Summary 1:
English economist William Stanley Jevons made the observation in 1865 that as people became more efficient at using an energy source, the demand for that resource would raise. Better machinery would allow more people to use the fuel and utilize the source to new areas. More people and more machines like engines in use would increase the overall fuel consumption. William Jevons’ example was coal, and he was able to predict the “peak coal” of Britain. As coal was used more efficiently, more coal was mined, and quickly the energy and cost to mine deeper coal reserves was higher than the energy and profit from using the coal. The observation of William Jevons is unofficially a societal law called Jevons’ law. Luckily, at the time oil was soon used to replace coal. Now, though, oil use is in the same predicament as to drill and harvest oil is causing higher demands than profit from selling and using oil. Modern society economies are completely based on oil, though, and if a sense of emergency is not gained by the public, then a “catastrophic” collapse will happen.

Summary 2:
As the earth pushes into the future a new type of economy is going to be needed to prevent an economic “crash.” The new economy would be a “steady-state economy.” A “steady-state economy” is different from a failed growth economy by the fact that it is not meant to grow, but hover. With the comparison between a plane and a helicopter, the “steady-state economy” is the helicopter. By focusing on maintenance and service, not production, the economy can begin to move towards the SSE. Instead of taxing goods, taxes would be placed on production waste, or pollution. Taxes would be on the “bad” part of industry and not on the labor or capital. The unregulated global free trade would have to follow stricter rules, keeping services in the country of origin for the businesses, increasing employment. Plus, the income difference would be minimized by smaller incentives based on production and a minimum and maximum limit for wages for everyone, a set income range. The GDP needs to be separated into two accounts. These two accounts would be profits from growth and the cost of the economic growth. The economy should observe how the constant growth is actually weakening the economy, or causing the plane to stall and hover, which it is not capable of doing. Such changes may not fully stop the potential economic “crash” in the future, but could slow it down and also be good guidelines for the economy after the “crash.”

Answers:
The problem Jevons was worried about was that the more efficient burning of coal would lead to higher mining that would force people to mine deeper for coal and the cost of the new mines would be greater than the profits made by selling and using the coal.
The comparison means that the plane is the current economy in that it is constantly going forward, or growing, but the helicopter is the “steady-state economy” where it is built for hovering, not continuously going forward, the two economic systems are two different methods and should not be treated as the same.

Questions:
1-Is there any economical way to mine for the deeper coal while maintaining higher profits, possibly by using the more efficient machines or coal alternatives? Would it be worth investigating?
2-The “steady-state economy” does have a good argument, but would the part about limiting free trade and making a wage range be gravitating towards communism?
3-Both articles seem to make the point that economic growth with fossil fuels will fail, but do not mention alternative fuels in any depth. Can reusable fuel support society in the next hundred years while at least maintaining the economic level of present times?