Developing World Consuming More Energy than Developed World. Price, Climate Will Suffer 27 comments
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Humanity crossed a threshold in 2007 when for the first time in history a majority of people became city dwellers. But if you read such books as the terrific Planet of Slums, by Mike Davis (City of Quartz), you’ll know that the composition of this migration has guided urbanizing populations not to modernity, but to squalor, high densities, and trash.
This is why it’s rather absurd for many to carelessly assert now that the concerns expressed in the 1970’s, about the future of food, water, and health were largely unfounded. Unfounded? Really? A fifth of the planet lives in poverty now. And not just mild poverty. A sixth of the planet lacks sufficient access to safe drinking water.
Topping off 2007’s milestone, however, the year 2008 ushered in yet another new era. For the first time ever, the developing world demanded and consumed more energy than the developed world. This finding came to light with the publication of the annual BP Statistical Review, in June. The advance in population, the migration to the cities, and the go-ahead in primary energy use in the developing world are all related. Of particular note is the composition of this new energy demand. While oil is definitely playing a new role in emerging economies, it’s the use of coal that has accelerated. This is not a surprise, as coal remains a cheap form of BTU and is the go-to fuel of the world’s poor.
Ninety-five percent of this final buildout of humanity will occur in the urban areas of developing countries, whose populations will double to nearly 4 billion over the next generation…The scale and the velocity of Third World urbanization, moreover, utterly dwarfs that of Victorian Europe. London in 1910 was seven times larger than it had been in 1800, but Dhaka, Kinshasa, and Lagos today are each approximately forty times larger than they were in 1950. –Planet of Slums, Mike Davis.
What Davis is pointing out in this passage, and in the broader scope of his book, is that while the urbanization in the developing world bears many of the same signs associated with Dickensian suffering–the speed at which this transformation is taking place is in fact something new.
This buttresses and enhances the insight, among observers of the world’s energy supply, that the developed OECD nations no longer control the price of fossil fuels to the extent they once did. The current financial crisis and depressed state of the world’s industrial economy only makes this new structure more clear. While oil, coal, and natural gas are certainly quite cheap compared to their highs of the decade, only a recession of the current magnitude was able to pull them down in price as low as they are today. In a previous era, oil would be at 10.00 dollars a barrel.
The tectonic changes in the world’s population and urbanization the last twenty years now beg a question. Is it possible that instead of the developing world ever reaching the living standards of the developed world, as many had once thought, the developed OECD nations are rather now on a course to meet the developing world somewhere in the middle? If that’s the case, it is very bad news for those concerned with climate change. Because in that middle place, where the new and the old world may be set to merge, it’s likely that the primary sources of energy will be wood and coal.
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This article has 27 comments:
"Because in that middle place, where the new and the old world may be set to merge, it’s likely that the primary sources of energy will be wood, and coal."
not only is not ordained, but modern technologies will eventually prevail - fusion, solar, fuel cells, etc. i would have suggested a different final sentence:
"Because in that middle place, where the new and the old world may be set to merge, it is likely all will use the same amount of energy per capita."
this will create a huge demand for energy producing machines in the developing world.
I also disagree with the author's population outlook. Global birth rates are falling, not rising, even in the developing world. The U.S.Census Bureau reported that in 2000, for example, women in Thailand and Brazil had on average less than 2 births within their lifetimes, meaning that those nations' natural replacement figures were negative. In Turkey, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Mexico, Vietnam, Egypt, and Iran, birth rates have fallen--often precipitously--since 1975.
Finally, I still wish to see solid, reproducible proof that (a) there is significant climate change occurring and (b) human activity is causing it. Simply put, computer modeling and mathematical guesswork is not enough when one is dealing with the huge economic shocks that global warming...er climate change theory advocates are promoting.
For most of Africa and south Asia there are urban centers and agrarian villages with little in between. As urban densities grow, there will be strain on food, energy, and water supplies and pressure to increase crop yields. However, it may prove difficult to repeat the same successes we witnessed with the green revolution in the 1970s (that success was largely responsible for food concerns being called unfounded).
