Paper short abstract:

This paper deals with the contribution of oil to the narrative of economic growth by asking how political and economic decisions have led to the triumph of oil after World War two, resulting in the consequences we have to deal with in the present and - most likely - in the future.

Paper long abstract:

To this day, economic growth is seen as a panacea for almost all societal, economic and social challenges. The German economist Birger Priddat depicted growth as a "heaven on earth narrative" and a secular promise of salvation for capitalism. Yet, since the oil price crisis of the early 1970s, "limits to growth" have become a focus of public attention, indeed, the depletion of resources associated with growth has shaped the debate ever since. The fact that oil made this economic growth possible in the first place - along with other factors - is now generally accepted. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how oil was able to achieve this triumph after the Second World War. True, there is the thesis of the "1950 syndrome" by Swiss environmental historian Christian Pfister, which contends that the price collapse of the 1950s contributed to the rapid boom. While this is correct, it is not sufficient as the sole explanation. This paper will therefore examine the political, social, and economic factors that made the triumph of oil possible after 1945 by focusing on the case of Switzerland, including a comparison with other countries. The paper presents an in-depth coverage of the political substruction, i.e., the implementation of regulations, law enforcement – or the lack thereof – and subsidies. It hence takes into account the claim of the panel’s coordinators by placing questions of environmental history in a larger - in this case economic history - context.