The Myth of Sustainable Development: Personal Reflections on Energy, its Relation to Neoclassical Economics, and Stanley Jevons

As a card-carrying ecologist I would like to commend Lyn A scott’s recent discussion ~‘‘Sustainable development in the oil an gas industry’’ ASME J. Energy Resour. Technol. 126 ~1! pp. 1–4! that appeared in this journal. Certainly given the past notori history of the oil and gas industry in these areas and the legac destruction~e.g. Wall Street Journal October 22–25, 1984, Pag on the industry’s legacy in Southern Louisiana ! it is reassuring to see environmental and social concerns given as much weigh profitability. But there is also something strange about this arti an elephant in the living room, that is something that is ov whelmingly large but that no one will talk about. How can a industry, one whose principal products are critical to contem rary civilization but which by most accounts is facing imminent at least incipient decline, be talking about sustainability? I base that latter statement on my own experience with ene and the oil industry that spans over 35 years and many pub tions, and on what seems to me to be the consistency of situation. I think the best way to make my point is to do so fro the perspective of my own personal intellectual history as I h tried to sift through and interpret the information and propagan My PhD is in ecology and environmental sciences, and I did dissertation on the energetics of fish migration. My interests, eled by the ideas and interests of my remarkable doctoral adv Howard Odum, has always been energy in all its forms and relation to how natural and human-dominated ecosystems f tion. I showed up in September 1970 at my new job at Brookha National Laboratory ready to go to work. But the first day w unexpected for the naive, idealistic young hippie that was because it was filled with a bewildering array of bureaucratic fairs that I realized only later was the entre ́e to a really wonderful suite of benefits that comes with a real government job. So I my first free medical examination, opened a new bank accoun the laboratory bank, learned how to make myself safe from various sources of radiation that were scattered about the lab tory, received an eye exam, free safety glasses, and two pai steel toed safety shoes! Finally they said go to such and suc office and arrange for your retirement account! I was astonish