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

Abstract

As a card-carrying ecologist I would like to commend Lyn Arscott’s recent discussion (“Sustainable development in the oil and gas industry” ASME J. Energy Resour. Technol. 126 (1) pp. 1–4) that appeared in this journal. Certainly given the past notorious history of the oil and gas industry in these areas and the legacy of destruction (e.g. Wall Street Journal October 22–25, 1984, Page 1, on the industry’s legacy in Southern Louisiana) it is reassuring to see environmental and social concerns given as much weight as profitability. But there is also something strange about this article, an elephant in the living room, that is something that is overwhelmingly large but that no one will talk about. How can an industry, one whose principal products are critical to contemporary civilization but which by most accounts is facing imminent or at least incipient decline, be talking about sustainability?