A few weeks ago, I read an amusing (though saddening) correspondence between two professional economists: HF, a sustainability economist, and Dr. C, an ecological economist:
HF had criticized Dr. C for not even
mentioning the name of Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen in his book on a green economy. Dr. C. replied: “Naturally,
Georgescu-Roegen, who had been honored with the Nobel Prize for his work on the
subject, is known to us.” But, while writing a book, one cannot mention every
relevant author etc.
Thereupon, HF thanked Dr. C. for his kind
reply, but added, inter alia: “…. Please allow me the following comment on your
knowledge about Georgescu-Roegen: The remarkable, in order not to say the
grotesque, point here is that Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen, as pioneer of
ecological economics, was not even regarded by the committee in charge as
deserving of receiving this honor.”
This triggered off the following
pages from my memory:
Who is this late Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen (in the
following, NGR)? Among environmental activists and ecologically interested
persons, there are very few, who not only came across the name but also read
his main book Entropy Law and the
Economic Process and some of his other writings. I guess, not all
professional economists nor all who studied economics at the university level
have heard a lecture on his theory and his views. They might be of interest and
useful, even very important for the very frustrated young environmental and
climate activists of today and those who are associated with them in groups
like Fridays for Future, X’tinction
Rebellion, Last Generation etc. So let me try to make a simple presentation
thereof. Not being a good writer, let me try it in the style of a grandfather
telling a story from his young days to his grandchildren. I am after all 86
years old and the activists of Fridays
For Future etc. could be my grandchildren. I hope my readers will excuse me
the inexactitudes and the paltry reference details.
I was nine or ten
years old when the following occurred: We were then living in a village in West
Bengal (India). We were six children; I was the fifth of them. One day, I and
my immediately elder brother were standing alone in front of one of the many
ponds that southern West Bengal villages generally have. My brother Dilip,
although barely one-and-a half years older, was much smarter than I, who was
reputed in our family to be the simpleton of the lot.
Now,
I had a question that was troubling me for many days, and I thought Dilip might
be interested. The question that troubled me was as follows: My parents were
two in the beginning, and then we six children came. I asked Dilip: How can it
work?: Originally my father’s salary must have sufficed for him and his wife,
my mother. It was a two-member family. But then, within 12 years, it became an
eight-member family.
Dilip was really smart. He said: You
are stupid. Look at this pond. Four months ago, in April, the pond had this
little water (he showed the then water level with his fingers). And now? Look
at it after five months, it is full. Millions of rain drops fell from the sky in
the pond; they will vanish again. No problem. This happens every year. I
understood the logic of his example. I fell quiet, but I was not really satisfied.
I could not understand the similarity between the pond and the growth of our
family.
Decades later, I would understand it.
Dilip was talking of a sustainable system, whereas I was perturbed by the
exponential growth of an unsustainable one. Little did I know then that we were
discussing one of the big issues of ecology and economy.
The same question
came up in college where I had political economy as one of my subjects. One day,
the lecturer was teaching us about the Malthusian theory of population. You
should know it, in the 1950s, India was a very poverty-stricken country. I
could see it in the village where we lived in my childhood as well as in
Calcutta, where we lived in the 1950s. I was seventeen years old, and Calcutta
was in the 1950s a hotbed of leftist politics. All kinds of communist and
socialist parties had a strong following there. And the social science and
humanities faculties of our college were full of communist and Marxist
lecturers. As expected, this particular lecturer rejected the Malthusian theory
of population. I remember only one sentence of his lecture: “A man is not only
born with a mouth, but also with two hands.”
In those days, at the impressionable
age of 17, in a poverty-stricken huge country like India, it was impossible for
a young person not to be influenced by communism and Marxism, particularly in
Calcutta. I absorbed much Marxist and socialist/communist ideology. But I was not
satisfied with the Marxist rejection of Malthus. Much later, I thought, Marx
simply was obstinate, unjust to another thinker who had expressed one part of
the truth about the human condition. But the 1950s, also the 1960s, were the era
of faith in eternal progress, development, and miracles that science and
technology were bringing to us, also in India.
