Quote:
Originally Posted by powderjunkie
The fallacy is believing that people living in the developing world even want 'our' kind of middle class lifestyle, as opposed to something more like Europe/Japan. Of course they'd take increased prosperity in whatever form available, but simple realities like population density preclude our type of lifestyle in most of the world.
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We don't have to guess, all we have to do is look at examples of countries that have pulled themselves out of poverty to see what happens with energy demand.
South Korea and North Korea are great case studies, as they naturally share many similarities and at one point had similarly poor standards of living (in fact, NK was probably better off till SK shifted economic strategies in the 80s). In 1985, they both had around the same energy use per capita (around 15,000 kWh). Today, their quality of life standards are vastly different, and North Korea is at 4,000 kwh while South Korea has ballooned to 68,000 kWh. That’s a 350% increase in energy use.
Here's an energy chart of those two countries, and Japan for context since you mentioned it:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/p...ry=KOR~PRK~JPN
You’ll see similar energy growth in countries that have seen their fortunes rise. Taiwan, Singapore, China, UAE, Turkey….energy use increases in the hundreds of %. And this is not just about people adopting western values and buying more phones and cars. This increase is necessarily for basic quality of life societal improvements...stable energy grids, economic prosperity, water management, infrastructure, health care, security…all this stuff is energy intensive. It’s important to understand that there is no such thing as an energy-poor wealthy country. You want people to have a decent quality of life, it takes a lot of juice.
Looking ahead at population demographics, all the forward growth is in Asia and Africa, areas with massive room for energy growth. India alone is going to blow everything out of the water. It's the worlds most populous country now at 1.4 billion people (bigger than all of Europe and North America…combined) and their currently energy use per capita right now is a measly 7,000kWh….which is HALF of what poor-ass Korea was in the 80s, and half of what Iraq is today. Forget Canada, just picture them matching successful countries around them. If they get to where China is today (31,000kwH), that’s at least a 4x increase in energy use. If you want them to match Japan as you suggested, it’s almost 6x. I don’t think they’ll get there…but with their population, even a double will be a massive amount of demand globally.
Keep in mind, I have said nothing here about energy types. My point is not that we'll be getting our energy from one source or another...my point is that the world will only get thirstier even with modest quality of life growth, and we're gonna need to feed the monster with everything we got. Every atom of energy you forego in the west, the rest of the world will gobble it up.
But also, let’s not forget... energy growth is also a good thing. Abundant energy is what massively improved our lives in the west, and it's what's going to improve lives in the rest of the world too. Yes, there are going to be tradeoffs (there always are!), but it means less people are suffering, and more are living better lives. The economic growth in China, despite all its issues and environmental harm, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the last few decades.... that’s a lot of collective human suffering that has been alleviated.