14 Comments on "Americans are 5% of World Population, consume 1/4 of its Energy"
Plantagenet on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 11:29 pm
We’re number ONE!
We’re number ONE!
U! S! A!
U! S! A!
HoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooRAY!
andya on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 11:59 pm
The PO title lacks congruence with the article. US is 4.5% of population and consumes 18% of energy. Should have read it first I guess, who cares though, not like anyone will notice.
It’s easy then, anyone wants to harp on about being sustainable, needs to start of by living like an Indian. I imagine it’s a pretty harsh life, especially if you don’t actually live in a tropical paradise like India.
We are basically fuct, which would have been an interesting title for this article. As opposed to hungry planet (the planets not hungry, people are) biting off more then we can chew (we are biting off less then we can chew, and attempting to take bigger bites exponentially).
@Planetagent – only #1 for food and trash. China tops more lists these days.
TIKIMAN on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 1:08 am
And without the USA, 98% of the world would collapse.
rollin on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 1:27 am
This should be displayed as a large poster in every classroom around the world.
rollin on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 1:48 am
I just noticed, I am way behind on my designated alcohol consumption. Who is drinking my booze?
BillT on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 4:26 am
TIKI, you are just indoctrinated with the ‘US exceptionalism” propaganda. The world would do just fine without the US. In fact, most of the world would like it if the US just disappeared. The US promotes war. That is it’s major and only export today. Oh, yes, the fiat dollars is also an export, long with the inflation it produces in other countries.
And, if you include the energy we import every day and ship to Walmart, it would exceed 25%. Maybe by a lot. But the coming years will see that all change as the West slips into third world levels of consumption.
GregT on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 4:51 am
It is very likely, that 98% of the world WILL collapse, thanks mainly to the good ol’ US of A, and the flawed idealism of the ‘American Dream’.
Too bad so many billions of other people, and species, will most likely perish with it.
Rollin,
It wasn’t me, honest…………:)
Arthur on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 9:06 am
There is nothing inherently wrong with 5% using 25% of the world’s resources. The oil industry essentially is a western achievement, westerners are paying good money for oil and gas to Arabs or Africans. Had it not been for westerners, the oil would never have discovered, let alone exploited in the first place.
Tiki is correct that a large part of the ‘third world’ will collapse once the fossil fuel revenues will stop. Arabia for instance will fall back to it’s traditional camel economy. But Tiki’s figure of 98% is ridiculous. As is the case with many Americans, he ignores his European mother civilization that put Tiki on north-American soil in the first place. And Russia, China, Japan and Korea don’t need the US either.
Tiki will be finding out the hard way that the ‘American way of life’ was the result of the spills of war, that is WW2, a war of conquest that put the US in planetary pole position, enabling it to impose a financial system to it’s own advantage (reserve currency, Bretton Woods).
Yesterday China openly humiliated visiting UK pm Cameron, a few weeks after the Chinese announced that the world needs to be ‘de-Americanized’. China is preparing itself for a major geopolitical upgrade at the cost of Anglosphere and it’s agenda of world hegemony.
Let’s see Tikiman how ‘exceptional’ you really are once you have to conduct international trade on a barter basis. Based on population numbers, expect your GDP to contract from 14T to 8T in real terms, to about the size of the GDP of China. And then there is that diverse ‘melting pot’ that easily could boil over, once the buck and the handouts stop. Good luck with that.
BillT on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 2:07 pm
Arthur, greed has come to your life I see. There is everything wrong with using 3-6 times your share of anything.
As for the discovery of oil. Sorry, it was being used thousands of years ago and eventually it would have been ‘discovered’ in many parts of the present world by non-Americans.
“… The earliest known oil wells were drilled in China in 347 AD or earlier. …”
The West is not exceptional except in it’s greed. ( And debt.)
Arthur on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 2:57 pm
Arthur, greed has come to your life I see.
How is that? Where do you think is my life different from yours to the extent that you can throw these qualifications around other than having ‘more beautiful opinions’?
That’s only true in a marginal sense, when oil present at the surface could be used for asphalt. But the real importance of oil came about in combination with the combustion engine, that has only meaning within the context of industrial society, that is western society. Without the context of an industrial society there is no way to produce oil in any meaningful quantities. And industrial society can only be sustained by the societies of the north (US, EU, Russia, China, Japan).
Juan Pueblo on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 8:37 pm
My wife and I are childfree and intend to enjoy this while it lasts. If I had kids I’d be really worried about their future, though.
I’ m going to spend the evening fishing, but first I want to read one more article.
DC on Thu, 5th Dec 2013 12:16 am
The problem I have always had with the “It would take 4.5 Earths” trope, isnt that it is wrong. It is that amerika has been working overtime to ensure that the rest of world doesn’t get to live like amerikans. All amerikas recent actions. Its endless wars, its state-sponsored terrorism, its subversion of the EU and endless attempts to destabilize Russia, China and so on, and all its other quasi-criminal activities are intended to keep 40% of the worlds resources flowing into amerika at below market rates.