That faith was
shattered in the 1970s.
I did not become
an economist, nor a political scientist. I studied German, also in Germany, and
became a lecturer in German in Hyderabad, a large city in South India. Once, in
the late 1960s or early 1970s, a famous actor and dramaturge of the Bengali
stage happened to be in Hyderabad. The man was also known as an intellectual.
So the Bengalis of Hyderabad invited him to speak at a meeting of theirs, on
whatever he wanted to speak. It was an intellectual rambling talk. But one
thing that I still remember from that talk is as follows:
Shambhu Mitra – that was the name of
the famous actor – said in the course of his talk: he had recently read a very
interesting small book, actually a lecture, by a British intellectual called C.
P. Snow. In the lecture entitled The Two
Cultures, Snow regretted the fact that in his country, generally,
scientists had no interest in literature and humanities and littérateurs
generally ignored the sciences, that there was hardly any exchange of thoughts
between the two groups of intellectuals. Snow called upon the two elite groups to
be more interested in the thinking of each other. He said, in the general
sense, to be more effective in their role as the elite of the country, “not
only should a professor of physics read some works of Shakespeare, but also a
professor of any of the humanities should e.g. know what the Second Law of
Thermodynamics says.” (inexact quotation – SS)
I had thought I belonged to the
educated elite of India, and I did not know what the Second Law of
Thermodynamics was. I wanted to know something about it. In the early 1970s, there
was no computer in India and also no Wikipedia.
So I began asking my students, many of whom were Engineers or students of
engineering; among them were also some lecturers in physics. But none could
give the answer. They mostly said, they had heard of it, but it was not so
important for their studies, nor for their future profession. After some failed
tries, I met a geophysicist who seemed to know what it was. But he was in a
hurry then. He said: O, if you want to know that, you must first learn what entropy is, and he went away. And all
the time I was asking myself why it should be so important for me to know what
these things said. I understood it a few years later.
In 1972 or 1973, I
read the famous book Limits to Growth
(Meadows et al.), the first report to the Club of Rome. That was a shock for
me, just as it was for many who had all along been talking of economic
development, progress, scientific development, socialism, capitalism with a
humane face and things like that. I thought, if what the book says is true,
then nothing will help. No amount of scientific discoveries and inventions, no
amount of planning will help, if the essential resources are limited and
exhaustible.
But was all that true? There were
many who refused to be perturbed. To take just one example: Prof. Beckerman,
the head of the faculty of economics at the University of Oxford, wrote that
the minerals contained in the top one mile of the Earth’s crust would suffice
for continuous economic growth for the next 100 million years. Others wrote
about the possibilities of substituting rare resources with more abundant ones.
More optimistic people thought of 100 percent recycling of exhaustible
resources. In sum, the vast majority of economists and experts in relevant
fields, as well as men in the street, refused to share the view that there are
limits to economic growth.
I also read the protocol of a
meeting of relevant Soviet scientists attached to the highest political bodies
of the of the state. They agreed with Meadows et al. so far as facts and
analyses were concerned. They agreed it was a problem, the limits, but they
criticized the authors for not considering that a socialist society approaches
the problem in a different way than a capitalist one. They did not elaborate,
in which different way.
So far as energy was concerned,
nobody disputed that the fossil fuels or fissionable materials such as uranium
and thorium were exhaustible. And everybody agreed that spent energy cannot be recycled.
But the main problem with nuclear power plants was more the risk of nuclear
accidents and radioactive pollution than exhaustibility of the resources. The
only question here was whether the risks were acceptable or not. From 1974
onwards (e.g. in Wyhl, Germany), there was vehement opposition from the people to
construction of further nuclear power plants. Also the huge construction costs
of such plants and the necessary safety measures were a strong deterrent.
So what was the solution of the energy
problem that the optimists came forward with? Fossil fuels were out, because
they were not only exhaustible but, also polluting and responsible for global
warming, power from nuclear fission was too risky and too costly. Nuclear
fusion power was(is) not developed yet. Deforesting the whole world for wood as
source of energy was not a proposition at all.
