18 ms·
What is energy, actually? (2011)
- mytailorisrich 7y agoGive up population growth. This really is key but too often overlooked.
- mpweiher 7y agoPopulation growth is slowing, and population is predicted to flatten out. So yay!
- mytailorisrich 7y agoThat falls very short of what should be done to limit our impact on the planet for the sake of protecting the environment and remaining wilderness. I really don't understand this disconnect between the message of urgency about the environment and the climate, and the widespread complacency about an actual root cause of the issue (as illustrated by your comment), which is population growth: "Oh it's slowing and will probably stabilise at 11 billions... that's fine. On the other hand, we must be emissions-neutral and stop using plastics by tomorrow." That's totally incoherent.
- TomMarius 7y agoMost of the world is empty: https://geoawesomeness.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/world-population-density-map.jpg https://geoawesomeness.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/world-... We just need to learn to be efficient.
- pacala 7y agoMost of the "empty" space on the map world is an inhospitable desert. Sahara, Australian Outback, Namib, the Arctic, North American West, Tibet, Kazakhstan, Antarctica, Patagonia. Granted, a few pockets of wild forests left, Amazon, parts of Central Africa, New Guinea, Siberia. Under intense development pressure. Hard to call that "most of the world".
- TomMarius 7y agoThere certainly are ways to live there. Granted, it needs some colonization effort - still easier than colonizing Mars, and actually producing some technologies for that.
- pacala 7y agoThe past 200 years is the era of energy-intensive technological innovation. What is the evidence that the technology innovation pattern we've experienced so far can shift into ultra-low energy mode at scale? In inhospitable environments to boot. PS. Mars colonization is folly.
- TomMarius 7y agoThe need to find new places to live, perhaps combined with regulatory effort.
- Turing_Machine 7y ago> Most of the "empty" space on the map world is an inhospitable desert. Southern California is an inhospitable desert, but tens of millions of people live there nonetheless.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoIf I look at the density map you posted: Oh look at the Amazon, it's all empty so we still have space to expand farming. Yay. The world is not empty. It's either exploited to cater for human needs or wilderness that should be protected at the point we've reached.
- TomMarius 7y agoPerhaps you missed the empty desserts the other commenter has pointed out. If we want to colonize Mars, we should be able to colonize desserts.
- Mulpze15 7y agoTo illustrate the same point differently: if the USA had the same population density as the UK, there would be 2.5 billion people living there, instead of the current 327 million. Math: 327 million US ppl * 274 UK ppl per sq km / 35 US ppl per sq km.
- diffeomorphism 7y agoMost of the "western world" already has barely growing or declining populations: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline What you are proposing is thus an imperialist dictate on African and Asian countries, which is an obvious no go. Instead you should advocate for improved standards of living and flourishing economies in all these countries, which is strongly correlated with stabilizing population levels.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoThis is both a ridiculous and offensive accusation. It is quite irrelevant which parts of the world have a growing population and which have not. What's important is the global population.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoGive up your Social Security benefits. Some has to work to pay your (and mine) SS benefits...and to change our diapers. Natural population growth is not occurring in rich countries
- odiroot 7y agoMany European countries already did, collectively. Now it's up to developing world to do their share.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y agoNot necessarily. Africa, with 1.+2 billion inhabitants, has a tiny carbon footprint compared to the US (which as less than 1/3 of Africa's population). Source: https://unfccc.int/files/press/backgrounders/application/pdf/factsheet_africa.pdf https://unfccc.int/files/press/backgrounders/application/pdf...
- mytailorisrich 7y agoThey have a tiny carbon footprint because they are overwhelmingly poor compared to the West (granted, the US have a particularly large footprint). So either we tell them that, sorry, but they have to stay dirt poor and also to stay away from their rain forests even if they starve, or the aim is to eradicate poverty on the planet, but in that latter case their resources footprint (this is more general than carbon alone) is bound to increase. That's why the global population is a key factor in fighting climate change and protecting the environment.
