from the pont of view of energy analysis. This doesnot mean that a new criterion of economic efficiency, such as energy return to energy input, should be introduced, which would be subsiuted for the usual terion of economic efficiency. It is a fact, for instance, that different agricultural products have use values which are not always related to their energy content, ancl even less to their energy cost, but rather to their protein or vitamin content, or simply to the pleasure to be gained by eating or drinking them. Nevertheless, such studies of the flow of energy in agriculture show that its not appropriate to analyse economic growth in terms of an increased productivity of agriculture (said to be based upon technical progress or upon the development of productive forces) which, because of the relatively low income-elasticity of demand for agricultural produce, frees labour to other sectors of the economy.4 Introduction Here again, we must emphasize that the study of energy flow is not the only ecological approach. There is a current debate on whether the lack of diversity of modern agriculture threatens its stability. Clearly, the higher productivity (in moncy terms) of modern agriculture is due not only to cheap energy inputs but also to the substitution of a handful of new crop varieties for the many ancestral types (Brush, 1986). Is the cost of seed banks lower than their future benefit, discounted pethaps at present value? Energetics leaves aside this aspect of ecological agricultural economics. The increase in agricultural productivity gained by using oil appears to be so only at the oil prices that have obtained. IFoil has been undervalued from the point of view of its conservation for future generations, then the increase in productivity is fictitious. To economic theorists, the question. might appear to be one of finding a means of giving values across the generations to the flows from the stocks of fossil fuels and other exhaustible resources, in such a manner that an acceptable, of even an optimal, path of depletion would be achieved. This would require the reserves to be known, the future demand of all generations to be known, and future changes in available techniques to be known. When the rate of depletion ‘of exhaustible resources is being discussed, an appeal is usually made to Hotelling’s rule, which compares, assuming the existence of a futures’ ‘market, the difference in net return (price minus marginal cost of extraction) between now and a future date with the interest fo be gained by selling now and investing the proceeds. But this criterion appears to beg the question, since interest will only accrue continually ifthe economy grows ~ a point emphasized by Soddy in 1922, arguing explicitly against Keynes. In other words, while there are grounds for discounting the future if it is assumed that the future will be more prosperous than the present (as assumed in theories of economic growth, where the sacrifice of current consumption in order to invest makes sense insofar as che investment will increase future consumption, and where the rate of interest makes the present discounted value of consumption equal, over time), the present use of exhaustible resources should perhaps be kept toa minimum if a long life for humanity is assumed, In any case, it seems clear that there is no way of escaping an ethical choice, sometimes hidden away in the assumptions of the models. One chapter of this book is devoted to 1 critique of the orthodox economic theory of exhaustible resources. “Time-preference’ will be discussed; this is often introduced in economic theory as a ‘revealed preference’ in agreement with the introspective, subjective individualism which characterizes methodologically economic theory. This methodology is somewhat awkward since, as is the nature of the case, economic agents who are not yet born cannot bid in today’s markets, Introduction 5 The first chapters of chis book do not deal, however, with such abstruse methodological questions, but provide a straight narrative of the history fof energy accounting in agriculture, after an initial chapter, which introduces the reader to some practical work on agricultural energetics. It appears that Sechii Podolinsky, a Ukrainian socialist physician, first developed the concept of energy return to energy input in different types of land use, trying to combine, in articles published between 1880 and 1883, this ecological approach with the Marxist theory of economic value Although one of the versions of Podolinsky’s article was published in Die Newe Zeit, there has been no discussion of his views in the Marxist literature on agricultural development, The relations between Marxism and ecology (centred on the notion of Produktivrift) is one of the main topics studied in this book. Another crucial episode in these relations was Lenia’s reaction to Bogdano’s writings, in 1909. Lenin attacked not only Mach’s theory of knowledge, but also Ostwald’s energetics When Podolinsky wrote from the ecological point of view on the ‘conditions of human life on earth’, he was using Marx’s terminology: the ecernal natural condition of the human life! Marx did not formulate this question in terms of human ecology (studying the flow of energy and materials) and in any case his particular interest was in showing how the conditions of existence would vary, that is, how they adopted different social forms in history. For instance, direct appropriation from nature in primitive society (grodultive Konsumption), or consumption of commodities bought with wages earned by selling labour, in capitalism. The ecological view of the conditions of human existence could have been easily connected with Marxism through an adequate definition of productive forces or productive powers. This was ror done by Marx. Despite the superficial similarity between an ecological approach and an approach in terms of reproduction’ of social systems, there has been a long-standing divorce between Marxism and ecology. Of all Marxist concepts, that which fits better with the main theme of this book is commodity fetishism, or, in fy vocabulary, the fiction of commensurablity in Neucath’s example, th fat that we ‘cannot compare kilograms of bland hours of han ‘The energy analysis of agriculture was not picked up, ether, by populist provpeasant authors. Chayanor did no eed Podaske ae poem could have been developed in favour of peasant farming. Energy analysis could have been put into service in the ideology of