- Economic policy, targets, and theory are currently expressed in terms of constant percentage economic growth. Which is to say, exponential growth.
- All empirical evidence ties past growth to increased resource consumption, most especially energy. "Dematerialisation" studies tend not to be well supported, and arguments for nonmaterial mechanisms for economic growth prove to be largely unfounded far more hypothetical or theological than even theoretical.
The point that extending Western standards of living beyond the ~1 billion residents of the US, EU, JP, CA, AU, & NZ (line noise), and the additional 1 billion of China who are still on net nowhere near Western levels of affluence, but have seen appreciable growth over the past two decades, accompanied by massive increases in energy consumption, resource utilisation, and sinks (effluent) exploitation, much of that energy from coal, to the five billions elsewhere, requires a similar energy-intensity-per-unit-GDP is precisely the one I'm trying to make.
There is some space for optimising efficiency in terms of GDP per unit energy, and within specific nations, there's been some evidence of this -- see the US since the oil shocks of the 1970s. But progress has been limited, most especially progress in the absence of further price shocks. Applying imposed efficiency requirements has worked poorly, and the tolerance of imposing, say, higher fuel taxes (as is practiced in Europe and Japan, neither having much by way of indigenous petroleum supply) has been scant.
(Higher prices for petroleum in petroleum-exporting countries themselves is even less viable, and is a major component of a theory of their collapse, the Export Lands Model. See Venezuela, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen as examples, with Russia potentially another, though its production has yet to fall markedly.)
Steve Keen has been doing some remarkable recent work on the role of energy in production functions, including a rewrite of the Cobb-Douglas production function to include energy as a term along with capital and labour. He's been working with a long-time researcher in the area, Robert Ayres, and making quite substantial progress, though whether or not that will be accepted by the field remains an open question. Economics has been exceedingly resistant to such messages in the past.
Keen's conceptual insight is that "labour without energy is a corpse, capital without energy is a sculpture". It's possible to increase efficiencies. Early steam engines operated in the 1-10% thermodynamic efficiency range, modern dual-cycle gas-turbine generation can exceed 50%, and when making use of waste heat for other processes can approach 80% efficiencies. But you're always limited to some theoretical maximum.
One area I've been exploring is the question of just what specific technolgical mechanisms there are. Economists describe technology generally as "efficiency", but it's an efficiency gained through specific means. I've identified nine:
1. Fuels. Applying more (or more useful) energy to a process.
2. Energy transmission and transformation.
3. Materials. Specific properties, abundance, costs, effects, limitation.s
4. Process knowledge -- how to do things. What's generally described as "technical knowledge", here considered as a specific mechanism of technology.
5. Structural or causal knowledge -- why things work. What's generally described as "scientific knowledge".
6. Networks. Interactions between nodes via links, physical or virtual, over which matter, energy, information, or some mix flow. (People would be one possible flow.) Transport, comms, power, information.
7. Systems. Constructs including sensing, processing, action, and feedback. Ranging from conceptual to mechanical to human and social.
8. Information. Sensing, perceiving, processing, storing, retrieving, and transmitting. Ranging from our natural senses to augmented ones, from symbolic systems (language, maths) to algorithms.
9. Hygiene. Sinks and unintended consequences, affecting the function and vitality of systems, and their mitigations or limits.
I've been playing with this ontology for a few years, and have yet to either remove or add to the basic nine factors. A dematerialisation that succeeded in doing so would be quite remarkable. I'm open to suggestions and criticisms.