- dagss 7y agoOnly a (smallish) portion of the western carbon footprint is directly correlated with having a decent life. Yes, the entire world cannot buy larger cars than what we need them for, we cannot fly around the world on vacations, we cannot throw away half the food we produce, we cannot buy clothes to use them once, and so on. Such needless things, often more related to consumption culture than living standards, is responsible for a large portion of emissions. Not only that, but we live in societies with an enormous capital in infrastructure built up from previous emissions. I think westerners should at least start thinking about not emitting CO2 just for the fun of it, before telling others to not have too many children.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoI would dispute your claim that our resources (again, it's not just about carbon) footprint is not directly correlated to basic standard of living. But the key issue with your reply is that this is not 'us' doing this versus 'them' doing that. We must reduce CO2 emissions and we must stop population growth. Both 'we' mean humankind as a whole.
- tyzerdak 7y agoI calculated that I use 3000kwh per year (only direct electricity+gas) If everyone use such amounts there were no global warming. But humans always have not enough stuff...
- ppf 7y agoDo you have an idea of your share of the embodied energy of all the items you use in the course of your life?
- ppf 7y agoTo give you an idea, if you have bought a new laptop and phone, that's around another 3000kWh already.
- IanCal 7y agoYou don't use any products or services that require energy to function?
- eru 7y agoThat's about 350W, if my calculations are right?
- dbetteridge 7y agoSo you don't buy - clothes - food - any cloud services - electronics - furniture ? Cause they would all require input of energy to harvest, process and ship
- anovikov 7y agohttps://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-energy-intensity-gdp-data.html https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-energy-inte... Yet, reduction of energy use per unit of GDP is not impossible. In the last 28 years there has been reduction by 35% overall.
- hliyan 7y agoSomewhat tangentially related: I wrote this in a private note to a friend last year. I don't believe this 100%, but the idea is worth exploring in my opinion: 1. Corporations desperately pursue continuous growth, even when they're already profitable, and do so at the expense of the environment, employee welfare and sometimes, the rule of law. 2. Corporations pursue growth because investors demand it. 3. Investors demand growth because they want a certain minimum return on investment. 4. Investors need to invest money in instruments with a certain minimum ROI because if they don't, inflation will erode their savings. 5. This continuous growth requirement forces companies to compete for larger and larger portions of market share, which in turn forces their competitors to compete harder in response. 6. The end result is a sort of "Red Queen" effect where everyone is forced to compete harder and harder just to maintain his/her existing standard of living. 7. We know that the more extreme a competition becomes, the more ruthless the participants become, often to the point of acting immorally. 8. Therefore, we should focus on curbing inflation to curb the pace of overwhelming growth, and thereby restore some measure of social justice.
- kome 7y agoyou re-discovered or independently discovered the basis marxism, sort of.
- pjc50 7y agoI guess you're being downvoted because of the M word, but you have a point; it's very similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...
- ezzzzz 7y agoCan somebody explain the stigma regarding Marx on HN? I mean, I get that this a forum for a VC firm but isn't it also a place for academic discussion? It's pretty hard to discuss things like income disparity, automation, etc without a mention.
- nabla9 7y agoThe argument is based on looking a the world as a whole. In developed world energy intensity of GDP is decreasing even when you take into account imports. Post-industrial economies can grow while decreasing energy use. What the author is suggesting is that the developing world should stop growing. I can't agree with that. They need their electricity and washing machines. GDP per unit of energy use (constant 2011 PPP $ per kg of oil equivalent) EU: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.GDP.PUSE.KO.PP.KD?locations=EU https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.GDP.PUSE.KO.PP.KD?lo... US: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.GDP.PUSE.KO.PP.KD?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.GDP.PUSE.KO.PP.KD?lo...
- abyssin 7y agoThey need their electricity and washing machine, but do they need exotic vacations and long commutes in powerful cars? Do they need clothes that are made to be worn for a very short time? Do they need technology that's cheap to the point of it being wasted without an afterthought?
- koheripbal 7y agoThere is an important argument here about how not all GDP is created equal. In both developing and developed worlds - a lot of people just buy wasteful garbage.
