Fossil fuels are foundational to progress
Regardless of their negative side-effects, fossil fuels have been a bedrock of human progress for two centuries.
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In previous articles, I made the case that we can best understand the nature of human material process using the concept of the Five Keys to Progress.
The Five Keys to Progress are critical because they are the necessary preconditions for a society changing from a state of poverty to a state of progress, and they are actionable in today’s world. In other words, the concept not only helps to understand the world but also how to make it better.
In previous excerpts, I explained:
Key #1: A highly efficient food production and distribution system. This enables societies to overcome geographical constraints on food production so that large numbers of people can focus on solving problems other than getting enough food to eat
Key #2: Trade-based cities packed with a large number of free citizens possessing a wide variety of skills. These people innovate new technologies, skills and social organizations and copy the innovations made by others.
Key #3: Decentralized political, economic, religious and ideological power. It is of particular importance that elites are forced into transparent, non-violent competition that undermines their ability to forcibly extract wealth from the masses. This also allows citizens to freely choose among institutions based upon what they have to offer to each individual and society in general.
Key #4: At least one high-value-added industry that exports to the rest of the world. This injects wealth into the city or region, accelerates economic growth and creates markets for smaller local industries and services.
In this excerpt, I would like to explain the fifth and final Key to Progress:
Key #5: Widespread use of fossil fuels. The incredible energy density of fossil fuels injects vast amounts of useful energy into society, enabling it to solve a wide variety of problems. Without this energy, life would return to the daily struggle for survival that dominated most of human history.
The following is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.
Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
See also my other posts on Energy:
Contrary to what many historians believe, modern material progress did not start with the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution super-charged a progress that had already been in existence for centuries and enabled it to spread through much of the world.
Before the Industrial Revolution, many Commercial societies in Northwestern Europe experienced progress. Some famous examples of Commercial societies include the:
Medieval city/states of Northern Italy (Venice, Florence, Genoa, Milan, and many more)
Late Medieval city/states of Flanders (Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, and Antwerp in modern-day Belgium)
The Dutch Republic (1579-1795)
Pre-industrial England, particularly in the southeast (roughly 1500-1800)
This progress within pre-Industrial Commercial societies created a standard of living that far surpassed other societies that had existed up until this time. But by today’s standards, citizens of Commercial societies were still relatively poor.
Commercial societies first evolved in Northern Italy about 800 years ago. These Commercial societies combined four of the Five Keys to Progress (productive agriculture, trade-based cities, decentralized power and export industries).
Over the following centuries Commercial societies diffused from Northern Italy to Flanders (modern-day Belgium) and then to the Netherlands and finally to Southeast England. Migrations from England to North America spread planted the seeds for new Commercial societies across the Atlantic Ocean.
Despite their prosperity they were still much poorer than today. The key missing ingredient was widespread use of fossil fuels, which enabled humans to acquire huge amounts of concentrated chemical energy and transform it into useful energy to perform tasks. Most importantly, that energy could be used to power new industrial technologies.
The Industrial Revolution in Britain added this fifth and final Key to Progress. The result was key technological innovations that transformed daily life. The railroad, steamship, steam turbines, automobiles, trucks, airplanes, electric motors, container ships and the electrical grid, are just a few of the thousands of industrial technologies that we take for granted today.
These fossil fuel-based technologies led to a standard of living for a typical person far beyond anything the richest men of the pre-Industrial era could imagine. Before the use of fossil fuels, economic growth and technological innovation mainly benefitted a very small portion of the world’s population. Today, to a large extent because of fossil fuels, economic growth and technological innovation benefits the vast majority of the world’s population.
Fossil fuels are critical to progress and economic growth because of their incredible energy density and the fact that they are affordable, easily stored and transported, reliable, controllable and easy to scale to fit needs. And because of these characteristics their geographical limitations are radically less than virtually all other energy sources.