And by necessity, out of the hands of the other 96% of humanity. Amerika’s policy was never to raise the standard of living around the world. As a tool for understand amerikan gluttony, I suppose its ok, but I think ‘needing’ 4 earths is actually understating the problem, if anything.
The other problem with the trope is the idea that everyone would want to live like amerikans. Civilized humans find amerikas lifestyle to be quite offensive on many levels. The only people dumb enough to copy it verbatim are Canadians, Australia\NZ and the UK. Interestly enough, those nations are also the most wasteful, and most enthusiastic when it come to burning fossil-fuels.
BillT on Thu, 5th Dec 2013 12:23 am
DC, yes, Americans are greedy as are most Western countries, even Arthur’s Europe. They have had longer to plunder the world than the US, but the US holds title now as the world’s biggest pirate.
Payback will be that the West has farther to fall than the rest…
Arthur on Thu, 5th Dec 2013 8:45 am
DC, yes, Americans are greedy as are most Western countries, even Arthur’s Europe.
Like you and most else here, for years I stood up early in the morning, travel a lot to a client’s office, work the entire day, go home. Lie exhausted on the couch in the evening, watch a movie, go to bed, repeat cycle. At the end of the month write invoice, cash. Pay off the house, bills, go on holiday to some beach for 2 weeks, buy an iPad.
Where is the ‘greed’?
Where in the process did I or similar folks ever jump on an African and robbed him of something? The only interaction between Westerners and ‘third worlders’ is when the former suspect that some useful resource is hidden in the soil of some exotic land, they go there with their impressive machines and technology, create employment for locals in the process and start digging and exploiting. The locals make a buck they would not have made if the Westerners would not have bothered to drop by to ‘plunder’ the resource.
They have had longer to plunder the world than the US
What do you mean, ‘they’? Don’t be
sanctimonious, there is not a iota of difference between your past life style, as described by yourself, including endless car & air miles and most other Americans (or Europeans), except that you spend a lot more time lately reading up on the resource situation, enabled by that fabulous Manila ATM, that miraculously still spits out your retirement money, saved during your long working years (for as long as it last’s, greetings from prof. Lawrence Kotlikoff and his warnings about the $205 trillion structural deficit).
I’m less impressed with moral denouncements of invariably other people than the denunciator. If they work their entire life to fulfill their dream of driving an SUV, well then good luck with it. Except that I know it is not going to last. Maybe it is a matter of temperament, but I don’t like moralizing. We have a huge problem that needs to be solved. The contours of the ‘solution’ are clear (solar economy), so roll up your sleeves and invent, construct, build. Maybe the world falls apart anyway, but it certainly falls apart if we do nothing. And I am not a fan of collapse or doom.
Plantagenet on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 11:29 pm
We’re number ONE!
We’re number ONE!
U! S! A!
U! S! A!
HoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooRAY!
andya on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 11:59 pm
The PO title lacks congruence with the article. US is 4.5% of population and consumes 18% of energy. Should have read it first I guess, who cares though, not like anyone will notice.
It’s easy then, anyone wants to harp on about being sustainable, needs to start of by living like an Indian. I imagine it’s a pretty harsh life, especially if you don’t actually live in a tropical paradise like India.
We are basically fuct, which would have been an interesting title for this article. As opposed to hungry planet (the planets not hungry, people are) biting off more then we can chew (we are biting off less then we can chew, and attempting to take bigger bites exponentially).
@Planetagent – only #1 for food and trash. China tops more lists these days.
TIKIMAN on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 1:08 am
And without the USA, 98% of the world would collapse.
rollin on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 1:27 am
This should be displayed as a large poster in every classroom around the world.
rollin on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 1:48 am
I just noticed, I am way behind on my designated alcohol consumption. Who is drinking my booze?
BillT on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 4:26 am
TIKI, you are just indoctrinated with the ‘US exceptionalism” propaganda. The world would do just fine without the US. In fact, most of the world would like it if the US just disappeared. The US promotes war. That is it’s major and only export today. Oh, yes, the fiat dollars is also an export, long with the inflation it produces in other countries.
And, if you include the energy we import every day and ship to Walmart, it would exceed 25%. Maybe by a lot. But the coming years will see that all change as the West slips into third world levels of consumption.
GregT on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 4:51 am
It is very likely, that 98% of the world WILL collapse, thanks mainly to the good ol’ US of A, and the flawed idealism of the ‘American Dream’.
Too bad so many billions of other people, and species, will most likely perish with it.
Rollin,
It wasn’t me, honest…………:)
Arthur on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 9:06 am
There is nothing inherently wrong with 5% using 25% of the world’s resources. The oil industry essentially is a western achievement, westerners are paying good money for oil and gas to Arabs or Africans. Had it not been for westerners, the oil would never have discovered, let alone exploited in the first place.
