Figure 1 shows a simple relationship. If a country has a low capacity for energy production, it will ultimately have a low standard of living. To improve the lives of everyone, a country needs to increase the production and access of low cost, reliable energy.
— Brant
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Thanks for posting the chart, I like it but I think the conclusion is a bit "weird".
That you need energy to increase the standard of living is a no-brainer. But why is the electricity consumption per capita of the US almost twice as large as that of Japan (it's a log scale on the y axis)? The standard of living certainly won't account for that. If they'd made the y axis linear the whole absurdity of it would become terribly obvious, and it would be the best argument for saving energy in developed countries and investing in energy infrastructure of the poor ones.
I think with large scale use of advanced nuclear, especially investment in and development of nuclear fusion for instance (quite a long time away from commercial use), the appearance of a zero sum game would disappear and there'd be no need to save energy in one area to increase it in others.
For what it's worth -- the conclusion was designed to be extremely simple as I had less than 3 minutes to put the post together.
I didn't mean to criticise your conclusion specifically but the general reaction that it generated on Twitter.
And you're absolutely right about nuclear fusion. It's puzzling that we spend billions and trillions of dollars on digging stuff out of the ground instead of investing it into an energy source that's virtually limitless.
I couldn't agree more -- a similar push to the effort to create COVID vaccines, but focused on fusion would probably have it commercial viable in a matter of a few years, unlocking near limitless energy.
Kind of shows where the priorities of our leaders really are.
Thanks for posting the chart, I like it but I think the conclusion is a bit "weird".
That you need energy to increase the standard of living is a no-brainer. But why is the electricity consumption per capita of the US almost twice as large as that of Japan (it's a log scale on the y axis)? The standard of living certainly won't account for that. If they'd made the y axis linear the whole absurdity of it would become terribly obvious, and it would be the best argument for saving energy in developed countries and investing in energy infrastructure of the poor ones.
I think with large scale use of advanced nuclear, especially investment in and development of nuclear fusion for instance (quite a long time away from commercial use), the appearance of a zero sum game would disappear and there'd be no need to save energy in one area to increase it in others.
For what it's worth -- the conclusion was designed to be extremely simple as I had less than 3 minutes to put the post together.
I didn't mean to criticise your conclusion specifically but the general reaction that it generated on Twitter.
And you're absolutely right about nuclear fusion. It's puzzling that we spend billions and trillions of dollars on digging stuff out of the ground instead of investing it into an energy source that's virtually limitless.
I couldn't agree more -- a similar push to the effort to create COVID vaccines, but focused on fusion would probably have it commercial viable in a matter of a few years, unlocking near limitless energy.
Kind of shows where the priorities of our leaders really are.