Many wild fish populations are already on verge of colony collapse due to overfishing, and some of the methods that increased crop yields in the short term are proving to be unsustainable in the long term (center-pivot irrigation draining Oglala auqifer, petro-chemical fertilizers). It's not a doomsday scenario, but the prices of inputs in our food chain will change dramatically - it's an inevitable consequence of increasing demand and decreasing supply. For example, it takes two acres of land to raise a cow - the future might see more acres devoted to more efficient forms of food.
The resource stress invites the other consequence of urbanization - which was predicted by Benjamin Franklin - the use of central planning to provide for the urban masses.
1.The world has been cooling since 2000
2. The oceans and the sun(sunspots ie solar radiation) are the dominant influences on planetary weather and there is a nested and deep cyclicality to these influences. Human beings have a marginal and highly local impact on the climate
3. Western computer models of the planetary climate are based on selective and even dishonest data, bad science, wrong algorithms and vitiated by an ideology that elevates inanimate matter over living human beings. The worship of these models by Westerners looks to the rest of the world like a blind idolatory worse than that found in primitive societies......it seems to be materialism at its worst
4. Food and Energy security are the paramount concerns of the Global South and they trump the priorities and obsessions of the West. Without food and energy security there can be no escape from illiteracy, disease, hunger and humiliation. The world is not prepared to sacrifice billions of black and brown babies at the altar of Western idols and intellectual fashion .
Assuming this correctly captures the position of the Gobal South the policy conclusions are:
1. Coal, nuclear(even in places as impoverished as Bangladesh) and natural gas, followed by liquid transportation fuels, will dominate energy investments and infrastructure development for the next 30 to 40 years outside the West
2. The energy and environmental policy of the world will soon be set by China, Russia, Indonesia, India,Brazil, South Africa and Nigeria and not by the US, Japan, Germany, France and the UK
3. The US and Western Europe, in 2009, lack the resources, will and importantly moral authority to impose their policy preferences on the rest of world not just on trade and investment but also on energy and environmental policy
4. Carbon supression and control efforts will fail : indeed carbon consumption will significantly increase in those parts of the world wthat have growing populations, including the US South , non-Pacific West and Southwest
Billions of people in the world, including tens of millions in the US, do not seek the same level of material consumption or things driven standard of living as people in Manhattan or LA or Boston. What they do seek, is a higher quality of life. The aspirations of the many will prevail over the dictates of the few.
Consequently, barring major breakthroughs in new energy generating technologies, the first half of the XXI-century will be very good for commodities and its producers. In this light, the present oil prices are ridiculously low.
Global warming is actually a solar system problem. Whats the common denominator here? The sun.
Mere humans can only wish they had the power to influence the planets temperature......
Since we cant do away with the sun guess we should learn to live with it. Carbon tax is the next ponzi scheme perpetrated on us by the elite, connected, rich and left wing followers. Fleece the minions!!!!!
What tax will they impose when it is discovered that the planet is cooling. Cap and sweater tax?
A few facts for perspective for the readers of this clap trap.
From the World Bank web site
Living standards have improved...
Living standards have risen dramatically over the last decades. The proportion of the developing world's population living in extreme economic poverty — defined as living on less than $1.25 per day (at 2005 prices, adjusted to account for the most recent differences in purchasing power across countries) — has fallen from 52 percent in 1981 to 26 percent in 2005.
While there has been great progress in reducing poverty, it has been far from even, and the global picture masks large regional differences.
Substantial improvements in social indicators have accompanied growth in average incomes. Infant mortality rates in low- and middle-income countries have fallen from 87 per 1,000 live births in 1980 to 54 in 2006. Life expectancy in these countries has risen from 60 to 66 between 1980 and 2006. For more health, nutrition and population statistics, see the HNPStats database.
Adult literacy has also improved, though serious gender disparities remain. Male adult literacy (% ages 15 and over) rose from 77% to 86% in low- and middle-income countries between 1990 and 2004. While female literacy rates rose from 60% to 74%. For more information on education statistics and on gender statistics, see the EdStats and GenderStats databases.
...but wide regional disparities persist.
