As the average EROI of an economy's energy sources drops toward 1 to 1, an ever-larger fraction of the economy's wealth must go to finding and producing energy. This means less wealth is left over for everything else that needs to be done, from building houses to moving around information to educating children. <...> ... the tar sands of Alberta, likely to be a prime energy source for the United States in the future, have an EROI of around 4 to 1, because a huge amount of energy (mainly from natural gas) is needed to convert the sands' raw bitumen into useable oil. <...> Without a doubt, mankind can find ways to push back these constraints on global growth with market- driven innovation on energy supply, efficient use of energy and pollution cleanup. But we probably can't push them back indefinitely, because our species' capacity to innovate, and to deliver the fruits of that innovation when and where they're needed, isn't infinite. Sometimes even the best scientific minds can't crack a technical problem quickly (take, for instance, the painfully slow evolution of battery technology in recent decades), sometimes market prices give entrepreneurs poor price signals (gasoline today is still far too cheap to encourage quick innovation in fuel-efficient vehicles) and, most important, sometimes there just isn't the political will to back the institutional and technological changes needed.
... the tar sands of Alberta, likely to be a prime energy source for the United States in the future, have an EROI of around 4 to 1, because a huge amount of energy (mainly from natural gas) is needed to convert the sands' raw bitumen into useable oil. <...>
Without a doubt, mankind can find ways to push back these constraints on global growth with market- driven innovation on energy supply, efficient use of energy and pollution cleanup.
But we probably can't push them back indefinitely, because our species' capacity to innovate, and to deliver the fruits of that innovation when and where they're needed, isn't infinite.
Sometimes even the best scientific minds can't crack a technical problem quickly (take, for instance, the painfully slow evolution of battery technology in recent decades), sometimes market prices give entrepreneurs poor price signals (gasoline today is still far too cheap to encourage quick innovation in fuel-efficient vehicles) and, most important, sometimes there just isn't the political will to back the institutional and technological changes needed.
Sometimes even the best scientific minds can't crack a technical problem quickly
There's also the little issue of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which "the best scientific minds" of the 19th century discovered as a result of investigating how to improve the efficiency of steam engines to power the industrial revolution.
We've know the damn (negative) answer to the question for 150 years, and just about immediately after the question posed itself in the early 19th century, but the knowledge still hasn't made it the la-la land of Economics (except, possibly in "fringe" environmental economics). Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
