Why Do So Many Economists Underplay the Psychological and Biophysical Aspects of Life on Earth?
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(2019) 4:15
COMMENTARY
Why Do So Many Economists Underplay the Psychological and Biophysical Aspects of Life on Earth? Michael Jefferson1 Received: 26 October 2019 / Accepted: 25 November 2019 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Abstract Standard economics and mainstream economists have been playing a marginal role in addressing the enormous challenges of a global shift to a low- or non-carbon energy future. Most economists have little knowledge of the role energy has played in human civilization, either from a psychological angle or a biophysical one. They usually appear to have limited knowledge of the constraints which lie ahead. All too often they are to be found backing over-optimistic, therefore unrealistic, expectations. This paper exposes the lacunae of “the dismal science” so far as most economists are concerned. It is based upon personal experience as a conventionally trained economist who in his working life found that his formal training in economics had little relevance. Its target audience is economists who should get more immersed in psychological and biophysical economics. Its intended readership includes those familiar with biophysical economics who wish to galvanise economists into taking the field more seriously. Keywords History · Key energetic principles · Uncertain future · Reality
Introduction This writer has always empathised with the view of those MIT students who in 1945, as Paul Samuelson has informed us, found their year of compulsory economics dull. Even now the arid portrayal of basic economics as graphs everlastingly showing supply curves seeking to meet demand curves is a serious turn-off for those wishing to address real world issues. A different approach offers a more relevant and interesting way forward. This economist, too, was exposed to this aridity (graduating from Oxford University and the London School of Economics) before spending time in a City of London merchant bank; attempting to manage an economic consultancy (with five Professors of Economics); working with Chairmen of a couple of dozen major UK-based international companies; spending over 5 years as the Royal Dutch-Shell Group’s first Chief Economist and member of its famed Group Planning scenario team (covering global geopolitical and economic aspects, and societal ones for part of that time). Appointed * Michael Jefferson [email protected] 1
ESCP Europe Business School, 527 Finchley Road Hampstead, London NW3 7BG, UK
in late 1973, this was an enormously fruitful period where my personal background was highly relevant, before moving on to other tasks in March, 1979, to head up planning in Shell’s European organisation and its crude oil appraisal section where a personal belief in a ‘Hard Times’ scenario proved very useful. The next 25 years were spent working in the energy field (oil, natural gas) from planning to crude oil purchasing—including supplying up to 45% of OECD countries oil requirements; in the energy field more generally, including renewable energy; in examining climatic change issues and
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