- yvdriess 7y agoIndeed, you can run a lot of new fridges in the developing world on the kWh budget of a heated private swimming pool.
- Bostonian 7y agoHow are people in developed countries who have exotic vactions etc. going to tell people in poorer countries that they should do without?
- martythemaniak 7y agoDo you have any family or friends in the developing world? Have you ever tried convincing anyone of this view offline?
- tkyjonathan 7y agoAll countries in the world pursue growth. Forcing them to reduce their energy usage, is a non-starter. Your best bet would be to reduce the energy consumption of things and have more power sources that have no CO2 emissions like hydro-electric and nuclear.
- supernova87a 7y agoKind of amusing that this idea is posted here on Hacker News, the center of people seeking jobs and companies that are the definition of growth. If you didn’t have growth, you’d all be waiting for your promotion at the power plant when someone dies and frees up a position for you.
- abyssin 7y agoWhat makes it amusing is the assumption that people's thoughts should be consistent with their behaviour. Being interested in growth could be a consequence of being interested in material safety. This last concern is perfectly consistent with reducing energy consumption, given climate change is a threat to material safety.
- koheripbal 7y ago... and more generally, players in a game can play by the existing rules, while still advocating a change to the rules.
- gadders 7y agoGrowth is a synonym for progress.
- cf141q5325 7y agoProgress, as in "your cancer progressed to stage 4". Growth can have downsides, be it what is growing or the costs of growth.
- ckastner 7y ago> Kind of amusing that this idea is posted here on Hacker News, the center of people seeking jobs and companies that are the definition of growth. But that's the good kind of growth, you see? I'm being sarcastic, of course. The ironic (and to me: annoying) thing about the really vocal moralists is that the concept of self-reflection seems to be entirely foreign to them. The problem is always with other people, and those other people just need to change, no matter at what cost.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- abyssin 7y agoFrench speakers, don't miss Jancovici's appearances on Thinkerview. Along with Bihouix, his talks are clear and enlightening.
- sbdmmg 7y agoAnd his recent (2019-11-07) interview on France Culture https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/linvite-des-matins/transition-energetique-avons-nous-encore-le-temps https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/linvite-des-matins/tr...
- revax 7y agoAlso his whole course on climate change on youtube. I'd never imagined JMJ linked here.
- cyborgx7 7y agoThey can't. Capitalism can only exist in growth. To give up growth you would need to give up Capitalism. You should do both. Edit: Do people who downvote me disagree that Capitalism necessitates growth to function? Or do they disagree that we should get rid of it?
- atemerev 7y ago“To reduce energy consumption, stop growing your net worth. Stay poor”. It is exactly the same on the micro level.
- jstewartmobile 7y agoA lot of charts and napkin math to reach an obvious conclusion. Better discussion would be, "A) Why do we worship GDP, and B) how do we stop?" My own answers (shared as a starting point rather than a destination) would be: A) - old westerners are really attached to the pensions they promised themselves - marginally-skilled people prefer the illusion of agency offered by employment over being total dependents of the state - people who have never experienced certain products and services attach much more value to them than those who already have--new toy vs old hat. - plutocrats are very interested in keeping the machine well-oiled so that they may enjoy their lives in peace and keep the guillotine at bay. and B) - short of civilizational collapse, I'm not sure that we can.
- paganel 7y agoThe elephant in the room is the continual neglect or the downright (intellectual) hate shown to anyone who had dared mention Malthus in the last 25-30 years (his thoughts had a bit of intellectual resurgence in the 1970s, but that was pretty much it). It seems like in the last 2 or 3 years we have tried and tried to reach his same conclusions in very convoluted ways, ignoring his very existence. The good thing at least is that some of us have at last reached the conclusion that some sort of planet-wide environmental growth limits have been reached, even that wasn't the case until not that long ago, when any mention of a possible limit was met with "we'll technologically surpass that, we always have".
- jstewartmobile 7y agoMalthus is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many "forbidden charts" that people can lose their jobs over these days! Outside of global warming--all we plebes get are Pinker-nuggets on how everything is just fine.