pro-peasant populism which might have pleased Podolinsky himself. Many years later (Buttel, "For instance, Dae Kapital, vol 1, MEW ed . ol 1. MEW ed, p19 die Bedingungen des menschlchen Lebens or die ewige Naturbedingung des menschlichen Lebens. eens‘6 Introduction 1980; Palerm, 1980; and of course Georgescu-Roegen) it was pointed out that the Green Revolution in agriculture of the 1960s was not ‘green’ at all, either in the old East European populist sense or in the new ‘German’ Sense, because it seemed to favour rich peasants or farmers over poor peasants and landless labourers, and because it also meant ‘farming ‘with petroleum’ While Podolinsky had at least a non-enthusiastic report from Engels om his intellectual efforts, and considerable attention later both in his own. Country and abroad, complete silence appears to have greeted Eduard Sacher, who, in books published in 1881 and 1899, also studied the flow of energy in agriculture. Sacher was aware of the increase in the energy input chat chemical fertilizers and the use of he steam engine for threshing implied. He also had the idea of correlating stages in the history of humankind with energy use per caput. There is also interesting material on agricultural energetics in the work of another Austrian writer, Josef Popper-Lynkeus, who in 1912 published Die allgemeine Nabrpflicht als Losung der sozialen Frage, the fandamental catly text of ecological economics. This book, full of detailed computations Of the use of resources, will be considered in chapter 13 on ‘ecological tiropianism’. Popper-Lynkeus proposed an economy which would make a decreasing use of exhaustible resources, and he considered te what extent renewable energy from agricultural crops could be substitured for coal, taking a ‘pessimistic’ view, because he quite properly included in his accounts the energy cost of growing crops. Such analysis is directly relevant, as shall be seen, to discussion today on ‘energy cropping’ versus food production, for instance in Brazil, The question is certainly not one ‘of choosing between ‘economics’ and ‘sentirient’ (as Patrick Geddes would have said ironically), but rather of what is zhe ethical ‘input’ from outside economics proper which would enable the view to be accepted that the price mechanism leads to an acceptable allocation of scarce resources (0 alternative ends, Popper-Lynkeus was a physicist, a friend of Ernst Mach, and he influenced the Vienna Circle and particularly Otto Newrath, whose economics based upon a Naturalrechnung and whose proposals for a “unified science and cosmic history’ are considered in this book. Another influence on Otto Neurath’s economics was that of Karl Ballod-Atlanticus, 4 Berlin economist, and, like Popper-Lynkeus, a left-wing ecologist and the author of another ‘ecological Utopia’, Der Zukunftsstaat, first published in 1898 ‘About 1840, that is, before the laws of energetics were established, the new ‘agricultural chemistry’ had started with Liebig in Germany and with Boussingault in France. Liebig often appears in textbooks as a founding Introduction 7 father of ecology (ef. Kormondy, 1965) because of his work on the eycles of carbon and of some plant nutrients. He liked to thirk that his own work, of which he became a commercial propagandist, was of great relevance in order to avoid a ‘subsistence crisis’ n Europe, which would occur unless ‘heaps of dung and guano deposits ofthe size of English coalfields’ were discovered (a phrase quoted by Kautsky (1899) in Die Agrarfrage, praising Liebig), or unless the new gospel of inorganic chemical fertilization were adopted. The reception of Liebig’s doctrines in some countries has been well studied (Rossiter, 1975; Krokn, 1978). The {question remains: was it often pointed out that European agriculture was starting to draw upon non-renewable material subsidies? Dd perhaps some contemporary sonomiss and agronomiss point out ha imports of ano trom Peru meant an inreas in the energy intensity of Euroean arc and meant a worsening ofits energy balance? Did anybody pin ut tha eru was exporting much more energy than it was getting back in return? Or did pechaps some economists discuss (though not yet using such technical terms) the ‘shadow-price’ of guano which would ensure an ‘optimal rate of depletion’ overtime? Such questions are clearly chetorical; about 100 years Inter the exports by Peru of enormous amount of asically the same resource, though at an carlicr stage inthe trophic chain (tis ime inthe form of Eshmedt for Nowh Atlantic enmale did'ace prompt a debate on such terms. . Around the turn of the century, the discussion on the substitution Clean sapere by nitrogen taken from he sir withthe do Hpdoe dy na indeed sated out in es of i eer est otha the analysis of the flow of energy in modern agriculture could have become 2 ellen feldofsodh much carer han tid The iia of the concept of ‘technical progress’ in economics and economic histo would hen be questioned An economic hry of agricole should te, at the same time, a history of agricultural science and technology, and a history of the social factors which influenced “call wee aad its applications ‘The ‘Entropy Law’ and the Economic Process Leaving aside the history of agricultural energetics (which takes up al one-quarter ofthis book), and going back to the nore poral theme a the relations (or lack of relations) between economics and the study of the flow of energy in human society, Jevons’ views have also been considered carefully, a task which the edition of his correspondence by Collison Black (Jevons, 1972) facilitates. Jevons, one ofthe progenitors8 Introduction of marginalise economic theory, was up to date in science as shown in his exchanges with John Herschel, Clerk Maxwell and others, and also by his treatise on the Principles of Science (Jevons, 1879). Jevons addressed himself in The Coal Question (Jevons, 1865}, to the substantive issue of coal reserves, and of improving the thermodynamic efficiency of coal- driven machines, expressing the view that as thermodynamic efficiency increased, so would the use of coal increase. Jevons certainly cannot be dismissed as one professionalized economist ignorant of natural sciences. The question that shall be asked is why, despite his interest in coal, did he not consider the intertemporal allocation of exhaustible resources in his work on marginalist economics? "Walras’ work shall also be touched upon briefly, he who rarely mentioned physical matters except to remark often on the