Turnbull, Thomas (Author)
Environmental History
Volume: 28
Issue: 4
Pages: 738-765
Publication date: 2023
Language: English
In the 1970s, employees at the RAND Corporation turned their expertise in rational decision making toward the problem of energy demand. In surveying existing energy demand forecasts, primarily those carried out by electrical utility companies, RAND researchers found that contemporary approaches were self-serving, and that these simple extrapolative methods helped create growing demand for energy. In response, RAND developed an independent method which recast the determinants of energy demand in general systemic terms. They proposed that each consumer, appliance, and act of consumption could be reconceived of as parts of a vast and programmable energy-conserving computer. The RAND approach made systems analysis and cybernetics central to energy policy, but also helped establish a misleading certainty that economic growth could be significantly decoupled from increasing rates of in energy use.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Thomas M. Turnbull;
(2024)
Redefining Efficiency: US Physicists and the 1970s Energy Crisis
(/p/isis/citation/CBB526682482/)
Article
Elke Seefried;
(2017)
Globalized Science. The 1970s Futures Field
(/p/isis/citation/CBB360888975/)
Article
Daniela Russ;
(2020)
Speaking for the ‘world power economy’: electricity, energo-materialist economics, and the World Energy Council (1924–78)
(/p/isis/citation/CBB594714296/)
Article
Rebecca Wright;
(2023)
68 Degrees: New York City’s Residential Heat and Hot Water Code as an Invisible Energy Policy
(/p/isis/citation/CBB748780046/)
Book
Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen;
(2019)
The Energy of Russia: Hydrocarbon Culture and Climate Change
(/p/isis/citation/CBB671500549/)
Article
Stefan Huebner;
(2023)
Asia’s oceanic Anthropocene: How political elites and global offshore oil development moved Asian marine spaces into the new epoch
(/p/isis/citation/CBB808595866/)
Book
Ana Romero de Pablos;
(2019)
Las primeras centrales nucleares españolas: Actores, políticas y tecnologías.
(/p/isis/citation/CBB801831424/)
Article
Kristoffer Ekberg;
Martin Hultman;
(2023)
A Question of Utter Importance: The Early History of Climate Change and Energy Policy in Sweden, 1974-1983
(/p/isis/citation/CBB300763136/)
Article
Ryan Driskell Tate;
(January 2021)
Rural Revolt: Power Line Protests and the Alternative Technology Movement in the United States, 1970s
(/p/isis/citation/CBB243007913/)
Book
Thomas O. McGarity;
(2019)
Pollution, politics, and power: The struggle for sustainable electricity
(/p/isis/citation/CBB204091874/)
Book
Abella, Alex;
(2008)
Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000831283/)
Book
Christian Dayé;
(2020)
Experts, Social Scientists, and Techniques of Prognosis in Cold War America
(/p/isis/citation/CBB971942824/)
Book
Ghamari-Tabrizi, Sharon;
(2005)
The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000503287/)
Article
Bessner, Daniel;
(2015)
Organizing Complexity: The Hopeful Dreams and Harsh Realities of Interdisciplinary Collaboration at the Rand Corporation in the Early Cold War
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001552039/)
Book
Amadae, S. M.;
(2003)
Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000775232/)
Article
Jennifer Eaglin;
(January 2019)
The Demise of the Brazilian Ethanol Program: Environmental and Economic Shocks, 1985–1990
(/p/isis/citation/CBB102895968/)
Chapter
Yves Bouvier;
(2012)
Filming Electrical Consumption: EDF’s Promotional Films (1946-2004)
(/p/isis/citation/CBB509113873/)
Book
Ronan Bolton;
(2022)
Making Energy Markets: The Origins of Electricity Liberalisation in Europe
(/p/isis/citation/CBB957217806/)
Article
Adam Rome;
(Spring 2019)
DuPont and the Limits of Corporate Environmentalism
(/p/isis/citation/CBB084779699/)
Book
William Thomas;
(2015)
Rational Action: The Sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940-1960
(/p/isis/citation/CBB219429330/)
Be the first to comment!