- enugu 7y agoCurious. Care to give some examples?
- erikbye 7y agoWhy do we need public companies?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zanny 7y agoI'd more ask why we need corporate charters sponsored and endorsed by the government. They solely exist to exonerate private persons from responsibility for harm done.
- Dumblydorr 7y agoIt would make far more sense to massively increase energy efficiency across all segments. This will further decouple GDP from emissions.
- new2628 7y agoWhat do you mean "further decouple"? It has never been decoupled in any real sense.
- andy_ppp 7y agoI'm very very unconvinced by this, why can't we have a green jobs revolution and sensible environmental protections and growth! These are not exclusive, just caused by a lack of imagination.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoThey may well be exclusive: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563467.2019.15...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- reacweb 7y agoIn the not so distant future, energy could become abundant thanks to solar energy. On the other hand, physical resources (rare earths but also the molecules contained in oil) are limited. I think it is more important to seek better recycling, reduce waste than to reduce energy consumption.
- BjoernKW 7y agoThe title is misleading in that it's not exactly the conclusion the article arrives at. The article has it quite the other way round: Once energy consumption doesn't grow anymore we either need more efficient means of growth (i.e. less energy consumption per growth unit) or we have to forego growth. It's pre-Industrial-Age Malthus all over again: Barring paradigm shifts that allow for more efficient production planet Earth can only sustain a maximum number of people (roughly 1 billion around Malthus' lifetime). However, Malthus' theory has been disproven time and time again precisely because there have always been such paradigm shifts that allowed us to sustain more people with fewer resources, in others words to increase GDP/NRJ as well as NRJ/POP. If NRJ/POP becomes stagnant either GDP/NRJ will have to grow rapidly or there won't by any GDP growth - and by extension population growth - anymore. I just don't get the seemingly recurring obsession with artificially limiting growth. Yes, thermodynamically the energy available ultimately is limited but that doesn't mean we should start to behave as if we've already reached thermodynamic equilibrium. What supporters of artificially limiting GDP growth often don't acknowledge is that placing such a limit also places a hard limit on population growth or even necessitates a reduction in population. In fiction, one staunch proponent of such an approach is Avengers villain Thanos, who doesn't want to decimate half of the Universe's population for a lark or because he's simply evil but because he's on a mission to free the Universe from growth and overpopulation. I suggest that instead of obsessing with the NRJ/POP term in the equation we focus on GDP/NRJ instead.
- K0SM0S 7y ago> I just don't get the seemingly recurring obsession with artificially limiting growth. At a basic level, it's a cognitive bias regarding economics, the idea of ultimate scarcity: a pie that's forever limited in size and that we all must share (opposite of a view of "abundance"). It however contradicts most of our experience of economics; throughout history champions of "abundance" (who dare to create it) are known as great kings and merchants and soldiers and religious figures. Facts are much less favorable to proponents of scarcity — such mindsets usually lead to economic crisis, under-development, stagnation. The scarcity view here would move that Earth is already saturated, no more room for anything / anyone, and thus we must all reduce our hopes and start sharing what little is there. Obviously, this is scientifically and economically absolutely wrong, the problem is more about distribution — the Earth is the kind of planet that can sustain 1,000 times more population, and that's low-balling it in terms of thermodynamics. It really is more a problem of energetic efficiency and now externalities (space industry to the rescue). On a cultural level, technology and development seem to map on a spectrum of perceptions ranging from "technological utopists" to "luddites" (believers in a technological doom). Both extremes are unlikely so most people/cultures fall in-between, around the center usually. It seems, again from history, from literature, that the best kind of development stems from a culture 'rather slightly positively biased towards technology' (with limits and caveats, what we could call a 'problem-solution driven society'). This was basically the bedrock of innovating Damascus around 1200, of innovating China (key moments throughout the last millennium), and of the scientific revolution in Europe, as well as 20th/21st century tech centers in America and Asia. My problem with anti-growth beliefs and scarcity proponents is they usually stop short of describing the whole picture, what implementing it actually does to populations, what economic slowdown or depression mean in real-felt terms for real-people. In my mind it's just as dangerous as saying "oh let's build a fascist state because that will be better to solve our problems, that's a risk worth taking!" On paper, maaaaaaybe, you might think that, as a thought experiment; in real life it just never worked. Never. That cure has always been worse than the disease. True for fascism, true for economic shrinking (and there's no "minimizing" growth, the minute you stop aiming for growth which isn't easy nor granted by the way, you find yourself in a world of depressed indicators and it becomes uncontrollable). Sometimes I feel like people don't realize that piloting a global economy is more like dog fighting or F1, it's not a walk in the park that we are free to take casually and amend to our liking — "oh, let's take this nice little path here!". No, it's hard, and when we fail too much, people die. It's not a toy to play with, it's a freaking hard tension between survival and progress. Idealism is very dangerous when met with complacency.