formal analogy (which also pleased Jevons) between the equations of mechanics and of economic ‘equilibrium. But the most interesting point of contact between Walras and ecological economics was the correspondence he had with Patrick Geddes, the Scottish urban and regional planner. ‘Geddes is an author difficult to classify, and certainly difficult to read. He criticized the notion of utility’ on the grounds that it was tautological. He believed that a part of consumption could be explained by biology, but he was by no means a reductionist, his favourite economist being John. Ruskin who had emphasized aesthetic values above all. The new ‘economics ~ as Geddes wrote to Walras in 1883 ~ was unsatisfactory also on the ‘supply’ side, since production should be studied with the help of physics. He developed the basic principles of a sort of Tableau Economique in physical terms, and he criticized economic accounting because it did not keep trace of the losses of energy and materials in the economic process. Geddes was also one of the first authors who tried to interpret the course of human history in terms of changes in the use of energy. One other author ‘who, at the turn of the century, also had this idea, was the American historian Henry Adams, to whose views one chapter shall be devoted. There might have been more discussions of the economy among the professional physicists than have been found. One discussion was by Rudolf Clausius, who in 1885 wrote on the energy reserves in nature and on their use for the benefit of humankind. Was he the first author to use the metaphor of the prodigal heir, which appears so often in the literature ‘on limits to geowth? ‘We have found? (he wrote) ‘stocks of coal from old times . . . These we are now using and we beliave just as a happy heir eating up a rich legacy’. It is tempting to adopt Clausius not only as an ecological economist, but also as a ‘green’ father-figure. However, not only his social context should be considered, but, in general, the issues involved in the ideological transference of concepts and findings from natural Introduction 9 sciences to social sciences and to social struggles.” I have tried to avoi srting ths book inthe form of ana prio Seerkem gtamecos a putative discipline of ecological economics which would have been in state rnascendifor about 100 years, Ihave also tried not 0 alter the other authors! ideas in order to turn them into background support for today’s left-wing “ecologism’ While in general, economists and economic historians were clearly not interested in studying the Hw of energy in human saceten, phytate on their side, seem to have been more willing to engage in theological speculation than in economics, deriving views on the divine creation of the world from thermodynamics, and threatening markind with a rather swift heat-death’. There are many examples of blatant ideological use of science even by scientists themselves. Such words of caution are, however not an answer tothe basic question: why did many other natural scientists not ‘trespass’ onto the economists’ field? Natural scientists, mathematicians and engineers (Watt, Lazare and Sadi Carnot, Coriolis, Babbage, Zeaner, Rankine, Herschel, Thomson, Clausius) had been concerned with the efficiency ofthe steam engine for a long time. Some of them, for example Babbage, are also catalogued as economists. The connection between the discovery of he mechanical equivalent of heat andthe roe of he team engine in the economy was phrase is Hessen in a foun: tent of the sogology af sciences eT founéavona by its very estence the stam engine is based on the transformation of one form ‘of movement (thermal) into another form (mechanical). Thus, together with the development ofthe eam engine we gt inevitably aso the problem ofthe easton of oe fom of movemennto another, which we donot find in Newton and which is closely bound with the problem of energy and its transformation, (Hessen, in Bukharin, 1931, p. 194) o st The physiologists came to consider from the mid-nineteenth century onwards the efficiency in the transformation of energy by plants and animals (and by the human body) asa central question in their research How to feed industrial workers at minimum cost, and assuring some standards of health, was a relevant consideration, ard time and again references have been found to the diet of a soldier st war, which the Prussian wars of 1866 and 1870 against Austria and France made topical Such research did not arise from idle scientific curiosity J he semen the entropy lsh copy law shows thatthe wl eno susie economic owt and therelore available resources sould be shared equally reminds me of the touching teopostion fom an Andalusian enecosjodct ene ote 910s th the eo fhe trace hm ohhh sch ethene nd came» macs of tare10 Introduction ‘The question can then be asked, why did ‘the entropy law and the economic process’ not become a well-established field of study in the 1850s, as might have happened? Clearly, in order to answer this question - which provides a common thread through all the chapters in this book - studies, are required of the ideological and political background of scientists, and particularly of the separation between sciences and of their institution- alization and professionalization.’ For instance, in the case of Clausius, ‘work has been done on his views on physics and the foundations of science (Truesdell, 1980), and part of his biography has been written (Ronge, 1955; Daub, 1971) butin chapter 5 the economic, political, and cultural context will be described, One other physicist {of minor importance in his own discipline) who ‘wrote on the economy was Leopold Pfaundler. In a brief and clearly written article (Pfaundler, 1902) he analysed the carrying capacity of the earth, with calculations of the solar energy falling on the soil and being converted by plants through photosynthesis, and also of the needs of food energy for human nutrition. His article suggests that the expression ‘energy crisis’ should be reserved for situations in which there are humans who are unable to obtain the 2,000 or 2,500 kilocalories per day that they would need for minimum sustenance, and that the cause of such ‘energy crises’ is, in the last resort, not the niggardliness of nature, but the restrictions in geographical mobility (because of frontiers, passports, visas): frontier police are like Maxwell's demons, Social-Darwinism and Ecology Pfaundler’s main thesis was that the carrying capacity of the earth was not