History of energy from 1950 to 2000

Summary: Stable political conditions and growth ideology expanded fossil fuel use within and across societies. Alternative energy sources complemented but did not supplement fossil fuels.

Between 1950 and 2000, fossil fuel production increased from 1.5 to 8 billion metric tons, igniting rapid changes first in the West and then throughout the world. This expansion was feasible because the political stability and ideological competition of the Cold War provided ideal conditions to exploit existing technology. As energy became cheap, it acted as a substitute for other economic inputs, accelerating the pace of change. Despite the environmental and political problems caused by fossil fuels, they continued to produce almost nine-tenths of global commercial energy by the end of the century.

By 1950, the United States and the Soviet Union had stabilized their spheres of interest and disseminated their high-growth, energy-intensive economic models. The Bretton Woods institutions (such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) and Marshall Plan grants sparked a postwar boom in the West. Other countries later benefited from these international arrangements, such as China in the 1980s and India in the 1990s. The socialist imitation, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), provided more modest benefits. Economic growth was considered necessary to fulfill political goals. In the West, it would diffuse social tensions and provide consumer goods; in the socialist bloc, growth would inculcate a proletariat and support a powerful military.

The postwar boom stimulated investment in fossil fuel infrastructure. Innovations in large-diameter pipelines and turbine-driven compressors allowed natural gas to meet demands for a clean household fuel. By the mid-1970s, oil tankers were often 30 times larger than their 1940s precursors. Henceforth, there were approximately 20 liters of oil per person at sea at any moment and one large spill annually. In 1967, the Torrey Canyon lost 120,000 tons of oil near Cornwall, England (four times the oil discharged by the Exxon Valdez). Disasters put pressure on tankers to become safer and cleaner; one measure was to prohibit rinsing tanks at sea. Nevertheless, by the 1990s humans discharged 10 times more oil into the ocean than occurred through natural seepage.

The most profound consequence of energy in this period was that it could be exchanged for time, thus catalyzing societal change. Energy had become relatively cheap: In 1950, a skilled West European worker could afford only 4 liters of oil with his hourly wage; by 1990, he or she could afford 20. Faster and expanded communication and transportation networks reduced barriers between regions and economic sectors. Car ownership changed how people conceived of physical distance and altered the structure of whole societies. In 1950, there were nearly 50 people per car globally, but by 2000 the ratio was nearly 10:1. Government oversight often could not keep pace with these changes, leading to environmental and political problems. This rate of change and accompanying social dislocation occurred at an even greater pace in developing countries after 1975.

Fossil-Fuel Development

Fossil fuels transformed agriculture. On average, each hectare of U.S. cropland in 1950 required 25 kilograms of oil, an amount that quadrupled by 1990. Application of energy-intensive artificial fertilizers increased 1,000 percent globally between 1950 and 2000 during what has come to be known as the Green Revolution (the growth of huge agribusiness with its monoculture farming techniques). Annual pesticide production rose from almost nothing to 3 million tons. By 2000, agricultural advances had allowed humanity to appropriate 40 percent of global photosynthetic capability, two-thirds of which were used to grow rice, wheat, and corn. Producing a single calorie of grain required three calories of oil, one-twelfth of the requirement for each beef calorie. Fossil fuels permitted global population to quadruple within 50 years to 6 billion people—three times what nonfossil-fuel-dependent agriculture could support. The United States would require 20 times more horses than it had at its historical peak in the 1910s (requiring twice the total U.S. arable land for horse feed) to replace its 1990s tractor fleet.

High per capita energy consumption was a necessary but insufficient condition for high living standards. With 100 kilograms of oil per capita available (in 1990s Ethiopia, for example) societies were vulnerable to famine. Life became more comfortable at 1 ton per capita (as in 1980s China), and at 2 tons widespread affluence was possible (as in 1960s France). In 1950, a tenth of humanity enjoyed this elevated level of energy consumption (and 60 percent of the world’s commercial energy), rising to a lucky quarter by 1990 (and 75 percent of world commercial energy), but the poorest quarter used only 5 percent.

