will the high cost of long distance electricity transmission shift population out of metros : back to the rurals ?

a top economist not too proud to talk to peasants - and to really listen...

Perhaps the smartest economist who ever lived, Romanian-born Nicholas Georgscu-Roegen, was the first to really make sense of what the varied land usage of the world’s energy sources really meant as to how we lived and where we lived.

Despite cities being as old as the day humans first began to stop being ever-travelling hunter-gatherers, they weren’t very big into well into the 19th century : their size being limited to the reasonable distance low-density energy in the form of wood or agricultural waste could be economically transported into the city from its rural fringes.

But coal mines and oil wells are highly ‘vertical’ forms of energy : a lot of high density concentrated energy can come out of the millions of tons of coal or oil that emerges from a very small portion of the Earth’s surface.

Highly dense energy means its cheap to transport long distance per megawatt of energy contained within.

As a result small cities could become mega-cities —- and still do.

This meant a change from thousands of years when diffuse sunshine, blowing wind, running water, along with the sun-grown and watered crops of forests and fields  provided humanity with ‘horizontal’ sources of low density, un-concentrated energy that was most economically consumed locally - in the rural parts of the world.

But we are running out of high density energy : organic material has always rotted back to basic carbon and hydrogen but only special - one time - conditions led it to form the vast beds of coal, oil and gas during the Coal Era.

Soon we will return to pre-1832, pre-Reform Act, conditions : conditions where wealth will be formed on the basis of land ownership : the more you have, the wealthier you are.

Perhaps not a return to a few aristocrats owning 90% of the land ; well not unless voters let that happen.

But a society where much more energy is made and consumed locally, in small factories making lightweight high density high value, cheap to ship, components that made be cheaply assembled at their points of final use.

Bulky, heavy low value products will tend to be made and consumed locally.

This means fewer buildings and infrastructure that are not deliberately designed to be made, adequately, from local materials rather than being built to be the best, but need distant exotic materials.

Compare for example, the soft wood constructed homes of northern European peasants to the sun-dried brick homes of the peasants of Egypt, made from mud and straw : in both cases, homes built with materials found a few feet from their door.

Electrical cars and trucks will likely be nowhere as cheap to operate as when cheap oil was around.

 Long distance suburban commuting to big covid-prone mega-cities will die out as more people work where they live : either with all of their hands in local factories or with only their keyboard fingers, in fibre-connected offices.

Economically, there is no reason why almost all the electrical energy in the USA can’t come from a few hundred mega solar farms owned by a handful of giant corporations : but will this fly in a nation with a very strong tradition of localism in its electoral politics ?

The political scientist in me says no.

Political power will shift to the parts of the world where extensive but low intensity energy can flourish : that means back to the rurals and away from megacities.

Will it be the Green Party to lead this shift ?

Currently, I doubt it.

Most Greens aren’t really very green , at least, aren’t very deep green.

Herman Daly and Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen draw blank stares from most of its candidates.

They all definitely are very pro a wholesale rapid shift back to a renewable energy based economy, for sure.

But they fail to see what history suggests the resulting land use patterns would look like. Georgescu-Roegen, by listening carefully to peasants, clearly did.

I know about this failure to listen, to really listen from thousands of years of peasant experience worldwide, from my efforts in my local Green parties beginning in the early 2000s (big shout here to Katie Boudreau.)

Greens world-wide currently campaign hardest with big city voters, the voters most hurt by a shift to renewable energy and distain engaging rural voters, the voters most likely to benefit by the return to low intensity renewable energy.

Quite simply, Greens are not busy building the new economy ; they‘re currently too busy building electoral walls to bang their head against...