To be sure, we should be investing in alternatives and converting our industrial infrastructure to use them. If there is any solution to industrial societies’ approaching energy crises, renewables plus conservation will provide it. Yet in order to achieve a smooth transition from non-renewables to renewables, decades will be needed — and we do not have decades before the peaks in the extraction rates of oil and natural gas occur. Moreover, even in the best case, the transition will require the massive shifting of investment from other sectors of the economy (such as the military) toward energy research and

conservation. And the available alternatives will likely be unable to support the kinds of transportation, food, and dwelling infrastructure we now have; thus the transition will entail an almost complete redesign of industrial societies.

The likely economic consequences of the energy downturn are enormous. All human activities require energy—which physicists define as “the capacity to do work.” With less energy available, less work can be done — unless the efficiency of the process of converting energy to work is raised at the same rate as energy

availability declines. It will therefore be essential, over the next few decades, for all economic processes to be made more energy-efficient. However, efforts to improve efficiency are subject to diminishing returns, and so eventually a point will be reached where reduced energy availability will translate to reduced economic activity. Given the fact that our national economy is based on the assumption that economic activity must grow perpetually, the result is likely to be a recession with no bottom and no end.