Climate change #5

In an attempt to estimate the size of the world’s energy needs in fifty years or so, I’ve been trying to find out how the current energy usage in the developed world compares to that of emerging economies.   Here are a few figures – without accompanying adjectives:

• The developed world has about 20% of the the world’s population;
• it uses 6 times as much energy as emerging economies;
• Within the next 20 years, world energy consumption is expected to rise by about 44%.
• Within 40 years, global population is expected to have increased by 30%.

It looks to me as if the only way to look at these figures and avoid the conclusion that we have a mega-challenge in relation to our energy consumption is to revert to pre-scientific, if not irrational, reasoning.

I’m not without hope.  In a way, I think it’s a terribly exciting time to be alive.  Maybe even to be young.  But solving this problem is going to require something more than turning off lights we’re not using.

I’m not sure a blog is the best way for me to tackle an issue as huge and complex as climate change.  I do think there is an urgent need for the problems and solutions to be presented in a way that makes them comprehensible to people who don’t have time to take an entire course, but whose involvement is going to be critical.

So at some point I may give up the blogging format and write a book like The Big Bang to Now which I wrote to make all of time comprehensible to people like me who don’t routinely deal with numbers much bigger than 10,000.   It’s not that the market necessarily needs yet another book on climate change.  I just may need to write it.