The kinetic energy of wind and the heat
(warmth)-energy of sunshine are known to humans from time immemorial – both resources
are inexhaustible (renewable) and nonpolluting. Also producing electricity from
them is possible. For some decades now, all kinds of environmentalists and
Greens have been proposing an ecological economy based mainly on electricity
produced by means of these two resources. Today, “clean energy,” “decarbonization“
of the economy, “green hydrogen”, “energy transition”, “green growth”, “hundred
percent renewables”, “sustainable development” etc. have become buzz words,
articles of faith, so to speak, though actually, till now, they are largely mere
slogans.
These propositions were so attractive
that at first, that is, in the early 1980s, I too superficially thought that it
was a plausible idea. But soon doubts also started cropping up. If these were
not mere slogans, but hopes with substantial scientific justification, then why
were some activists still advocating for natural gas as a fuel to replace coal?
Natural gas is of course a lesser evil than coal and oil, but it is a fossil
fuel nonetheless. Or why were some reputed environmental scientists, such as
the late James Lovelock of Gaia fame, advocating for more nuclear energy, and
not wind energy, to replace fossil fuels in the UK?1
In the mid1980s,
finally, I found a popular science book entitled Entropy written by Jeremy Rifkin. In this book I also found a
reference to a scientific paper of NGR on the question of solar energy,2
which had, in 1978, when the paper had been written, not yet become an article
of faith of all environmentalists and Greens. I read the paper as soon as I got
it. In it, NGR drew a distinction between feasibility and viability,
and came to the conclusion that solar electrical energy is of course feasible, but
it is not viable. I cannot here quote the whole paper of NGR. But there is
space here for a few short passages –
from NGR’s original paper and my book,3 in which I have summarized his argument. NGR,
who had, for this paper, examined the case of solar energy produced with
aluminum collector technology, wrote (paraphrased by SS): Can the second generation of solar power plants be built using the solar energy
produced by the first generation? NGRs answer was no, at least not yet. A
viable technology is one that is capable of “reproducing” itself after it has
been brought into existence by means of an earlier technology. Illustrating the
point, he writes: “The first bronze hammer …. was produced by some stone
hammers. However, from that moment on, all bronze hammers were hammered only by
bronze hammers.” (NGR 1978: 18). To take an illustration from the energy sector,
the first ton of coal was extracted by using human and animal muscle power. But
soon, machines driven by coal energy were producing the capital equipment
necessary to extract coal, and such equipment was itself to be driven by coal
energy. This is not the case with solar energy. All the necessary equipment,
including solar collectors, are produced through processes based on sources of
energy other than the sun (coal, oil, uranium etc.). Solar energy is,
therefore, feasible only so long as other sources of energy are available. That
means it is not viable.
Later, when photovoltaic solar energy
started dominating the scene, the argument remained the same. They are
feasible, but not viable. Currently, we know that 70 percent of all
photovoltaic-panels sold in the world are made in China, where coal is by far
the greatest source of energy, not the sun (nor wind or flowing water).
Same is the case with electricity
from wind energy. The turbines, rotor blades, concrete towers etc. – are all
produced with energy based mainly on conventional sources.
I have dealt with the subject in numerous
articles, all published on my blog-site.4 So there is no need to elaborate on it any further.
To sum up, according to NGR, it may be impossible to solve the problem, for the
intensity of solar radiation reaching ground level is extremely low. And neither
sunshine nor blowing wind is available all the time.
Here enters the Second Law of
Thermodynamics (often also called the Entropy Law).5 In and on the surface of the sun, the
temperature is unimaginably high. But when it reaches the surface of the earth,
it is extremely low. What happens is that on its way to the earth solar radiation
(sunshine) dissipates, its entropy
increases. In order to make it useable for producing electricity, we have to
collect (concentrate) the dissipated solar radiation – by means of aluminum
mirrors or photovoltaic solar panels. These and all the related equipment from
A to Z has first to be produced, for which energy from other sources has to be
spent, the quantity of which is usually more than what is finally produced by
the solar thermal and photovoltaic power plants. That means their energy balance is
negative. Same is the case with wind electricity.