All of these advantages explain why fossil fuels offered huge advantages over pre-Industrial energy sources such as human-power, animal-power, wind-power and water-power. Human-power and animal-power require food, which was the critical constraint on traditional societies. Humans and animals need food to survive and reproduce and they need far greater amounts of food to increase production beyond subsistence.
Before the Industrial Revolution, societies were caught in a “Catch-22” situation. You needed more energy and food to create progress, but the people and animals required to produce that energy required more energy to do so. This is why there was such a long delay between the invention of agriculture and the Industrial Revolution. Gradually, a few Commercial societies overcame those limits by increasing per capita food production and distributing the gains to productive cities.
In addition to being one of Five Keys to Progress, fossil fuels are also critical for two of the other Keys to Progress: highly productive agriculture (Key #1) and export industries (Key #4). Fossil-fuel-powered tractors, synthetic fertilizers and petroleum bi-products played a critical role in radically expanding agricultural productivity.
And while some industries do not require high amounts of fossil fuel usage beyond electricity, these are mainly industries dominated by rich nations. Manufacturing is critically dependent upon affordable, controllable energy that only fossil fuels can provide.
Quite simply the prosperous world that we live in today would not have been possible without the widespread usage of fossil fuels. The Industrial Revolution in Britain might have been fueled by imported wood and charcoal, but it surely could not have spread to the rest of the world and lasted for centuries without fossil fuels. Without industrial technologies powered by fossil fuels, most nations would still be living at the same standard of living as they did in 1500: i.e. desperate poverty for virtually everyone but a few elites and a few lonely commercial cities
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While we have developed other industrial energy sources since the Industrial Revolution (nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind, biomass, geothermal), none of them offer all or even most of the advantages of fossil fuels. In particular, all but nuclear have very serious geographical constraints and much lower energy density, while solar and wind are unavailable during large portions of the day and year.
Proponents of solar and wind are correct in that their prices are falling rapidly, but they do not acknowledge that price is only one of constraints on our ability to replace fossil fuels with an alternate energy source. Indeed, solar and wind require vast amounts of fossil fuels to construct in the first place.
Fossil fuel usage is more important than production
One important point is that the use of fossil fuels is far more important than the production of it. Many nations have industrialized without domestic resources of fossil fuels, although domestic coal sources have been very important. Because of industrial transportation technologies and energy companies, anyone can now buy fossil fuels on the market.
And some nations have been seriously hurt by domestic fossil fuel production. While the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Norway have largely benefitted from domestic production, a long list nations such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Kuwait, Venezuela, and Mexico have been hurt by such production. Their economies are dominated by one industry, and their political elites largely control that industry.
In general, nations which acquired four of the Five Keys to Progress before discovering coal, petroleum or natural gas have benefitted most from those discoveries. Those nations were effectively adding new revenue streams to an already dynamic and stable political and economic order based upon transparent, non-violent competition between elites.
Nations that discovered fossil fuels before they acquired four of the Five Keys to Progress have usually experienced the opposite. They rapidly evolve huge government monopolies to extract and distribute fossil fuels. Political elites then use those monopolies to distribute wealth to a small group of political and economic elites to maintain power. The last thing these elites want is transparent, non-violent competition between each other. Nor do they want other high-value-added industries that could potentially be used to finance political opposition.
These nations have effectively established a modernized version of what Agrarian elites have been doing for thousands of years: extracting wealth from society and using it for their own purposes. The enormous amounts of wealth generated by fossil fuels give elites a new lease on life and enable them to effectively ignore demands from the masses for more freedom and broad-based economic growth.
Fossil fuels will remain crucial for many decades
I do not claim that fossil fuels were the only energy source used by Industrial societies to power their progress in the past. Nuclear power and hydroelectric dams have provided a significant amount of electricity in the 20th Century, and they still do today. Unfortunately, their benefits are restricted to the production of electricity. This makes their application to industry and transportation far more limited than fossil fuels.