- nickik 7y agoThere is so much wrong with this. > from 1880 to 1975, when energy per capita is strongly growing, the world undergoes just one major economic crisis, in 1929. > since 1975, after the rate of growth dramatically decreased, there has been a crisis every 5 to 10 years: 1975, 1980, 1991, 2000, 2008, 2012, and it would be no surprise to have a new one in the coming years. These statements are just totally wrong. There were many more economic crisis between 1880 - 1975 and often those were worse then those since 1975. These statements are just 100% opposite of every history of economics I have ever seen. It seems he gets the causation totally backwards. > and recurring recessions will become something normal in our economic system Recessions are absolutely not linked to energy supply.
- charlysisto 7y agoVery impressed to find Jancovici here. I've been watching his intervention for 6 months and I found he has one of the most rational approach to our coming world. It is bleak but not desperate, although his main message is : technology/economy (based on our consumption of fossil fuel) will not have time to catch up on the coming catastrophies and the inevitable pic oil. We have shaped the world to our convenience now we have to adapt to it and the illusion of infinite resource needs to end or it will end us.
- saint_fiasco 7y agoThat's easy to say from the First World, where they already traded our (global) environment for (local) gains. But what are the people in poor countries supposed to do? Just stay poor forever?
- mrpopo 7y agoThe problem of excessive energy consumption isn't caused by the people in poor countries though.
- saint_fiasco 7y agoIt isn't now, but most countries that used to be poor and then ceased to be, did that by increasing energy consumption. China is a recent example, hopefully India will soon be another.
- vixen99 7y agoAnd who defines excessive? If you happen to be talking about CO2 emissions, the level in the UK (1% of total emissions) has been reduced to that last experienced in 1890. Aside from CO2 what's the problem with energy consumption in itself? There are plenty of people in the UK who have a financial problem in keeping warm in the winter. I see a figure of 4 million from 2016. That's not at all likely to get smaller as renewables push up from providing 22% (inc. non carbon) of the energy demand in the UK at present. https://gridwatch.co.uk/ https://gridwatch.co.uk/
- mrpopo 7y ago> Aside from CO2 what's the problem with energy consumption in itself? I agree with this entirely. Some countries managed to reduce CO2 emissions from their electricity production. However when you look at primary energy consumption, including heating, industry, transportation, no country manages to reach a low-CO2 energy profile. > There are plenty of people in the UK who have a financial problem in keeping warm in the winter. There are plenty of people in the UK who live in old, precarious buildings with very poor insulation. Mandatory paid-for insulation in these buildings would reduce energy consumption, CO2 emissions and increase comfort of living. That's part of the measures pushed forward by Jancovici. > And who defines excessive? That is, indeed the key question of our times.
- CraigJPerry 7y agoWe make more things, but we consume less resources to do it today than ever before. That was the essential point of Andrew McAfee's book and his discussion on Econtalk the other week. https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/ https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/ That appears to be backed up here too; this article reports that the $GDP per kWh is increasing over time. Does this then mean that reducing GDP will have disproportionately LESS of an effect on energy consumption than it will have on value? I.e. we will have to take a much bigger hit on value produced to effect energy consumed.
- hliyan 7y agoI don't think the author is suggesting reduction of GDP, but the reduction of GDP growth...