determined by the availability of materials, but by the availability of free energies, since materials could be completely recycled because of the law of conservation of matter. One other contribution by Pfaundler (following Boltzmann's steps) was his awareness of the links between social-Darwinism and the study of the use of energy and materials by humanity. Social-Darwinism has inevitably cropped up in my research, against my wishes, and against the wishes of some of the other authors (for instance, Popper-Lynkeus and Podolinsky), who held strongly egalitarian views. ‘Although I certainly understand Podolinsky’s principle, that a society is not viable unless the energy return to human energy expenditure covers » These are themes developed by writers such as Cannon, 1976; Gregory, 1977; Keohn et al. (eds) 1978; Graham et al (eds), 1983, Introduction n the energy cost of human labour, and while I realize that the idea of arranging societies in a scale according to such parameters might be useful, Lam annoyed by statements such as one can find in the pages of Human Ecology where, for instance, the very low level of energy use by highland shepherds in the Andes is commended as an adaptive device.* One could as well say that the shepherds not only ‘adapt’ to ecological conditions, but to the land tenure system, that is, they have used natural resources ina manner compatible with their own survival and reproduction and with the delivery of a surplus to the landowners, the value of which has been assessed in calories (cf. Brooke Thomas, 1976, p. 403). Feruvian peasants have attempted time and again, at least from the Spanish conquest ‘onwards, otto adapt to the destiny that the colonial power, the authorities from Lima, the local landowners, and the world economic and political system, reserved for them. While the patterns of migration of animals can probably be explained to a great extent by ecologists (who else?), the preventing of Mexicans from entering the United States, and the export of oil from Mexico to the United States are social, political shenomena. The ‘openness of Saudi Arabia and Iran to visiting oil tankers, even the relative isolation of the Tsembaga-Maring or the Kung San in the 1960s, are facts, of human history which energetics and biology do not explain. The dynamics of human history is better understood as the result of a struggle between rich and poor, the forms of which vary according to the changes in relations of production, than as a history of social organisms which ‘adapt’ co ecological conditions. Although a dog may be envisaged travelling across the Atlantic by Concorde with a great expenditure of fuel, the intraspecific differences in the use of energy and materials are small in all species, if human intervention is excluded, compared to the differences for humankind. It is distinctive of the human species that at one given moment the use of energy and materials by its members can show enormous differences. The struggle between groups of humans (inside each society ~ or, rather, state ~ and between states) is not a biological ‘struggle for life. A classic statement of the connection between energetics and natural selection theory was made by Alfred Lotka (1880-1949): ‘If we had only the animal kingdom to consider we should in the first instance be disposed to conclude thar the cosmic effect of the scrimmage for available energy * eg. Smith, 1979; or Weinstein et al., 1983, The Quechus Indians ofthe Peruvian high ‘Andes are an example of human population which ha developed special cultucal adaptations deal with hypocalore stress imposed by 4 harsh environment, referring to their use of dung as fuel and to cheir “vertical” economy where meat and wool from the highlands is traded for ceteals and other produce from lower levels.2 Introduction would be to increase the total energy flux, the rate of degradation of the energy received from the sun. But plants work in the opposite direction. And even among, animals, greater efficiency in utilizing energy, a better husbanding of resources, and hence a less rapid drain upon them, must work to the advantage of a species talented in that direction. There are thus two opposing tendencies in operation, and itis difficult co see how any general principle can be applied to determine just where the balance will be struck (Lotka, 1925, p. 357}. In Lotka’s view, however, the ‘law of evolution’ (i.e. of reproductive success of a species) took the form of a ‘law of maximum energy flow’: nature... . (Lotka, 1925, p. 357) ‘ The success of the human species could therefore be analysed in terms of its learning to use sources of energy. But, could the link-up between ‘energetics and evolution, could the notion that ‘the life contest is primarily ‘a competition for available energy’ (Boltzman, 1886, cited by Lotka, 1925, p. 355) be applied intraspecifically? Unfortunately, an intimation of such social-Darwinist energetics is found in Lotka’s influential book: ‘An impartial judge, if such could be produced, would doubtless concede 10 the human species, as it stands today, an unique and predominant position in the scheme of nature. For, civilized man has achieved the distinction of practically clearing the board of all foes of a stature in any way comparable to his own. This has resulted for him in a very special form of the struggle for existence, With the conflict against other species relegated ro the back- ‘ground, man’s combat with his own kind has been forced to the center of the stage. .. . (Lotka, 1925, p. 417) This line of thought is unsound, because natural selection theory cannot be applied intraspecifically except in a metaphorical way. The subject will be ccnsidered again in the chapters on Pfaundler and on Henry Adams. Introduction 13 Ecological and Pecuniary Economics In the list of authors, Frederick Soddy, a well known chemist, deserves a prominent place. In order to emphasize (in a very ‘green’ way) the role of agriculture in the economy, Seddy drew a distinction between the ‘vital use’ of energy and its ‘laboral use’, similar to that of Lotka between ‘endosomatic’ and ‘exosomatic’ uses of energy. From 1903 onwards he had told economists to study the use of energy by humanity. He blamed economists for mistaking chrematisties for economics. It's difficult to classify Soddy either as an ‘optimist’ or as a ‘pessimist’ con the question of economic growth. He certainly believed in the progress of scientific knowledge, but he did not believe that this necessarily