After spending half a century in the Evil Empire (the states) I now live in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The economy here is based on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder - Agricultural commodities with little value added and tourism. It would seem that energy consumption (at some of the highest costs in the world) is not only RED but a potential economic Black Hole.

Energy exports and imports can affect GDP but I don't reasonably believe a reduction in use or a reduction in production is going to increase wealth. At the same time though it may or may not stagnate growth depending on what makes an individual countries GDP based on trade.

In regards to the question " Is energy use the cause of wealth or does wealth simply creates the ability to consume energy"? The answer is both.

All species growth rates and life cycle are based in the availability of energy, a society is nothing more than a colony of bacteria. Humans react to the availability of energy like any other biological organism.

It's helpful to think of society as an organism (because it is a colonial organism).

Life is about reversing entropy by capturing energy. That should pretty much answer the question.

I understand people want some nuance. That black and white is almost always dangerously naive. That said the industrial revolution is nothing more than an evolutionary step that reduced selection. It runs on capturing energy. It caused a population explosion because of that reduced selection. The selection switched from individuals to the group level with groups who captured less energy in some cases virtually disappearing. It is at the heart of guns, germs and steel.

We didn't evolve to live a civilized life. We evolved for an easy but unstable environment, the Garden of Eden if you like. Civilization is all about efficiently capturing energy, it's why agricultural societies more or less replaced hunter gathers. Food being just another source of energy like fire which increases caloric efficiency. The problem is how do you define efficiency.

Organisms can be so good at capturing more energy than they expend that they destroy their environment, Snow Geese being an example. This illustrates short term and long term efficiency. The problem is you can't get to long term efficiency without short term efficiency. All organisms degrade their environment with waste. What makes the natural world work is that one organism's waste is another's energy supply. It isn't how much waste you produce but how it is utilized.

Eventually entropy always wins, we all die. Civilizations get tired and die. What the West needs is to be energised. We need to be thinking about expending more energy not less but to do so wisely. The wise choose is to push through the current limitations to a more energetic future.