While there has been great progress in reducing poverty, it has been far from even, and the global picture masks large regional differences.
Poverty in East Asia—the world’s poorest region in 1981—has fallen from nearly 80 percent of the population living on less than $1.25 a day in 1981 to 18 percent in 2005 (about 340 million), largely owing to dramatic progress in poverty reduction in China. The goal of halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015 has already been achieved in East Asia.
Between 1981 and 2005, the number of people in poverty has fallen by around 600 million in China alone. In the developing world outside China, the poverty rate has fallen from 40 to 29 percent over 1981-2005, although the total number of poor has remained unchanged at around 1.2 billion.
$1.25 a day poverty rate in South Asia has also fallen, from 60 percent to 40 percent over 1981-2005, but this has not been enough to bring down the region’s total number of poor, which stood at about 600 million in 2005.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, the $1.25 a day poverty rate has shown no sustained decline over the whole period since 1981, starting and ending at around 50 percent. In absolute terms, the number of poor people has nearly doubled, from 200 million in 1981 to 380 million in 2005. However, there have been signs of recent progress; the poverty rate fell from 58% in 1996 to 50% in 2005.
In middle-income countries, the median poverty line for the developing world—$2 a day in 2005 prices—is more relevant. By this standard, the poverty rate has fallen since 1981 in Latin America and the Middle East & North Africa, but not enough to reduce the total number of poor.
The $2 a day poverty rate has risen in Eastern Europe and Central Asia since 1981, though with signs of progress since the late 1990s.
web.worldbank.org/WBSI...~menuPK:435040~pagePK:...
A Univ level study came out and it made a best attempt estimate of the % of the total weight of humans and their livestock and pets, as compared to the total weight of all living animals (excluding insects and fish). The estimate was approximately 96%, leaving on 4% wild. We are late in this game my friends.
2) if so......what happens to oil price ?
any comments ?
LONG on oil !
While Europe has BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Fiat, Renault and Peugeot, all coping far better with the credit crunch. Even GM Europe and Ford Europe are in a better state than their parent companies. Or what about German and French high speed trains makers, busy selling to the emerging markets.
Then there are the new renewable industries such as French Nuclear. Danish, Germany and Spanish Wind turbine companies making up 6 of the world's top 10. By way China has 2 and India 1. So much for China rejecting going green, as they also have some world biggest Solar energy manufactures as well.
Only in Solar technology does America lead and I suspect Germany and China will give America a run for its money.
So Steve good luck with your in investment in developing countries with luck you could afford a really good car, like a Mercedes or a BMW, Porsche, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar, Bentley, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Lamborghini, Bugatti..................
On Jul 09 11:10 AM Steve in Greensboro wrote:
> There is no man-created global warming. The countries that reject
> this nonsense (China, etc.) will continue to grow. The countries
> that adopt it (old Europe) will stagnate or shrink. The risk of
> the current administration taxing carbon dioxide emissions is another
> good reason to stay away from U.S. equities and invest in developing
> countries.
> Interesting to me that so many responses to this posting seem to
> be trying to deny the massive overpopulation and poverty problems
> that the world no finds itself in.
Interesting to me that those who put forth the "massive overpopulation and poverty problems" do not sustain their arguments with objective data. Instead, it is persons like myself and bifbarlo that use objective data when making the points that overpopulation is a myth and poverty is actually decreasing.
Overall, living standards may be increasing / poverty decreasing. This is just statistics and globalization.
Whoever thought the entire developing world would meet the current developed world was dreaming. That would be like locusts eating the earth. What we are seeing now is the living standards of the developed world decreasing with more poverty and homelessness and unemployment. A small drop in the developed world is a big gain in the developing world.
> Carlos: overpopulation is and isn't a Myth.
>
> It Isn't a Myth to populations which do not have extensive Arable
> Land to feed their populations.
That's not overpopulation. That's a resource allocation problem. Oftentimes, they can't feed their populations because of heavy-handed government meddling (i.e. North Korea, Zimbabwe).