- lonelappde 7y agoYou are conflating KWhr with KWhr/production. KWhr is increasing because production is increasing faster than efficiency is increasing.
- mikl 7y agoFunny how it’s always private spending that’s being targeted by the people who want us to become poorer to save the environment. And yes, becoming poorer is what giving up on GDP growth means for most of us, since the population is growing. How about we started cutting the fat in the public sector? All that debt-fuelled overspending western governments engage in has a massive climate impact.
- Ma8ee 7y agoYes! I think it is a no-brainer that we immediately cut all defense spending to a small fraction to what it is now. If we do, we can decrease the total public spending and at the same time provide good education and health services to everyone.
- alexnewman 7y agoIt is ludicrous how few economists are willing to take thermodynamics as a limiting theory to the economy when it's so critical in finance and science. Not as crazy as the fact ISLM doesn't capture private debt, but still a huge problem
- remotecool 7y agoUnless births are also somehow limited, limiting GDP growth will eventually cause large amounts of poverty. Nobody wants to admit that the only real way to limit energy consumption is a horrible dystopian future.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoBirth rates have plummeted around the world, the reason we have a growing population is people living longer. The only exception is Africa but even there the highest emitting countries like South Africa have a birth rate barely above replacement levels.
- jariel 7y ago"To reduce energy use, jump off a bridge" This ideological nihilism creeping into the public consciousness is becoming problematic. There are far more reasonable approaches to all of our problems. - As energy gets more expensive, the 'value' (really just price) of products goes up, thereby increasing the GDP. So his logic is not there to start. - GDP growth is not entirely dependent on natural resource extraction, it's actually mostly product and process innovation. - There are immense supply side opportunities available right in front of us in Nuclear - we've not invested heavily in R&D in 30 years due to populist blowback. And guess who was leading the charge against Nuclear? The Greens. Greenpeace 'saved the whales' and 'killed nuclear', it should be noted it was founded by people who knew nothing about Nuclear, and the some of the founding leadership have ironically become 'pro nuclear'. Today France is 85% nuclear, well within striking distance of being carbon-free in terms of electricity production, that will die due to failure to re-invest in the subject. It's contentious, but within reason. We can have our cake and eat it too, we just have to be smart about it.
- bufferoverflow 7y agoThis is silly. You will not convince most people to abandon technological progress.
- cal97g 7y agoNo.
- jryan49 7y agoIf we entirely give up growth the world's standards of living will freeze where it is.
- austincheney 7y agoIn a market economy there is a lot of deliberate inefficiency. Commercial economies are driven, primarily, by transaction quantity, which is most typically exchanging end goods/services for money. Exchange quantity goes up as wages go up and unemployment goes down. Therefore it is in the interest of companies and government that people are employed, as many as possible, even if each person does very little to substantiate the wages earned. This line of thinking falls apart when an economy enters a correction. Likewise, people will require less energy when wages shrink or disappear all together. Energy consumption is one of many indirect parts of the market economy. When people have less money they will travel less and shop less, which decreases the need for fuel and manufacturing. --- Reducing energy consumption is a very bad deliberate goal though. Energy efficiency is a natural goal from the collision of increased demand versus fuel cost. The economic desire to increase energy efficiency does just result in lower prices but also cleaner fuel sources. This has trended true over the last 150 years far before people became aware of environment consequences from rising fuel consumption. Since rising demand, a product of rising consumption rates, drives technology interest in fuel efficiency it is healthier for future economies, and the environment, to encourage greater fuel consumption at consequence to the economy, and environment, at the present. That statement will remain true only so long as up scaling increase of efficiency outpaces up scaling rates of consumption over time. So far the difference in scale has shown true since the start industrialization and there is no indication that the difference in scale will decrease. Another way to think about this is energy equivalence. As energy sources become cheaper, cleaner, and more available over time they allow greater access to energy by people with less purchasing power. A poor third world economy can grow in ways it could not before because less investment is demanded to achieve growth independence. These new and emerging energy sources and distribution methods are not created for humanitarian reasons. They are created from expensive investment to satisfy expensive first world energy demands. The people who benefit most are those with the greatest need in developing economies under high market pressure without the luxury of expensive investments in infrastructure or logistics. An under-developed economy with high market pressure is one where there is huge demand for raw goods/resources but that economy lacks the finances to invest in itself, such as Ghana under the cocoa industry.
