Jancovici : Can we save energy, jobs and growth at the same time ? 08/01/2018

Jean Marc Jancovici is one of the most vocal of we can call "Nuclear ecologist" around in France, the content is amazing and he definitely have a point if you want to follow [0]. He is a realist, but in this field we need to go beyond and to open big money for the research into small and decentralized nuclear power. Every citizen have to know the pros and the cons, and be educated to the risks. Energy provide good living standards, but we have to know the drawbacks and we have to account for externalities in every business model. This will be the only way to keep our standards of living and keep an habitable home. [0] [this video]

I haven't read anything that I've felt covered it fully. If you want something easy to consume on our economy and technological progress essentially being getting better at converting energy to productive work you can check out this somewhat decent link from Jancovici: [this video] It meanders a bit for the first 5-7 mins, but does a decent job of making the argument. Min 40 also has another pretty good slide. It does go into covering recommendations which I'm not necessarily recommending, but it does accurately summarize our economy as one of energy transformation. The best analogy in it is this. Right now if we need to do construction and dig a 10ft x 10ft x 10ft hole we can pull out a backhoe and be done in a min. If we with all of our current knowledge had to do it without consuming energy we'd be digging by hand with a shovel, and no faster than someone pre-industrial would. When you start looking at every industry you come to the same conclusion. All of our technological know how boils down to just better ways to be more productive in converting energy. But fundamentally consuming energy to be productive is the modern economy.