In most circumstances, nuclear and hydroelectric are more expensive than fossil fuels and require longer and more expensive time to construct. During construction, they also require substantial amounts of fossil fuels to power construction and transportation equipment, as well as the production of steel and other materials. Hydroelectric dams also require very specific geographic characteristics that most nations do not have in abundance.
Most importantly, neither energy source was important for any nation during or before their transition from poverty to progress. They only became important after they transitioned to progress. So widespread usage of fossil fuels is a Key to Progress, while nuclear power and hydroelectric dams are the results of progress. They are a useful supplement to fossil fuels, but they cannot entirely substitute for them, particularly in the realm of transportation and industry.
If you disagree on those points, you are free to substitute the words “fossil fuels” with “fossil fuels later supplemented by nuclear power and hydroelectric dams where geography and capital make them possible”. In this book, I prefer the more concise version of just saying “fossil fuels” for obvious reasons.
Nor do I claim that we will never invent another energy source that has all the advantages of fossil fuels and none of their disadvantages. I believe that as long as progress is maintained for the next century, it is very likely, perhaps inevitable, that we will do so. In fact, in future books in this series, I suggest policies that can help make it happen sooner.
Nor do I believe that solar, wind and other non-hydro renewable energy sources cannot play a role in Industrial societies. Their use is rapidly increasing and their cost is rapidly declining. That is a good thing, and it is a result of the vast, decentralizing problem-solving network that is a modern society.
My claim is that solar and wind have never fully substituted for fossil fuels, nor can they do so within the next one to three decades. This is not the place to discuss all the positive and negative consequences of replacing fossil fuels with solar and wind, but I believe that climate activists are naïve in believing that we can make such a transition quickly using current technology without major consequences for economic growth and progress.
It is not a coincidence that the percentage of energy consumption made up of fossil fuels has hovered just above 80% for the last few decades. This is despite trillions of dollars of investments in renewable energy and constantly increasing global energy usage. Solar and wind are growing rapidly, but they are not replacing the use of fossil fuels to any significant extent. They are merely adding energy in addition to the current usage of fossil fuels. I believe that trend will continue for the next few decades.
Let’s not forget the positives
Today virtually every mention of fossil fuels highlights the negative consequences of their use, particularly pollution and climate change. But it is important to realize that fossil fuels, despite their drawbacks, are a key foundation of progress. Quite simply, the modern world that we take for granted would not have been possible without fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels power innovation. Fossil fuels power economic growth. Fossil fuels power our education system, our transportation system, our communication system, our food production system, our health care system, and our military. Fossil fuels are key to generating all the wealth that pays for every government program we have. Before we try to eliminate fossil fuels, we need to make sure that we do not also eliminate all the benefits that have come from their use.
In the next article in this series, I will explain How Progress Works in our daily lives once the Five Keys to Progress are established.
See also my other posts on Energy:
The above is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.
Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
It is great to revisit some of these ideas, even two years later. Thanks for that.
Key #3: Decentralized political, economic, religious and ideological power. ... elites are forced into transparent, non-violent competition ...
In your examples of countries that were blessed with fossil fuel supplies, but that did not have the 3rd Progress item, I was wondering if perhaps Mexico (or some other countries ??) might be said to have (sort of) attained a measure of Key #3, but then regressed and lost or reduced it? Key #3 seems to be vitally important, as you say, but also perhaps potentially more prone to being lost after temporarily achieving it (even after or perhaps when fossil fuels are added to the mix, thus providing elites with more resources to re-establish their control and extractive measures?)
A lot of the talk about WEF, perhaps the EU, and other versions of "globalization by elites" would seem to be sliding/ slipping back into that situation, barely being resisted by "populist" forces.
Hopefully this question is not too "off topic" :-)
While I am a big advocate of developing renewable, or more sustainable sources of energy, you are correct here. There is no logic to completely "ending oil," nor an ability to do so all at once, without suffocating progress entirely.