entailed technical progress, though he was sometimes carried away by the vistas of energy opened up by radioactivity. Soddy's main point was that the economists were mistaking real capital for financial capital. He pointed out that the payment of interest could only arise either from growth of the economy or from impoverishment of debtors, and that there was no pure economic theory of growth, since growth depended, in the last analysis, on physical factors, that is, on the availability of energy. The exhausting of the stock of fossil fuels could only be called squandering, even if fossil fuels were spent in the construction of so-called ‘capital goods’ by which the present generation would presumably increase ‘productive capacity’ to the benefit of future generations. Soddy’s critique was not only that rentier capitalists could not 30 on earning interest merely by loaning ‘out their capital, none of them using it ‘productively’ in order to extract profits from wage-labour. His point was also that it was impossible for capitalists to go on earning interest (or profit) even though their capical were invested ‘productively’ - unless they spoliated exhaustible resources. It is the definition of ‘production’ which is in question. Ostwald’s contribution to ecological economics was less polemical against the economists than Sodcy's, and directed more to the historians. He also failed in his rather high-handed attempt to engage in dialogue with historians and with social scientists, though he later became one of the recognized forebears of evolutionary ecological anthropology in the United States (through Leslie White). The true heads of this lineage ought to be Podolinsky, Sacher, and Geddes. Ostwald, also a chemist, was president of the Monist League (founded by Haeckel) between 1911 and 1914. Haeckel himself, though credited with the introduction of the word ‘ecology’ in science, is not featured in this book because he did not study the flow of energy in human societies. He was a most important figure in the doctrine that the theory of natural14 Introduction selection and evolution is applicable A Geeman square mile was about 50 squatekilomerres. Liebig was thinking ofthe poor soils i northern Germany. Henry Carey (1793-1879) was an American protectionist theorist who argued against the existence of decreasing returns in the extensive margin, but who saw the economy very ‘much in physical terms and was worried by the depletion of the friliy of che soil caused by agriculeural exports, He was influenced by Liebig and by his fellow protectionist economist Etasmus Peshine Smith (1824—82) who was a student of Liebig's agricultural chemistry and who came close co depicting economic activity in terms of energetics in his Manual of Political Economy 1953; cl. Michael Hudson, 1975, p. 212-37, “Modern” Agriculture: A Source of Energy? 41 ‘The estimates which Lisbig gave of the phosphoric acid and the potassium taken from the fields in the United States without restitution ‘were used as an opportunity to defend chemical fertilizers again - for example, super-phosphates, manufactured with sulphuric acid, At the same time, however, he praised the Chinese practice of fertilizing the fields with human excrement and thought that the landowners of the great countries should form societies to set up reservoirs where human and animal excrement would be collected and prepared for transportation to the fields (Liebig, 1859, p. 268). The urbanistic problem of rubbish, exerement and refuse accumulated in the big cities was the other side of the problem of an agriculture of spoliatios. From this, two clear lines of argument emerged: an ecological line and a line of economic growth based on agrarian chemistry and the great sewers, and the chemical treatment of urban refuse which large-scale urbanization required. The interpretation of the history of agrarian technology eventually triumphant was not the ecclogical interpretation, also found in Liebig, even though he did sell patents for fertilizers. His digressions on the recycling of excrement were considered to be the rhetorical exaggerations of a learned scientist, or to refer to the eccentricities of the Chinese; while ‘most Chinese were taking excrement to their own fields in China, some thousands of coolies held in debr peonage were taking bird excrement in Peru and sending it on to Europe.!! What was appreciated about Liebig was the promise of an agriculture with great yields, separated from the big cities and based on chemical fertilization. That made him a famous man, which was very much to his liking. 2 The discussion about the substitution of industrial fertilizers for Chilean nitrate came after Liebig. Chiean saltpetre was imported in great quantities; for example, about 10 kilograms per person per year in Germany towards 1900." Boussingault remarked early on that nitric acid was the result of the combining of azoze and oxygen, and that in order to achieve the combination of these two geses with an electric spark, the mixture must " Liebig's opinions about the agrculture of Ching (and Japan) were formed under the influence ofthe Prussian scientific missions which were then investigating the possibilities of establishing colonies, and in which che geographer Richthofen (1833-1905) later participated, The dition of his Lets om Moder Agile which hs ben quoted smosnced te sale of buss ofthe author. There is 1 book on Liebig and English agriculture in preparation by Vance M. D. Hall (ef, Centaxrs, (1982-83), 26, p. 232), to be added to the excelent studies by Rossier, Krohn, and Schaefer "Which is far less, for example, chan the present quantity of petroleum and petroleum produets: about 4 kilograms per person per day42 "Modern’ Agriculture: A Source of Energy? be moist according to Cavendish (Boussingault, 1845, pp. 323-4). Boussingault did not then envisage the practical possibility of industrial nitrogen fertilizers manufactured by electricity. That discussion would ‘come later, explicitly in terms of the energetic costs of substitution. For example, there are detailed calculations of the kilowart-honrs necessary. to ‘manufacture’ nitrogen in Popper-Lynkeus’ book (1912, p.714) and particularly in Jurisch’s (1908). The First World War gave great impetus, since nitrogen was necessary for making explosives, thus fulfilling Joseph Henry's prediction of seventy years before that one day the bolt of Jove (chat is, electricity} would come to the aid of Mars, the god of war. Soddy also referred