Will Culturally Inappropriate Prosperity Doom Us All?

[james_davis_nicoll]

As pointed out in email

Spun right, this could a population bomb for the 21st century:

The basic story is: growth, but not evenly distributed growth. Developed countries are expected to plateau in population and energy demand, but developing countries are expected to grow like gangbusters:
[snip]
What kind of energy will satisfy all that new demand? While renewables and natural gas are expected to grow faster than ever before, and oil and coal are expected to substantially slow their growth, there will nonetheless be more oil and coal burned in 2030 than in 2011:

[Poll #1754119]

Comments

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

The last time this came up in James's journal, people pointed out that you still needed wires on the ground to feed the cell towers; cell towers are excellent for the last mile, but you still need ground-based infrastructure. (Satphones are both $$$ and power-hungry.)

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

Obviously there's been some savings, or those countries would have run wires the whole way.

For energy production, they can use results of the research we've done, without having to build our early versions.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Note: "excellent for the last mile". There's definitely been a substantial savings, but physical wires haven't been eliminated yet.

[http://users.livejournal.com/krin_o_o_/]

But in many places the investment of that infrastructure is easier to protect. Random copper theft of last mile vs buried in sealed concrete to towers and all that.