- acidburnNSA 7y agoGreat discussion. My favorite definition of energy is that it is a replacement for the labor and time of human beings. Energy gives us freedom to choose how to live our lives because it does stuff for us that we don't want to do. This is why so few of us are farmers. Energy leads very directly to high quality of life. As such, per capita energy usage isn't just linked to GDP, but also to Human Development Index (a composite index to quantify quality of life that includes GDP). Here's what HDI vs. per capital electricity usage looks like: https://i.imgur.com/8otdGxP.jpg https://i.imgur.com/8otdGxP.jpg Bubble size is proportional to population. While correlation does not imply causation, it's quite clear that as quality of life improves, so does energy usage, to a point. The striking thing is the knee. The knee is mentioned in the parent article from a GDP point of view but I think that's only part of the story. On the low-energy side, you can see that a little bit of energy can dramatically improve your quality of life. At the very low end is where people are cooking with indoor stoves and dying to the tune of 3.8 million per year from indoor air pollution. Then you see for places like the USA, we could cut our per capita energy usage in half and probably not be affected from a quality of life standpoint. We're saturated. There is a worldwide moral imperative to increase per capita energy usage of people at the low end of this curve for quality of life reasons. They deserve the ability to choose how they spend their time. Doing so requires about a 2-4x increase in total world energy production. Energy sources that can enable that kind of gain without causing more air pollution deaths and without causing climate change are well-known. Here they are as a function of carbon emissions (equivalent) per kWh generated: https://i.imgur.com/8LQFVMO.png https://i.imgur.com/8LQFVMO.png
- carapace 7y ago> The term “GDP per energy unit” is nothing else than the energy efficiency of the economy: the more efficient the economic system is, the more GDP is produced with the same amount of energy. In other words, when this term increases, it means that for the same amount of kWh (or BTU!), we can have more furniture, glasses, cars, frozen peas, buildings or coffee machines. FWIW, i want to point out that this is an often-overlooked leverage point for improving our situation. Our systems today are grossly inefficient. For example, something like 30%-50% of the electricity we generate (okay, transform) is lost in the grid on the way to the consumer. Much of it is lost after that too.
- temac 7y ago> For example, something like 30%-50% of the electricity we generate (okay, transform) is lost in the grid on the way to the consumer. I don't think it is that much. Plus electricity is not our main energy consumption. And most of our machines have actually a decent efficiency. And/or it is hard to optimize. ICE for example have not even progressed that much in several decades. One or two dozen % maybe? And they will also not improve much in the future. So we can not sustain by merely efficiency improvements. Because we are talking about reducing the energy consumption greatly. Like x2, 3, 4. But of course efficiency is crucially important, and part of what will be required.
- carapace 7y ago> I don't think it is that much. I can't find a good reference, and I think it's gotten better since the 70's, but yes, depending on who you ask and how you do the accounting (and which nation or region you're talking about) losses are from about 10% to as much as 70%. I'm glad you're not against improving efficiency but you should check it out, the scope for improvement just in efficiency is great. I. e., ICEs emit streamers and blobs of unburned fuel (not to mention other still-useful chemicals that instead become pollution). You can install a spark plug in your tail pipe and send 5m flames shooting out the back. People used to do it for kicks, I'm given to understand. There's a whole cottage industry of fringe-tech gadgets to atomize fuel more finely to improve cars' fuel efficiency. Or consider the refrigerator, it opens like a cabinet spilling cold air on the floor every time. We can get 2x improvement in energy consumption just though greater efficiency.
- gpsx 7y agoHow do these ideas of energy relate to things like google search and software in general? I know server farms use a ton of energy and I also am pretty sure the human brain is by far the biggest consumer of energy in the human body. Maybe it is just that different forms of value creation take different amounts of energy. I suppose it takes much more energy to create a car than to add a new software user.