to Cavendish's ‘great discovery of the eighteenth century’. In the Birkeland-Eyde process, instead ‘of the energy of a patient attendant turning the handle ofa frictional electric machine . . . the power, ‘of hundreds of thousands of horses, derived chiefly from the “white fuel” of the Norwegian and Swiss hill-sides, are ceaselessly at work, turning dynamos which produce powerful high-tension arcs in the air, so converting it partially into nitrous and nitric acids’. As did so many other British writers in the years after 1900, he referred to Sir William Crookes’ famous presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, where Crookes had drawn attention to the probable furure failure of the wheat supply unless chemists succeeded in solving the problems of the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. They had indeed succeeded (with the Haber process they were to succeed further), but the question, as to how long the Chile saltpetre beds will last, has simply been merged into the moze general problem of how long the natural resources of energy of the globe will hold out. Insofar as such developments utilize the natural energy running to waste, as in water power, they may be accounted as pure gain. But insofar as they consume the fuel resources of the globe they are very different. The one is like spending the interest on a legacy, and the other is like spending the legacy itself. The wheat problem .. is one particular aspect ofa still hardly- recognized coming energy problem. Soddy therefore anticipated ‘a period of reflection in which awkward interviews between civilization and its banker are in prospect’ (Soddy, 1912, pp. 135-9).!* The alarm about agricultural yields in the absence “ Sody made tis point in an aril in Siem: International Review of Scientific Shei, 1X, 1912, pp. 186-202, and in the same year in his book Matter and Energy. This book was Uwanslated and published in 1913 in Moscow with a preface and noces by Nicolai Mororow, a texcmember of Narodnaya Volya who had spent the years 1881-1905 in prison and who lacer became a writer on scientific topics. CI. A. N. Krivomazov, ‘The reception of Sodd’s work ‘nthe USSR’, in Kaufman, 1986, p. 121. Morozov must have been familiar with Podolinsky’s work, and he might have emphasized the similarity between Podolinsky’s and Soddy’s energy ‘economics (Nicolai Morozov is not to be confused with G. F. Mocozow, the forest ecologist.) “Modern’ Agriculture: A Source of Energy? 43 of chemical fertilizers was as old as Liebig, if not Humphry Davy (178-1829), but the view that modern agriculture was energy-intensive agriculture was still a novelty in 1912, and surprisingly remained a novelty: tuntil the 1970s. Recent discussion on new agricultural practices such as pon-tllage shows that savings in fuel for tractors must be compensated by greater nitrogen fertilization (Randall, 1982, p. 363). ‘The increase in agricultural production is doubtful, certainly not because there is not enough nitrogen in the air, but because the increase in agricultural production implies the expenditure of fossil energy in the manufacture of fertilizers. And so, a modern discussion of rural economy (the title which Boussingault used for his book, which is not about chrematistic or catallactic economics but about agricultural chemistry) would have to consider the possibility of manufacturing nitrogen fertilizers with a smaller expenditure of energy (using appropriate catalysts) and endowing cereals, by means of genetic engineering, with bacteria such as those associated with pulses. A discussion on the ecological effects of the new biotechnologies, including their impact on erergy use, seems more useful than an orthodox economic discussion of decreasing or increasing returns in agriculture or on the belief of some economists in ineluctable ‘technical progress’. For the moment, looking at the evolution of the last hundred years in the over-developed countries, itis difficult to say whether agricultural productivity is greater or smaller. The expenditure of fossil energy (and of minerals, which are not renewable, since they cannot in practice be totally recycled) has risen more than profortionately. Measured in money, there is no doubt of the increase in agricultural productivity, but where do the prices of exhaustible resources come from? From supply and demand? Can we really explain the temporal pattern of use of ‘exhaustible resources by employing the methodology of economic theory, meant to explain che exchanges between individuals who are now alive, and who hold views on the history of science and on technical progress, who possess given purchasing powers, and who exhibie subjective preferences whose origins are all unexplained? Some writers think that, because of the decrease in the price of oil in the mid-1980s, energy considerations are no longer relevant. Commenting, fon Pimentel’s work of the 1970s on the energy intensity of modern agriculture, it has been asserted: ‘In retrospect :t appears that these concerns about energy dependence, although not without foundation, were overdrawn’ (Hayami and Ruttan, 1985, p. 221). The proof is supposed to be that the fears about the impact cf a presumed energy shortage on fertilizer prices have failed to materialize. However, a decrease in the price of oil does not mean that oil reserves in the world have increased.44 ‘Modern’ Agriculture: A Source of Energy? ‘The argument against mainstream economics is not that the marker is wrong because it is based on subjective valuations instead of being based 6on objective geological facs. Geology i a human science. The argument, to be fully developed in chapter 11, is simply that the market for exhaustible resources cannot operate unless agents have some estimates about present and future availability, and unless they attribute a certain present value to future demand. 