Reflections on the 1974 APS Energy Study

We physicists who worked together on the 1974 American Physical Society summer study entitled Efficient Use of Energy: A Physics Perspective believed we were doing something important in questioning two beliefs strongly held by most people involved in problems of energy supply. One of the beliefs that we challenged concerned how energy relates to wellbeing, namely that only by ever greater use of energy can society achieve greater well‐being. The other concerned how physicists relate to energy: that it is appropriate for physicists to work on problems of energy supply, but inappropriate for us to work on problems of energy use. The shared goal of the participants in the 1974 APS summer study was to overturn both of these majority positions—by creating counterexamples. In the first instance our counterexamples would be analyses that demonstrated the emptiness of the connection between various aspects of wellbeing—personal mobility and light to read by, for example—and the level of energy use required to achieve them (see figure 1). In the second instance our counterexamples would be ourselves.