- wazoox 7y agoFor millennia, there was no growth because available energy was strictly limited. GDP of a country was a function of its population, itself strongly related to its agricultural capacity. Read ancient history; you'll see that empires, for ages, relied entirely upon pillaging their neighbours for their own enhancement. The world economy was a strictly zero-sum game basically forever. The political constructions of the past reflected that state of the matter. There was no social mobility because resource scarcity commanded that as a son of a mason, you couldn't be anything but a mason. And of course, 90% of people had to work in agriculture, anyway, just to feed everyone. There was no way out. Of course society was driven through rigid hierarchies. Then at some point some guy discovered America, and a strong, growing influx of riches began pouring into Europe. People discovered absolute, continued growth. Then as this trend continued and England had cut down all its trees, they started using coal, and the movement accelerated itself, and went on until now. As Jancovici remarks, we always went from some energy source to a more powerful, denser, more reliable one: hunting to agriculture, windmills and hand pumps to coal, coal to oil. We never went the other way around, but at some time we'll have to. How to cope? Now let's talk for a minute about GDP. I had quite heated argument with people with economics background. Basically, they say that GDP can grow eternally because GDP is related to value, which has no physical existence. So though GDP generally implies some form of materiality (be it in the form of ore, grain, industrial goods, or services) it's not mandatory because you could for instance build a better car using no more materials than the previous one. However it seems to me that this quickly wanders into philosophical territory: what is value? In economics, it seems related to human satisfaction. As the number of human beings on earth is physically limited (we could be 10 billions, 100 billions, but not an infinity), at some point that implies that individual satisfaction can increase indefinitely. That's a stretch, however you see it. That would mean that two humans exchanging a given set of resources in a closed room could increase indefinitely the satisfaction they get from their relationship, and so any arbitrary small country with as few inhabitants as you want could have an infinitely growing GDP, and reach individual nirvana and beyond. BTW I fail to see the point of free trade at this point... Standard neoclassic economics are full of such logical holes.
- jhallenworld 7y agoI think there is only limited correlation between physical energy and money. Money is directly tied with human work: wages for time and effort. Physical energy can vary widely depending on the specific work, even when the price is the same. The cost of fossil fuel is low because the human work necessary to extract it is very low- it's a problem for the ecology due to no (immediate) human work cost for the Co2 damage. The cost of solar is even lower (which is why it's disruptive)- once you have the solar panel, you don't need any human work.
- bg117 7y agolabor that are still uneducated and do physical work like mining are plenty. so there is not shortage of labor and that keeps wages low. When something is produced on a mass scale, the costs gets lower and that explains why panels are cheap.
- bullen 7y agoI'm mostly commenting here to be able to find this guy again later. But now that I have listened to him he is 100% spot on about most things. The only problems this guys has are: 1) He's biased for nuclear because it feeds him. Nuclear cannot be built without hydrocarbons and toxic nuclear waste is not something you can dig down into the ground without hydrocarbons, even if the radiation is only hazardous for 1000 years, we're not going to have enough energy to handle the waste. 2) He does not understand money enough yet. Fiat money cannot have value without hydrocarbons. GDP is 99% debt because today money is 99% debt and therefore neither has value. Money is something humans have arbitrarily invented without being inspired by nature, it does not exist! 3) He does not understand that some things run and use energy whether you use them or not. For example the routers on the internet because processors are synchronous. The solution is async. processors, but our economic system doesn't encourage energy saving research, at least before it's too late, which is now. That said, if the energy density of uranium is 1000000x that of oil, which in it's turn is 1000x more than batteries; this guy for president?
- ALBERT300 7y agoMy better half was having an unsanctioned romance reason he needed a kid, I have constantly speculated him however there was no confirmation until it arrived at a point where I needed to contact Theredhackergroup@gmail.com for help, I had to know without a doubt and I got what I needed, I saw that every one of my feelings of trepidation are in reality obvious, he was undermining me and I need to leave him