Confronting Economic and Social Realities, 1980–1999 189
DOCUMENT 142: John P. Holdren on Energy and
Human Well-Being (1990)John P. Holdren, a professor of environmental policy at Harvard, served as a science advisor in both the Clinton
and Obama administrations and was involved in preparations for the Kyoto Protocol [Document 145B] and the
Paris Climate Agreement of 2016. He is concerned about the failure of the United States to establish an energy
policy that adequately encourages the development of clean, safe fuels to satisfy the nation’s long-term energy
needs. Foreseeing negative social, political, economic, and environmental consequences from the continued
absence of such a policy, he worries about its effect on America’s position as a world leader.[C]ivilization is not running out of energy
resources in an absolute sense, nor is it running
out of technological options for transforming
these resources into the particular forms that our
patterns of energy use require. We are, however,
running out of the cheap oil and natural gas that
powered much of the growth of modern indus-
trialized societies, out of environmental capacity
to absorb the impacts of burning coal, and out
of public tolerance for the risks of nuclear fis-
sion. We seem to be lacking as well the commit-
ment to make coal cleaner and fission safer, the
money and endurance needed to develop long-
term alternatives, the astuteness to embrace
energy efficiency on the scale demanded and the
consensus needed to fashion any coherent strat-
egy at all.
These deficiencies suggest that civilization
has entered a fundamental transition in the
nature of the energy-society interaction without
any collective recognition of the transition’s char-
acter or its implications for human well-being.
The transition is from convenient but ultimately
scarce energy resources to less convenient but
more abundant ones, from a direct and positive
connection between energy and economic well-
being to a complicated and multidimensional
one, and from localized pockets of pollution
and hazard to impacts that are regional and even
global in scope.
The subject is also being transformed from
one of limited political interest within nations
to a focus of major political contention between
them, from an issue dominated by decisions and
concerns of the Western world to one in which
the problems and prospects of all regions are
inextricably linked, and from one of concern to
only a small group of technologists and manag-
ers to one where the values and actions of every
citizen matter.
Understanding this transition requires a look
at the two-sided connection between energy and
human well-being. Energy contributes positively
to well-being by providing such consumer ser-
vices as heating, lighting and cooking as well as
serving as a necessary input to economic pro-
duction. But the costs of energy—including not
only the money and other resources devoted to
obtaining and exploiting it but also the envi-
ronmental and sociopolitical impacts—detract
from well-being.Source: John P. Holdren, “Energy in Transition,” Scientific
American 263, no. 3 (September 1990): 157.