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Charles Hall (e-mail: chall@esf.edu) is a professor in the department of Environmental and Forest Biology and in the Program of Environmental Stud-
ies, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New York, Syracuse, NY 13210; also at SUNY, Timm Kroeger is a graduate
student in the Graduate Program of Environmental Sciences at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Dietmar Lindenberger is senior
researcher at the Institute of Energy Economics, University of Cologne, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, D-50923 Cologne, Germany. Reiner Kummel is a
professor of physics at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Wurzburg, D-97074Wurzburg, Germany. Wolfgang Eichhorn is a professor
of economics at the Institute of Economic Theory and Operations Research, University of Karlsruhe, D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany. @ American
Institute of Biological Sciences.
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ECONOMIC
TERMS :
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NATURAL RESOURCES
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RAW MATERIALS
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INTERMEDIATEGOODS 1
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FINAL DEMAND
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Figure 2. A more comprehensive and accurate model of how economies actually work. The second column of this diagram rep-
resents the entire global ecosystem milieu within which the rest of the global economy operates. Natural energies drive geolog-
ical, biological, and chemical cycles that produce natural resources and public service functions and maintain the milieu es-
sential for all other economic steps. Extractive sectors use economic energies to exploit natural resources and convert them to
raw materials. Raw materials are used by manufacturing and other intermediatesectors to produce final goods and services.
Thesefinal goods and services are distributed by the commercial sector to final demand. Eventually, nonrecycled materials
and waste heat return to the environment as wasteproducts. We believe this diagram to be the minimum model of how a real
economy works.
of unavoidable entropy production, the valuable part of en- relegated energy and other resources to unimportance in
ergy (exergy) is transformed into useless heat at the temper- those analyses (e.g., Denison 1979, 1984). This attitude was
ature of the environment (energy), and usually matter is dis- fixed in the minds of most economists by the analysis of
sipated, too. This results in pollution and, eventually, Barnett and Morse (1963), who found no indication of in-
exhaustion of the higher grade resources of fossil fuels and raw creasing scarcity of raw materials, as determined by their
materials. Human labor, living on food, has been and con- inflation-corrected price, for the first half of the 20th century
tinues to be replaced (at least in part) by energy-driven ma- (Smith 1989).
chines in the routine production of goods and services. Their analysis, although cited by nearly all economists in-
Although the first and second laws of thermodynamicsare terested in the depletion issue, was nonetheless seriously in-
the most thoroughly tested and validated laws of nature, and complete. Cleveland showed that the only reason that de-
they state explicitly that it is impossible to have a perpetual creasing concentrations and qualities of resources were not
motion machine-that is, a machine that performs work translated into higher prices for constant quality was be-
without the input of exergy-the basic neoclassical economic cause of the decreasing price of energy and its increasing use
model is a perpetual motion machine, with no required in- in the exploitation of increasingly lower-grade reserves in the
puts or limits (Figure la). Most economistshave accepted that United States and elsewhere (Cleveland 1991). Thus, al-
incomplete model as the basis for their analyses and have though economistshave argued that natural resources are not
Results
The LINEX functions, which include the production factor
energy)reproduce the output of all three production systems
for all years considered with only minor residuals, including
the recessions caused by the two major energy crises. The en-
ergy crises were triggered by the first and second oil-price ex-
plosions in 1973-1975 and 1979-1981 in the wake of the
Yom Kippur war between Israel and its Arab neighbors and
the war between Iraq and Iran, respectively. The influence of
creativity in response to the oil price increase shows in the re-
duction of the energy demand of the capital stock, co,and the
enhancement of capital's productive power by the enhanced
a. after 1977. These shifts of technology parameters are the
result of the decisions of governments and entrepreneurs to
invest in energy conservation technologies after the shock of
2,01 Qlm= 280 Bill. DMlm the first oil-price explosion. Structural changes toward less
energy-intensive economic activities played a role as well.
Of course, the limitation of the parametric time changes
to one year is a consequence of our simple modeling of cre-
ativity's action as a single one-year pulse. If one goes a step fur-
ther-that is, assumes that creativity is always active and
models the transitions between the different values of a. and
cobefore and after the energy crises using continuous func-
tions of t i m e t h e discrepancies between the theoretical and
empirical USA curves after 1985 disappear and the results for
Japan and Germany remain practically the same5 (Henn
2000). In any case, in the short run the changes caused by cre-
Figure 3. Theoretical (diamonds) and empirical ativity are small compared with the changes caused by the
(squares)growth of annual indutrialproduction q = changing combinations of capital, labor)and energy. There-
QIQoin the USA (Qo= Q19rn),top; Japan (Q,,= Q1972), fore)creativity's influence)and thus any explicit time depen-
middle; and West Germany (Qo= Q1960), bottom. In all dence of the production function) can be neglected during
three systems the overall growth of the capital stock k is time spans of at least a decade. Even without any parameter
similar to the overall growth of the output q, and the ups readjustmentsbetween 1977 and 1978,the evolution of pro-
and downs of energy inputs e and outputs q occur at the duction in Germany and Japan during three decades is re-
same times. Labor 1 rises in the United States, stays nearly produced by the LINEX function with residuals of less than
constant in Japan, and decreases in West Germany The 10% (Kummel et al. 2000). Other energy-dependent pro-
empirical time series of k,l,e can be found at the Web site duction functions with mathematically simpler (i.e.) con-
http://fieorie.physkmi-~erzb~g.de/TPl/kuemme~ stant) or more complicated elasticities of production yield
profile.html.