French development reveals how energy and consumerism evolved quickly together. In 1954, 60 percent of French households had running water, 30 percent a car, 25 percent an indoor toilet, and 10 percent central heating. By 1990, these, as well as washing machines and refrigerators, had become universal; furthermore, 75 percent of families owned a car. During the same period, capital supplies of all fuels doubled, gasoline consumption rose sixfold, electricity eightfold. The distorted nature of socialist economics disproved that any straightforward link between energy and consumption was inevitable. In 1990, the average East German was only a third as rich as her Western cousin but consumed 25 times more energy.

Increased consumption of fossil fuels often, but not always, meant greater air pollution. Inhabitants of Glasgow, Scotland, inhaled a kilogram of soot annually in the 1950s but breathed easier by 1990, as smoke, soot, and sulfur air particles declined 70–90 percent. Air quality improved in many Western cities through cleaner fuels, electrification, and greater energy intensity. English households reduced their coal consumption from 42.5 million metric tons (in 1960) to 3 million (1996) by switching to natural gas.

Soon after the 1973 oil crisis, most Western states’ per capita energy consumption peaked, and subsequent economic growth was achieved by increasing energy intensity. Socialist states continued to rely on coal and failed to increase energy intensity, resulting in notoriously dirty “eastern air” (Ostluft). Air pollution contributed 3 percent to Czech mortality in the 1980s. Air pollution levels fell 50 percent by 1994 because communism’s collapse was accompanied by deindustrialization and improved environmental regulations. Metropolises of developing nations experienced worsening air quality caused by population growth, more cars, industrialization, and ineffective regulation. Mexico City, the setting of Carlos Fuentes’1958 novel Where the Air Is Clear, was blanketed within three decades by air thick with dust and soot in concentrations 600 percent higher than the maximum set by the World Health Organization’s guidelines. Few developing cities, such as Ankara, managed to improve their air quality by 2000.

Changes in the global energy regime accelerated climate change. From 1950 to 2000, burning fossil fuels regularly contributed two-thirds of excess carbon emissions, an amount that increased from 1.6 million tons of carbon in 1950 to 6.4 million tons by 2000. Correspondingly, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased from 315 to 369 parts per million (ppm), and the five-year mean of global surface air temperature increased 0.5 degree Celsius.

Despite these problems, energy alternatives have failed to displace the fossil fuel regime. In the early Cold War period, many hoped a that “peaceful atom” (nuclear energy) could overcome Cold War tensions and provide—predicted the head of the American Atomic Energy Commission—energy “too cheap to meter.” Public opinion turned sour, however, after a series of accidents at nuclear power plants, notably the incident at Three Mile Island in 1979 and the much worse meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear facility in Ukraine in 1986. Safety regulations increased building costs of U.S. reactors tenfold by the 1980s. No U.S. civilian reactors were ordered after 1978, although construction continued abroad, especially in developing countries. Egypt’s Aswan Dam was an exemplary Cold War imbroglio. President Gamal Nasser commissioned Soviet engineers to dam the Nile River to realize Egyptian aspirations of independence and modernity. The dam produced a third of Egyptian electricity and controlled the flow of the Nile to irrigate crops and prevent flooding. However, without seasonal flooding, farmland was deprived of nutrients and the Nile Delta receded. The period of experimentation with alternative energy sources soon came to an end, and the composition of world commercial energy production has varied little since the 1970s, with renewables at 1 percent, nuclear at 7 percent, hydroelectric at 3 percent, and fossil fuels at 89 percent.

An unlikely best seller of 1972, the Club of Rome’sLimits to Growth, warned of resource scarcity. However, it was not paucity but rather superabundance of fossil fuels that posed significant risks to humanity in terms of pollution and climate change. Nevertheless, the fossil fuel energy regime continued in the face of limited energy alternatives—nor was an alternative to American-style consumerism evident, which became only more dominant after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and ensuing globalization.

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