3 The History of Agricultural Energetics: Podolinsky Introduction “The beginning of the influence that the second law of thermodynamics ‘was to have on ecological theory’ has been traced back to Lotka (1925) by E, P. Odum (1968, p. 15), In fact, the study of the flow of energy and of energetic efficiencies in human societies started earlier, though it did not become an academic discipline. There is nothing very starting in this, All. to0 often a rich past of ideas, concepts, controversies, personal failures and successes falls into oblivion as the history of disciplines which have finally found their academic niches is written. Thus, ‘the ecosystem approach to ecology which was developed by the Odum brothers out of the thoughts of Lindeman . . . (based upon) food chains, energy flow, trophic levels, and ecological efficiencies’ (Colinvaux, 1976; ef. also Ellen, 1982, p. 95) began much earlier than the names quoted would suggest. Some writings will now be introduced which, although published about a hundred years ago, read like recent contributions to ecological anthropology, ‘human ecology and energy economics, since they were based on comput™ ations of the energy returns to inputs in different human activities. Such tial attempts (around 1880) were generally received with silence, and ‘one cannot therefore exclude the existence of other precursors in the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s. ‘The work being considered could have: been a foundation stone for human ecology, for ecological anthropology, and for energy economics, and I would be reluctant to classify it as belonging to only one of these disciplines. The study of the flow of energy and the cycles of materials in small human groups (Rappaport, 1967; Lee, 1979) is usually classified as ecological anthropology while, for instance, the study of energy flows in rural China (Smil, 1979) (discussed in chapter 2) would belong to human ecology. However, anthropologists like Leslie White and, more recently, R.N, Adams, have also attempted work of the widest scope (see White,46 The History of Agricultural Energetics 5 ; 1959; and Adams, R. N., 1975; 1982; 1984). Moreover, te eeale ‘studies, for instance that by Brooke Thomas (1976) on the flow of energy in a settlement of Quechua shepherds in Puno, Peru, to which reference has been made in the introduction, are classified as human ecology, perhaps because they do not attempt to link up the study ‘of ecology with that of other levels of realty ~ social organization, religious beliefs and rituals~as the anthropologists do, Although comparative suudies on energy flows in agriculture (Pimentel, 1973, 19795 Leach, 1976) Glearly belong to the category of agricultural energy economics, they make ‘icc of the findings of ecological anthropologists on the output /input ratios, in energy terms in traditional systems, such as tropical slash-and-burn wigriculture, or Chinese rice- or Mexican maize-growing. From the 1850s and 1860s onwards, it was possible to adopt a quantitative view of the flow of energy from the sun (shough that sun sip rked by nuclear fusion was not understood until the 1930s), and it was “Iso possible to determine how much of the energy from the sun interoepted by the earth was radiated back into space, and how much (or, rather, how Iitle) could be transformed by plants into carbon, which they took from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The process of nutrition as oxidation ‘of carbon was also understood, as was the use of energy in metabolism a tort not surprising that somebody should have attempted to measure the output/input ratio in agriculture in energy terms. One of the first such attempts was made by Serhii Podolinsky. This has been ‘known for some time, mainly because of Engels’ letters to Marx on Podolinsky, which had already been mentioned in the 1920s, both in the literature on the relations between Marxism and natural sciences, and in biographical works on Podolinsky’s role in Ukrainian populism and socialism of the 1870s. Engels had some knowledge of the elementary ‘energetics of human. physiology, and in a note of 1875, (ater included in Dialectics of Nature) he refers to Fick’s and Wislicenus’ experiment in climbing the Faulhorn in 1865, which became popularized under the name ofA day of hunger for science’. Adolf Fick (1829-1901) had already written in 1857 and 1858 on the number of kilocalories (2,700) that a han would spend and need pet day, when not working (Fick, 1906, IV, 418). Different types of work would imply different energy expenditures ‘over that rate. An idea being circulated at the time (for instance, in an article in Das Ausland in 1877, 50, p. 298, without author's name) was that the economic values of different types of work could be established in physical terms. Engels already had rejected explicitly this notion in 1875, ‘On 19 December 1882, Engels wrote to Marx that Podolinsky had ‘discovered’ the following facts, already well known. If the food intake of The History of Agricultural Energetics 47 one person per day were equal to 10,000 kilocalories, then the physical work done would be a fraction of this energy. This physical work would become economic work if employed in fixing solar energy, for instance through agricultural activity. Whether the energy fixed by the work of ‘one person per day were equal to 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 or one million kilocalories, would depend only on the degree of development of the means of production. Establishing an energy budget was in any case possible only in the most primitive branches of production, such as hunting and fishing. In agriculture (here Engels was most perceptive] one would have to reckon, among the energy inputs, the energy value of fertilizers and other auxiliary means, a difficult thing to compute. In industry, all energy accounting had to stop; it was impossible to calculate in energy terms the costs of production of a needle, a screw or a hammer. The wish to express ‘economic relations in physical terms could no: be carried out, All that Podolinsky had managed to show (wrote Engels to Marx on 22 December 1882) was the old story that all industrial producers have to live from the products of agriculture; this well-known fact could, if one so wished, be translated into the language of physics, but little would be gained by it, Engels’ letters to Marx on Podolinsky were first published by Bebel and Bernstein (1919, vol. IV, pp. 499-502) and they have since then been published several times, in all major European languages. Podolinsky’s original article appeared in similar Russian, French, Italian and German versions between 1880 and 1883. It will be summarized in the following pages. He began by explaining the laws of energetics, quoting, from Clausius that although the energy of the Universe was a constant, there was a tendency towards the dissipation of energy or, in Clausius’ terminology, there was a tendency for entropy to reach a maximum. ‘Entropy’ referred to the quantity of energy waich would no longer be transformed into other forms of energy. Podolinsky did not discuss the