August 2001 / Vol. 51 No. 8 BioScience 669
quantitatively and qualitativelysimilar results6(Lindenberger Price does not always r&ct scarciv and economic importance.
2000). Scarcity of a resource must be defined in terms of both short-
The results of our analysis also demonstratein allthree cases and long-term resource availability. Price, the economist's
that the productive power of energy is more important than usual metric of scarcity, reflects many important aspects of
that of capital or labor, and nearly an order of magnitude larger scarcity poorly because it is often based on short-term mar-
than the 5% share of energy cost in total factor cost. This fol- ket values. Most important, as Norgaard (1990) and Reynolds
lows from the time-averaged LINEX elasticities of production (1999) show, is that uncertainty about the size of the base of
of capital, labor, and energy, which are for the United
- - States, a resource can obscure the actual trend in scarcity of that re-
a =0.36,B =0.10,7 =0.5%forJapan,E ~ 0 . 3 4 , =0.21, source, with the result that "empirical data on cost and
7 = 0.45; and for West Germany, E = 0.45, B = 0.05,Y = 0.50. price... do not necessarily imply decreasing scarcity"(Reynolds
In addition, the time-averaged elasticity of production of 1999,p. 165).As an example of this phenomenon, in mid-1999
labor, B, is much smaller than labor's cost share (typidy 0.70). the real price of oil was at nearly its lowest level ever, despite
In industrialized countries such as the United States, the fact that most estimates of the time at which global oil pro-
energy commands about 5%, labor about 70%, and capital duction will peak range from 2000 to 2020 (Kerr 1998,Cleve-
about 25% of total factor cost. This means that one of the land 1999).
fundamental assumptions of neoclassical equilibrium eco- The concept and implementation of sustainable develop-
nomics, that is, the equality of elasticities of production and ment as interpreted and advocated by most economists must be
cost shares, has not been satisfied under the conditions of pro- thought through much more carefilb given the requirementfor
duction prevailing in the United States, Japan,and Germany energy and materiak for all economic activiv (see Hall 2000 for
over the last three decades. Rather, under pressure to minimize a detailed analysis of Costa Rica). Energy is in fact dispro-
costs, these economies have been driven into substituting portionately more important in terms of its impact on the
cheap, powerful energy (in combination with increasinglyau- economy than its monetary value suggests, as evidenced by
tomated capital stock) for expensive labor, which is weak the events of the 1970s (i.e., inflation, stock market declines,
economically in the sense that its elasticity of production is reduced economic output, and so on), which appear to be re-
much smaller than that of energy. This substitution of energy occurring to some degree in 2000 partly in response to a
for labor takes time because of technical constraints on the similar proportional increase in the price of oil. Fundamen-
progress of automation, the demand for those products and tally, current societal infrastructure has been built and main-
services that cannot be produced in a totally automated fash- tained on the basis of abundant, cheap supplies of high-
ion, and still-existing and respected laws and agreements. quality energy-that is, energy characterized by the large
Therefore, the economies of the industrial countries have amount of energy delivered to society per unit of energy in-
not yet reached the absolute cost minimum. vested in this delivery (through exploration and develop-
ment or through trade of goods for imported energy [Hall et
Some social implications of our anaZysis al. 19861).
If one accepts the importance of a biophysical basis for eco- In developing nations, investmentpolicies based on neoclas-
nomics, then our analysis has some important implications sical economic analyses encourage borrowing fiom developed
for economics and for society. countries and hencegrowing indebtedness. Pressure to service
The replacement of expensive labor in routine jobs with the the debt encourages the quick extraction of resources to gen-
combination of cheap energy and capital stock is likely to con- erate a cash flow so that payments of interest and repayment
tinue under the present incentive structure. This combination of principal can be maintained. In the meantime, the long-
also reinforces the trend toward globalization,because goods term productivity of the region may be destroyed. But those
and services produced in low-wage countries can be trans- assessments are not included in neoclassical analyses; in the
ported cheaply to high-wage countries. Thus, high unem- rare cases where resources are included in the analysis, their
ployment (in most high-wage countries) will continue if the value is heavily discounted. For example,many tropical coun-
disparities between the productive powers and cost shares of tries sell their forest products at a price far below their worth
labor and energy are not removed (for example, by adjusting (Repetto 1988, Hall 20001, and the Russian government has
fiscal policy). Certainly, the low price of fossil fuels relative to been talked into abolishing its export tax on fossil fuels,
their productive power generates large profits. But, as is well which was the last source of secure revenues for highly in-
known, it also prevents the market penetration of large-scale debted Russia. Developing countries and nations in transition
energy-conservingand nonfossil energy technologies, which to market economies should attribute more importance to
could lower the demand for fossil fuels and relieve some of their natural resources than they presently do under the in-
the burden of pollution. We therefore believe that the prob- fluence of the reigning economic theory.
lems of unemployment,resource depletion, and pollution can Humans tend to seek political explanations for events that in
be attacked successfully only if the pivotal role of energy as a fact may have been precipitated by biophysical causes. For ex-
factor of production is properly taken into account in eco- ample, Reynolds (2000) shows how the sharp decline in the
nomic and social policy. former Soviet Union's oil production may have precipitated