{"id":45308,"date":"2019-04-12T13:24:55","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T18:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45308"},"modified":"2019-04-12T13:24:58","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T18:24:58","slug":"book-review-of-wrigleys-energy-and-the-english-industrial-revolution%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45308","title":{"rendered":"Book review of Wrigley\u2019s \u201cEnergy and the English Industrial revolution\u201d\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Book review of Wrigley\u2019s \u201cEnergy and the English Industrial revolution\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Preface<\/strong>. I\u2019ve made a strong case in my book \u201cWhen trucks stop running\u201d and this energyskeptic website that we will eventually return to wood and a 14th<\/sup> century lifestyle after fossil fuels are depleted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if you\u2019re curious about what that lifestyle will be like, and how coal changed everything, this is the book for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One point stressed several times is that in all organic economies a steady state exists.  Or as economists put it, that there were just three \u201ccomponents essential in all material production; capital, labor, and land. The first two could be expanded as necessary to match increased demand, but the third could not, and rising pressure on this inflexible resource arrested growth and depressed the return to capital and the reward of labor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then along came coal (and today oil and natural gas), which for a few centuries removed land as a limiting factor (though we\u2019re awfully close the Malthusian limits as well, population is growing, cropland is shrinking as development builds over the best farm land near cities, which exist where they do because that was good crop land).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s world, energy set the limits to growth, but in the future land once again will.  So will the quality of roads, how many forests exist whose wood can be gotten to towns and cities, and so on.  So if you\u2019re in a transition town group or in other ways trying to make the future better, perhaps this book will give you some ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this world is too painful to contemplate, read some books about the Amish, which would be an ideal society for me minus the religious side of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A. Wrigley. 2010. Energy and the English Industrial revolution. Cambridge University Press.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book review of Wrigley\u2019s \u201cEnergy and the English Industrial revolution\u201d Preface. I\u2019ve made a strong case in my book \u201cWhen trucks stop running\u201d and this energyskeptic website that we will eventually return to wood and a 14th century lifestyle after fossil fuels are depleted. So if you\u2019re curious about what that lifestyle will be like, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[25611,11836,11859,1498],"class_list":["post-45308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-a-wrigley","tag-alice-friedemann","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-industrial-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45309,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45308\/revisions\/45309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}