One of my interests is keeping track of world population and consumption dynamics. This ties in with the whole idea behind Peak Oil, the rapid acceleration of Asian markets, and American over-consumption. Here in the U.S. we are so used to having what we want, when we want it, I think it can be easy to forget that not everyone in the world has such luxury.
Let's run some numbers.
The entire population of the world is estimated by the UN at 6,671,226,000 (6.6 billion)
Countries ranked by population:
1. China - 1.32 billion (about 19.84%)
2. India - 1.12 billion (about 16.95%)
3. United States - 300 million (about 4.6%)
4. Indonesia - 225 million (about 3.5%)
5. Brazil - 186 million (about 2.8%)
A 2005 study stated that 86% of the world's energy consumption comes from non-renewable fossil fuels (petroleum, coal, natural gas). This is troubling. As a species, humans are ravenously consuming resources that have taken trillions of tons of biomass and millions of years to accumulate. It's like a kegger where everyone is doing kegstands but didn't bring money to buy more beer. And America is the loud, fat obnoxious guy who considers it his personal mission to drink more beer than anyone else IN THE WORLD.
Energy consumption by country (in thousand barrels oil per day):
1. United States - 20,687
2. China - 7,273
3. Japan - 5,159
4. Russia - 2,861
5. Germany - 2,665
Obviously there is a disparity here as China has over FOUR TIMES as many people, yet still consumes less than us. From our perch as the only world superpower, it's easy for us to get away with this. But I don't believe we are going to be the only one for long. The next 50 years are going to be very pivotal in human history as powers are already shifting and tensions between nations are becoming strained as petroleum dwindles.
The only solution I see is wiser energy policy. This includes a two-step approach:
1) Use less energy!
- this is a no-brainer. Efficiency will be our friend once energy prices begin to climb to unmanageable levels. Instead of hulking SUVs and infrastructure built around road travel, take a cue from Europe and consider rail transit (which is another blog post all by itself) or
2) Research new energy sources!
- another obvious one. This whole situation can be made manageable if we look to the future without oil and begin to probe new avenues. This is happening already, but this process could be helped by wiser investing in research (the government investment in biofuel is ridiculous and cost ineffective). If we use fossil fuels as a springboard to advance research in new energy production methods, we could make it out of the crisis yet.
