This is the time of year when writers put together their “Best of” lists, in part because they are easy to write. And on my list of best business books of the year, there’s only one book: Matt Ridley’s “The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves.” Having only one book on my list makes writing today’s posting easy, but it also increases the odds that you will remember the book’s title and actually buy it.
Logistics professionals are paying attention to pending green legislation because the price of energy affects how cost-effectively we can do our job. Mr. Ridley has some interesting things to say about carbon-based fuels, their role in history, and pending green regulations.
The story of energy is simple. Once upon a time all work was done by people for themselves using their own muscles. Then there came a time when some people got other people to do the work for them, and the result was pyramids and leisure for a few, and drudgery and exhaustion for the many. Then there was a gradual progression from one source of energy to another: human to animal to water to wind to fossil fuel. In each case, the amount of work one man could do for another was amplified by the animal or the machine. The Roman Empire was built largely on human muscle power, in the shape of slaves…
Fossil fuels cannot explain the start of the industrial revolution. But they do explain why it did not end. Once fossil fuels joined in, economic growth truly took off, and became almost infinitely capable of bursting through the Malthusian ceiling and raising living standards. Only then did growth become in a word, sustainable… Economic growth only became sustainable when it began to rely on non-renewable, non-green, non-clean power. Every economic boom in history, from Uruk onwards, had ended in bust because renewable sources of energy ran out: timber, cropland, pasture, labor, water, peat. All self-replenishing, but far too slowly, and easily exhausted by a swelling populace…
Some things are finite but vast; some things are infinitely renewable, but very limited. Non-renewable resources such as coal are sufficiently abundant to allow an expansion of both economic activity and population to the point where they can generate sustainable wealth for all the people of the planet without hitting a Malthusian ceiling, and can then hand the baton to some other form of energy.
Mr. Ridley also has some interesting things to say about global warming. His view is that we are being too pessimistic and are underestimating the ingenuity of entrepreneurs to solve this problem. If you are interested in those arguments, I recommend that you buy the book.
I’ll sum it up by saying that I enjoyed this book a lot more than any book I’ve read in a long time.
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