You might also like

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

  

  From Everand

  The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

  Mark Manson

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (5824)
• The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

  

  From Everand

  The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

  Brene Brown

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (1093)
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

  

  From Everand

  Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

  Chris Voss

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (852)
• • Magazines
  • Podcasts
  • Sheet music
• Principles: Life and Work

  

  From Everand

  Principles: Life and Work

  Ray Dalio

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (612)
• The Glass Castle: A Memoir

  

  From Everand

  The Glass Castle: A Memoir

  Jeannette Walls

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (1720)
• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

  

  From Everand

  Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

  Angela Duckworth

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (590)
• Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel

  Jesmyn Ward

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (1194)
• Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

  

  From Everand

  Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

  Margot Lee Shetterly

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (903)
• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

  

  From Everand

  Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

  Phil Knight

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (541)
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower

  

  From Everand

  The Perks of Being a Wallflower

  Stephen Chbosky

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (2105)
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

  

  From Everand

  The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

  Ben Horowitz

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (349)
• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

  

  From Everand

  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

  Ashlee Vance

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (474)
• Bad Feminist: Essays

  

  From Everand

  Bad Feminist: Essays

  Roxane Gay

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (1029)
• The Outsider: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  The Outsider: A Novel

  Stephen King

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (1871)
• Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

  

  From Everand

  Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

  Carmen Maria Machado

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (823)
• The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

  

  From Everand

  The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

  Viet Thanh Nguyen

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (122)
• The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

  

  From Everand

  The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

  Siddhartha Mukherjee

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (271)
• Angela's Ashes: A Memoir

  

  From Everand

  Angela's Ashes: A Memoir

  Frank McCourt

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (442)
• Brooklyn: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  Brooklyn: A Novel

  Colm Toibin

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (1948)
• The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living

  

  From Everand

  The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living

  Meik Wiking

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (403)
• A Man Called Ove: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  A Man Called Ove: A Novel

  Fredrik Backman

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (4771)
• Steve Jobs

  

  From Everand

  Steve Jobs

  Walter Isaacson

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (809)
• The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

  

  From Everand

  The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

  Thomas L. Friedman

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (2259)
• The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel

  Garth Stein

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (4208)
• The Yellow House: A Memoir (2019 National Book Award Winner)

  

  From Everand

  The Yellow House: A Memoir (2019 National Book Award Winner)

  Sarah M. Broom

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (98)
• Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

  

  From Everand

  Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

  Gilbert King

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (266)
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

  

  From Everand

  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

  Betty Smith

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (1929)
• Yes Please

  

  From Everand

  Yes Please

  Amy Poehler

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (1903)
• A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story

  

  From Everand

  A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story

  Dave Eggers

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (231)
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

  

  From Everand

  Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (234)
• The Woman in Cabin 10

  

  From Everand

  The Woman in Cabin 10

  Ruth Ware

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (2525)
• Wolf Hall: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  Wolf Hall: A Novel

  Hilary Mantel

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (3973)
• Fear: Trump in the White House

  

  From Everand

  Fear: Trump in the White House

  Bob Woodward

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (738)
• John Adams

  

  From Everand

  John Adams

  David McCullough

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (2409)
• On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal

  

  From Everand

  On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal

  Naomi Klein

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (74)
• The Light Between Oceans: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  The Light Between Oceans: A Novel

  M.L. Stedman

  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

  4.5/5 (789)
• Manhattan Beach: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  Manhattan Beach: A Novel

  Jennifer Egan

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (880)
• The Constant Gardener: A Novel

  

  From Everand

  The Constant Gardener: A Novel

  John le Carré

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (104)
• The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

  

  From Everand

  The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

  George Packer

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (45)
• Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore

  

  From Everand

  Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore

  Jay Sekulow

  Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

  3.5/5 (137)
• Little Women

  

  From Everand

  Little Women

  Louisa May Alcott

  Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

  4/5 (105)