Your examples of energy usage enabling further economic growth are good ones, particularly the railroads, which absolutely depended on the ability to harness wood or coal for locomotion. But I disagree with how you interpret these examples and the rest of your analysis.
Re:
You seem to be labelling energy as a technology? If so, I think this is wrong. Energy is a fundamental input.
Well, first, there are such things as energy technologies. The steam engine is a technology. Processes to create coke from coal, or to refine crude oil, are technologies. These technologies are what make all of that energy accessible and usable.
I don’t know what it means for energy to be a “fundamental input.”
When you say:
So to answer the question in your title directly: because there wasn’t enough surplus energy available.
I don’t think this does answer the question, because technological/industrial progress is what made that surplus energy available. It didn’t just become available for some other reason. The surplus was created by progress itself. So it can’t be used to explain progress.
In short, surplus energy is not exogenous to technological or economic growth, it is endogenous.
>Well, first, there are such things as energy technologies. The steam engine is a technology. Processes to create coke from coal, or to refine crude oil, are technologies. These technologies are what make all of that energy accessible and usable.
To quote my post:
>Certainly technology is involved in capture/extraction/utilisation. But… hmm there’s a quote ‘Labour without energy is a corpse, capital (substitute technology here) without energy is a sculpture’.
And back to you (emphasis mine):
>I don’t think this does answer the question, because technological/industrial progress is what made that surplus energy available. It didn’t just become available for some other reason. The surplus was created by progress itself. So it can’t be used to explain progress.
I agree that technologies increased our access to surplus energy. I strongly disagree that they ‘created’ it.
Fossil fuels are exogenous to tech, right? They’re an energy store that was created long before homo sapiens turned up. And the quality/quantity of this energy store is huge, gargantuan… it’s the greatest treasure trove in the history of our planet.
But without such a dense & economical energy source available… you don’t get an industrial revolution. Technological progress plateaus.
This is what I mean by a fundamental input—the energy store has to exist in the first place, in order to be harnessed by technology. The surplus is not being ‘created’, it is being ‘harvested’.
I think I’m derailing your topic somewhat, as we discuss more I think I understand more about your thought and I don’t think this ‘nuance’ of energy is very relevant within this framework.
Outside of it though, hugely important. The belief that we can ‘invent energy’ has fairly disastrous consequences for our civilization.
The physical fact of hydrocarbons sitting in the ground is exogenous, yes. But that was true since before humans existed, so it doesn’t explain progress. You need an explanation for why we didn’t start using those fuels on a large scale until the 1700s or so. And the proximal explanation for that is technology.
Your examples of energy usage enabling further economic growth are good ones, particularly the railroads, which absolutely depended on the ability to harness wood or coal for locomotion. But I disagree with how you interpret these examples and the rest of your analysis.
Re:
Well, first, there are such things as energy technologies. The steam engine is a technology. Processes to create coke from coal, or to refine crude oil, are technologies. These technologies are what make all of that energy accessible and usable.
I don’t know what it means for energy to be a “fundamental input.”
When you say:
I don’t think this does answer the question, because technological/industrial progress is what made that surplus energy available. It didn’t just become available for some other reason. The surplus was created by progress itself. So it can’t be used to explain progress.
In short, surplus energy is not exogenous to technological or economic growth, it is endogenous.
>Well, first, there are such things as energy technologies. The steam engine is a technology. Processes to create coke from coal, or to refine crude oil, are technologies. These technologies are what make all of that energy accessible and usable.
To quote my post:
>Certainly technology is involved in capture/extraction/utilisation. But… hmm there’s a quote ‘Labour without energy is a corpse, capital (substitute technology here) without energy is a sculpture’.
And back to you (emphasis mine):
>I don’t think this does answer the question, because technological/industrial progress is what made that surplus energy available. It didn’t just become available for some other reason. The surplus was created by progress itself. So it can’t be used to explain progress.
I agree that technologies increased our access to surplus energy. I strongly disagree that they ‘created’ it.
Fossil fuels are exogenous to tech, right? They’re an energy store that was created long before homo sapiens turned up. And the quality/quantity of this energy store is huge, gargantuan… it’s the greatest treasure trove in the history of our planet.
But without such a dense & economical energy source available… you don’t get an industrial revolution. Technological progress plateaus.
This is what I mean by a fundamental input—the energy store has to exist in the first place, in order to be harnessed by technology. The surplus is not being ‘created’, it is being ‘harvested’.
I think I’m derailing your topic somewhat, as we discuss more I think I understand more about your thought and I don’t think this ‘nuance’ of energy is very relevant within this framework.
Outside of it though, hugely important. The belief that we can ‘invent energy’ has fairly disastrous consequences for our civilization.
The physical fact of hydrocarbons sitting in the ground is exogenous, yes. But that was true since before humans existed, so it doesn’t explain progress. You need an explanation for why we didn’t start using those fuels on a large scale until the 1700s or so. And the proximal explanation for that is technology.