NGR pointed out that when we use
matter (materials) for any purpose, it also undergoes entropy increase. In
common parlance, we call it wear and tear. In industrial production processes
it leads to waste production. Waste can of course be recycled, but that again
requires expenditure of energy. Moreover, some part of the matter always gets
irretrievably dissipated, which is why hundred percent recycling is never
possible.
All scientists agree that the Entropy
Law is a universal law, and that it can never be overridden. It is having its
effect everywhere, even in societies as a whole. Much later, I read a book
entitled Social Entropy by Manfred
Wöhlke, where the author maintains that it is the Entropy Law that is in effect
when we observe that formerly well-functioning cohesive societies are breaking
down (dissipating, so to speak) and states becoming failed states.
I also read in the 1980s a debate in the
pages of The Ecologist – in those
days the leading theoretical journal of the ecologists and environmental
activists – in which Edward Goldsmith (the editor of the journal and a leading
writer on ecological issues) tried to refute the universality and
incontrovertibility of the Entropy Law, that NGR was asserting. Goldsmith gave
the example of plants which sprout by themselves from the soil after the
previous generation dies away.
To Goldsmiths “refutation” NGR replied
that plants do not reproduce themselves through any mystical unending source of
energy, but that it is the suns’ energy that is enabling them as well as any
life that exists, not only to live, but also to reproduce themselves, and that the
life process would end when the sun dies out due to the effect of the Entropy Law.
NGR had entitled his main theoretical book The
Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971).
Conclusion
In the 1960s and 1970s, when NGR wrote his main theoretical book and the
papers that I could read, his focus was on the non-renewability and hence
exhaustibility of the resources that we need. He calls the supplies of
non-renewable energy sources and other minerals in low-entropy state “the
limited dowry of mankind’s existence on earth”. A dowry is not only a limited
but also a one-off gift, Therefore, Georgescu-Roegen comes to the logical
conclusion:
“Even with a
constant population and a
constant flow per capita of mined resources, mankind's dowry will ultimately
be exhausted if the career of the human species is not brought to an end
earlier by other factors.” (1971)
By “other factors”
he must have meant a nuclear war between the superpowers. Global warming was
not a matter of concern until the second half of the 1980s. But today, as we
know, scientists are afraid that due to global warming and climate change the
Earth may soon become an “uninhabitable planet” – title of a three to five
years old book. But the resource problem has not disappeared. I think it cannot
be solved, for our whole present-day economy has been built up and is running
on the basis of mined resources, all of which, especially the fossil fuels,
will ultimately be exhausted sooner or later.
On the prospect of mankind on the
Earth, NGR wrote in a fit of pessimism,
"Will mankind listen to any program that implies
a constriction of its addiction to exosomatic comfort? Perhaps the destiny of
man is to have a short, but fiery, exciting and extravagant life rather than a
long, uneventful and vegetative existence. Let other species – the amoebas, for
example – which have no spiritual ambitions inherit an earth still bathed in plenty
of sunshine." (1972)
I think NGR has here
made a small mistake. What will come to an end is not exactly the career of the
human species on the Earth, but that of the industrial society. The human
species is living on the planet since before any resources were mined.
------------OOO------------
Notes.
1. See also my article . The Ecological Clarity
that the Ukraine War brings – A Paradox and Its Explanation on my blog site.(see note No. 4)
2.. Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen: Technology Assessment: The Case of the Direct Use of Solar Energy.
3. Saral Sarkar: Eco-Socialism or
Eco-Capitalism.
4. My blog site: http//eco-socialist,blogspot.com
5. "The
second law of thermodynamics says that entropy always increases with time".
(quote from internet).
I prefer to use the term Entropy Law,
for the term thermodynamics may
erroneously suggest that the law applies only to heat transmission. But, as NGR
pointed out elsewhere, dissipation inevitably occurs also when we use matter
(materials) for any purpose.
