Oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear fuels are the major energy resources lubricating the global economy. There will be no cheap alternative to fossil fuels, and irrespective of contrary claims and efforts, there may be no alternative, period. The best way to face the future is to focus on the necessary alternative of decreasing our needs for resources, not to increase them through further growth.

Classical economic theories assume that unlimited resources in a finite world can provide for the unlimited desires of mankind — a fundamental flaw dating to Adam Smith’s “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” in the 1750s. The growthmaniacs unrealistically view the economy as a perpetual growth machine.

No matter the endpoint, economic growth requires three basic elements: raw materials, fuel and population. Goods and services are not self-producing; they require energy for the extraction of raw materials and their manufacture, distribution, sale, and eventual disposal.

All human activity involves 196 nations of the world relentlessly siphoning fossil fuels for “needs” and “wants of convenience.” About a coffee cup’s worth of oil — and other fuels — is used to produce each dollar’s worth of goods and services that consumers demand, purchase, use and wastefully dispose.

Since oil is critical to the global economy, the most crucial issue facing the world is almost certainly the “end of cheap fuels” and the sustainability of mankind’s voracious appetite for fuels. Oil is finite because it was created about 100 million years ago in very special geological times, and its formation rate is negligible compared to the global rate of use. As a consequence, oil is a non-renewable resource. Although we will probably never totally run out of oil — there will always be enough oil to lubricate your bicycle chain — within the next 25-30 years most of the remaining oil will be used and the energy investment necessary to get at what is left will become prohibitive.

Alternate energy sources can’t be developed independent of fossil fuels except by wishful thinkers.

What is truly necessary to best preserve the fossil fuel and other raw materials that are left is lower population growth and economic contraction. This is the harsh reality that politicians and policymakers do not want to face.

The Energy Supply

In the late 1850s, discovery of oil occurred in Pennsylvania and Azerbaijan (formerly Russia). At the time, the Earth’s population reached 1 billion and geologists estimated that the planet contained about 2 trillion barrels of oil. The world’s human population, currently more than 6.5 billion, is projected to reach nearly 8.4 billion by the year 2025 and may reach a disastrous 15 billion by 2100. Geologists estimate the remaining oil at about 1 trillion barrels. Many around the globe practice different monotheistic religions but, in reality, Petroleum is God.

The nations of the world cannot run their societies without fossil fuels, as made clear in Alice Freidemann’s new book, "When trucks stop running."

The fairytale dreams of ever increasing wealth and affluence, which were considered the birthright of Americans, will be scientifically and technologically impossible to maintain because of depleting fuel reserves. This dream of affluence, fueled itself by advertising that promotes an incessant desire for more, implies a very nasty future when it confronts the future reality of resource shortages, economic depression, potential world conflict and, eventually, the necessary acceptance of a very different and medieval lifestyle.

Energy Accountability

Even though the federal and state environmental policies require consideration of the impacts of proposed actions and alternatives on the use and conservation of energy resources and measures to mitigate energy waste, no environmental impact assessment or evaluation — I have read over 100 — ever accounts for the energy necessary to design, build, operate, maintain, repair and eventually demolish structures over their projected lives. No planning and zoning commission in Connecticut requires such consideration in its regulations.

The former Norwich State Hospital property is a perfect example of government escaping impact considerations on the use and conservation of energy resources in the sale of the land by the state to Preston and subsequently to the Mohegan tribe. In evaluating the wisdom of future tribal development of the property, no assessments exist in either the regulations of the Preston Redevelopment Agency or the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission to consider the energy that will be invested to build and maintain new structures at the former state property. Yet this should be the most critical question of our age. How can we extend the resources we have?

There is a more prudent way to approach the future than building, expanding and consuming. It would involve ending our focus on growth and learning how to build and run a society on less.

Robert Fromer is an environmental consultant who lives in Windsor.