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Am I missing something, or hasn't energy per capita in the developed world already stopped growing? As well as population growth in rich societies?

• jbotz 7y ago
  Energy consumption has not stopped growing in rich societies... so long as the economy grows, energy consumption grows. The relationship isn't perfectly linear only because the available metrics are imperfect, but if you have any data that outright contradicts this rather reasonable assupmtion, please show us.
  • azernik 7y ago
    Money (and hence economic size) is an arbitrary measure of "value" that does not necessarily correlate with energy consumption.
  • evdev 7y ago
    https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&idim=country:USA:CHN:CAN&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:USA:CHN:CAN&ifdim=region&tstart=-302731200000&tend=1432872000000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
    • jbotz 7y ago
      Huh, I sure put my foot in my mouth on that one... a rather big assumption I never checked. Recalibrating... But in my defense it's worth mentioning that globally it still seems to hold true. The fact that energy consumption stopped in rich countries is apparently mostly due to the fact that manufacturing, which is one of the most energy-intensive parts of the economy, moved to poorer countries. But since the rich countries consume those manufactured products, the energy use should be counted against them too!
      • philipkglass 7y ago
        See my above reply to jbay808. If you include imports, CO2 emissions attributable to the US increase by 6%. Even with that 6% upward correction, primary energy consumption per capita in the US now is lower than it was in the 1970s.
• BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Except it's the total energy that matters in this discussion of Earth limits, not the one per capita...