The Industrial Revolution As An Energy Revolution

Via Mark Thoma, VoxEU on the importance of fossil fuels in the history of economic growth:

  The great bulk of the literature about the industrial revolution has been devoted to explaining how it began. This has been to the neglect of the equally important question of why the growth did not grind to a halt as all previous experience suggested was inevitable. It is in this context that the history of energy usage is critical to the understanding of the changes which took place.
Societies whose productive capacities were limited by the annual product of photosynthesis operated within severe and seemingly immovable constraints. Societies which switched to depending on the stored products of photosynthesis in the form of fossil fuels were released from these constraints, though whether the immense benefits which were thus made possible will prove durable and stable remains an open question.

The potential of limited increases in energy production is very disconcerting for our way of life, that's for sure.  If, because we are cooking the planet, we have to change our current energy-intensive lifestyle, things will not be fun.