Studying the “addiction to oil” of developed societies using the multi-scale integrated analysis of societal metabolism (Msiasm)

Abstract

This paper is organized in three parts. Part 1 introduces relevant concepts used in the rest of the paper. Part 2 presents the approach called Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal Metabolism (MSIASM), which provides a flexible system of accounting for developing a quantitative analysis of energy conversions and energy flows to study structural and functional changes of socio-economic systems. The peculiarity of this approach is that it makes it possible to handle the epistemological challenge entailed by the metabolism of dissipative systems, which are organized and operating simultaneously on multiple-scales; Part 3 uses the MSIASM approach to study the addiction to oil of developed societies and provides a method to check the desirability and feasibility of potential alternative energy sources to oil.