Identification of a 50-year scaling relating current global energy demands to historically cumulative economic production

Abstract. Global economic production, or the GDP, has risen steadily relative to world primary energy demands, suggesting technological change is driving a gradual decoupling of society from its resource needs and associated pollution. Here show that in each of the 50 years following 1970 for which reliable data are available, one Exajoule of world energy was consumed to sustain each 5.50 ± 0.21 trillion constant 2019 US dollars, not of yearly production or physical capital, but of running cumulative production summed over human history. The half-century for which this fixed ratio held covers two thirds of historical growth in energy demands, so assuming its persistence, the implication is that society is not in fact decoupling from resource needs. Rather, it can be expected that future environmental impacts will be more strongly guided by past activities, or inertia, than is generally permitted within economic and climate modeling prescriptions that allow for policy to spur more rapid change.