Tying the pieces together

Earlier I criticized the Amory Lovins' article in the September's issue of Scientific American for not adequately addressing the depletion of fossil fuels. The next-to-last article in the printed version more directly addresses my concerns; it's entitled Economics in a Full World.

Society can no longer safely pretend the global economy operates within a limitless ecosystem.

the alternative to a sustainable economy, an ever-growing economy, is a biophysical impossibility.

the disaster will be felt eventually. Avoiding this calamity will be difficult. The sooner we start, the better.

The article points to the Laws of Thermodynamics as inviolable. Interestingly Lee Raymond, head of ExxonMobil , as noted earlier, refers to those same Laws when comparing oil to other sources of energy.

In a sidebar to the article, the author, Herman Daly, lays out 3 precepts that need to be followed for a sustainable future. We violate these precepts (call it a protocol, if you wish) at our peril.

Another blogger, in his Economist's View, quotes from the Sciam article: Measuring Human Well-Being.