The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines

by William Stanley Jevons

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. OPINIONS OF PREVIOUS WRITERS. One of the earliest writers who conceived it was possible to exhaust our coal mines was John Williams, a mineral surveyor. In his " Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom," first published in 1789, he gave a chapter to the consideration of "The Limited Quantity of Coal of Britain." His remarks are highly intelligent, and prove him to be one of the first to appreciate the value of coal, and to foresee the consequences which must some time result from its failure. This event he rather prematurely apprehended; but in those days, when no statistics had been collected, and a geological map was un thought of, accurate notions were not to be expected. Still, his views on this subject may be read with profit, even at the present day. Sir John Sinclair, in his great Statistical Account of Scotland,1 took a most enlightened viewof the importance of coal; and, in noticing the Fifeshire coal-field, expressed considerable fears as to a future exhaustion of our mines. He correctly contrasted the fixed extent of a coalfield with the ever-growing nature of the consumption of coal. 1 Vol. xii. p. 547. In 1812 Robert Bald, another Scotch writer, in his very intelligent " General View of the Coal Trade of Scotland," showed most clearly how surely and rapidly a consumption, growing in a "quick, increasing series,"1 must overcome a fixed store, however large. Even if the Grampian mountains, he said,2 were composed of coal, we would ultimately bring down their summits, and make them level with the vales. In later years, the esteemed geologist, Dr. Buckland, most prominently and earnestly brought this subject before the public, both in his evidence before the Parliamentary Committees of 1830 and 1835, and in his celebrated " Bridgewater Treatis...

Genres: Economics, History, Science

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1866

About the author

William Stanley Jevons, LL.D., MA, FRS was an English economist and logician.

Irving Fisher described Jevons' book A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy (1862) as the start of the mathematical method in economics. It made the case that economics as a science concerned with quantities is necessarily mathematical. In so doing, it expounded upon the "final" (marginal) utility theory of value. Jevons' work, along with similar discoveries made by Carl Menger in Vienna (1871) and by Léon Walras in Switzerland (1874), marked the opening of a new period in the history of economic thought. Jevons' contribution to the marginal revolution in economics in the late 19th century established his reputation as a leading political economist and logician of the time.

Jevons broke off his studies of the natural sciences in London in 1854 to work as an assayer in Sydney, where he acquired an interest in political economy. Returning to the UK in 1859, he published General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy in 1862, outlining the marginal utility theory of value, and A Serious Fall in the Value of Gold in 1863. For Jevons, the utility or value to a consumer of an additional unit of a product is inversely related to the number of units of that product he already owns, at least beyond some critical quantity.

It was for The Coal Question (1865), in which he called attention to the gradual exhaustion of the UK's coal supplies, that he received public recognition, in which he put forth what is now known as the Jevons paradox, i.e. that increases in energy production efficiency leads to more not less consumption. The most important of his works on logic and scientific methods is his Principles of Science (1874), as well as The Theory of Political Economy (1871) and The State in Relation to Labour (1882). Among his inventions was the logic piano, a mechanical computer.

Reviews

[Pedro Tardio Ascarrunz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is totally something else I thought it´d be, I heard about it in a podcast, which talked about energy and the future of sustainability. However, this book is hardcore science on coal and it´s history on earth, thought it was just a light story on how coal got to be where it is in energy scale but instead it shares how it started, the projections it had and the future of coal. It must be a very interesting book to read for people who study the matter, for an amateur curious (I thought) it was a bit much.

[Andrew Ragland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive, erudite, and clear. This book should be read by anyone interested in or responsible for energy policy. Jevons explores the impact of energy policy on manufacturing, exportation, emigration, and a raft of other related issues. So many of his predictions have come true that his theories must be accepted as proven.

[Kev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jevons' Paradox is a crucial prerequisite principle in understanding environmentalism, global chaotic climate change, peak oil, ecology, commodities & merchantile economics and the real global limits of economic activity/resource exploitation.