My great objection to the "overpopulation" canard it twofold. First, it is a RISING population which provides a greater pool of labor and entrepreneurial capital. Would India, for example, really have the great future prospects that it has if its population were shrinking the way Russia's is, for example? Second, proponents of the overpopulation thesis often look to unethical methods, such as forced sterilization, to force their agenda on developing peoples.
One family one child law in china seems draconian, however mass starvation (tens of millions) as they have seen earlier in the century is no picnic. At some point, India will run out of enough water and people will mass migrate or starve. You call it a canard, I call it reality. Maybe you believe in creationism and a flat world, and that whatever the Pope says is real truth. And maybe you don't.
But compassion calls for a great sensitivity to plight of the billions of people who are now on the edge of subsistance. Adding more people to the mix may keep labor costs low, but these are human beings. How many can you feed?
The vast majority of the whole world lived in poverty, subsistence farming, until the 19th century. The industrial revolution, supercharged by fossil fuels, created a major change, and the doomsayers are counting on peak oil bust. The question to answer is this- at what point will fossil fuel costs create market-driven demand for solar/tidal power, and what is alternative energy's potential capacity?
While we're not that far away now, oil and coal will stay cheap enough for the next 20-50 years to remain cost competitive, and as the established source, dominant. Alternative energy technology will have plenty of time to scale up slowly. But even pilot production will be very large, and there is enough raw material for terrawatts of annual production now.
And as long as there is plenty of energy, economic development will continue, even in the US- in spite of misguided policies derived from misguided worldviews like Gregor's here.
> Carlos,
> One family one child law in china seems draconian, however mass starvation
> (tens of millions) as they have seen earlier in the century is no
> picnic. At some point, India will run out of enough water and people
> will mass migrate or starve. You call it a canard, I call it reality.
Again, you discount human ingenuity. As the price of food or water rises, there will be some entrepreneur who will provide the means to create it AS LONG AS government doesn't get in the way (i.e. Mao's collective farm policies led to starvation in the latter half of the 20th century).
> Maybe you believe in creationism and a flat world, and that whatever
> the Pope says is real truth. And maybe you don't.
I do believe in some sort of divine intervention in creation, do not believe the earth is flat, and believe the Pope speaks the truth in matters of faith and morals. In your mind, does that then disqualify me from expressing my opinion on economic issues? I would never claim that an atheist, for example, is unfit to expound on economics.
> But compassion calls for a great sensitivity to plight of the billions
> of people who are now on the edge of subsistance. Adding more people
> to the mix may keep labor costs low, but these are human beings.
> How many can you feed?
I don't believe that draconian measures like China's one-child policy are justified in the name of "compassion." Using such logic, then it would be justified to "cull" a nation's population of retarded individuals to lessen the number of mouths to feed. Again, many of these problems that you mention can be traced to governmental action.
Meanwhile, many who now earn a $1.00 a week feel blessed because They get to work at all or worked for much less.
The US tries to butt in where they are not welcome, It denigrates the People of many countries by saying they live in Poverty, it continues to impose conditions on its Aid. It Tries to Impose Democracy whether it is wanted or Not.
We do not allow the People of other countries to make their own decisions.
Bush/Obama: A coup in Thailand, a coup in Honduras. Who is meddling? Obama, simply amazing.
With the world population slated to rise to 9 billion (50% increase from now) and much of it in China and India planning to use fossil fuels, we will pass the point of no return unless something drastic is done now. There is a small hope of finding a way to take the CO2 out but probably that won't happen.
Most of the world will never reach the US standard of living but they don't have to as even a 1950's standard will demand large increases in energy use. That energy must be clean and as renewable as we can make it (nuclear is "clean" but not renewable). The developed countries must drive it and push the developing countries to follow (even if at a slower pace) or we will have the gun to our heads.
Readers of SA have to realize that these posts are republished from the author's original blog-and--that SA often changes the title. In this light, I can understand why so many comments here understand this post of mine as expressing a support for the thesis of climate change. Actually, that's not the case. I express no view whatsoever. I only refer to it.
Also, I reject traditional measurements of poverty which have tended to measure wealth in US Dollar terms. I am not alone in this criticism. It's hardly radical or even novel to question measures of poverty in USD terms.
Thanks to all.