Tiki is correct that a large part of the ‘third world’ will collapse once the fossil fuel revenues will stop. Arabia for instance will fall back to it’s traditional camel economy. But Tiki’s figure of 98% is ridiculous. As is the case with many Americans, he ignores his European mother civilization that put Tiki on north-American soil in the first place. And Russia, China, Japan and Korea don’t need the US either.
Tiki will be finding out the hard way that the ‘American way of life’ was the result of the spills of war, that is WW2, a war of conquest that put the US in planetary pole position, enabling it to impose a financial system to it’s own advantage (reserve currency, Bretton Woods).
Yesterday China openly humiliated visiting UK pm Cameron, a few weeks after the Chinese announced that the world needs to be ‘de-Americanized’. China is preparing itself for a major geopolitical upgrade at the cost of Anglosphere and it’s agenda of world hegemony.
Let’s see Tikiman how ‘exceptional’ you really are once you have to conduct international trade on a barter basis. Based on population numbers, expect your GDP to contract from 14T to 8T in real terms, to about the size of the GDP of China. And then there is that diverse ‘melting pot’ that easily could boil over, once the buck and the handouts stop. Good luck with that.
BillT on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 2:07 pm
Arthur, greed has come to your life I see. There is everything wrong with using 3-6 times your share of anything.
As for the discovery of oil. Sorry, it was being used thousands of years ago and eventually it would have been ‘discovered’ in many parts of the present world by non-Americans.
“… The earliest known oil wells were drilled in China in 347 AD or earlier. …”
The West is not exceptional except in it’s greed. ( And debt.)
Arthur on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 2:57 pm
Arthur, greed has come to your life I see.
How is that? Where do you think is my life different from yours to the extent that you can throw these qualifications around other than having ‘more beautiful opinions’?
About ‘oil being used for thousands of years’…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Early_history
That’s only true in a marginal sense, when oil present at the surface could be used for asphalt. But the real importance of oil came about in combination with the combustion engine, that has only meaning within the context of industrial society, that is western society. Without the context of an industrial society there is no way to produce oil in any meaningful quantities. And industrial society can only be sustained by the societies of the north (US, EU, Russia, China, Japan).
Juan Pueblo on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 8:37 pm
My wife and I are childfree and intend to enjoy this while it lasts. If I had kids I’d be really worried about their future, though.
I’ m going to spend the evening fishing, but first I want to read one more article.
DC on Thu, 5th Dec 2013 12:16 am
The problem I have always had with the “It would take 4.5 Earths” trope, isnt that it is wrong. It is that amerika has been working overtime to ensure that the rest of world doesn’t get to live like amerikans. All amerikas recent actions. Its endless wars, its state-sponsored terrorism, its subversion of the EU and endless attempts to destabilize Russia, China and so on, and all its other quasi-criminal activities are intended to keep 40% of the worlds resources flowing into amerika at below market rates.
And by necessity, out of the hands of the other 96% of humanity. Amerika’s policy was never to raise the standard of living around the world. As a tool for understand amerikan gluttony, I suppose its ok, but I think ‘needing’ 4 earths is actually understating the problem, if anything.
The other problem with the trope is the idea that everyone would want to live like amerikans. Civilized humans find amerikas lifestyle to be quite offensive on many levels. The only people dumb enough to copy it verbatim are Canadians, Australia\NZ and the UK. Interestly enough, those nations are also the most wasteful, and most enthusiastic when it come to burning fossil-fuels.
BillT on Thu, 5th Dec 2013 12:23 am
DC, yes, Americans are greedy as are most Western countries, even Arthur’s Europe. They have had longer to plunder the world than the US, but the US holds title now as the world’s biggest pirate.
Payback will be that the West has farther to fall than the rest…
Arthur on Thu, 5th Dec 2013 8:45 am
DC, yes, Americans are greedy as are most Western countries, even Arthur’s Europe.
Like you and most else here, for years I stood up early in the morning, travel a lot to a client’s office, work the entire day, go home. Lie exhausted on the couch in the evening, watch a movie, go to bed, repeat cycle. At the end of the month write invoice, cash. Pay off the house, bills, go on holiday to some beach for 2 weeks, buy an iPad.
Where is the ‘greed’?
Where in the process did I or similar folks ever jump on an African and robbed him of something? The only interaction between Westerners and ‘third worlders’ is when the former suspect that some useful resource is hidden in the soil of some exotic land, they go there with their impressive machines and technology, create employment for locals in the process and start digging and exploiting. The locals make a buck they would not have made if the Westerners would not have bothered to drop by to ‘plunder’ the resource.
They have had longer to plunder the world than the US
What do you mean, ‘they’? Don’t be
sanctimonious, there is not a iota of difference between your past life style, as described by yourself, including endless car & air miles and most other Americans (or Europeans), except that you spend a lot more time lately reading up on the resource situation, enabled by that fabulous Manila ATM, that miraculously still spits out your retirement money, saved during your long working years (for as long as it last’s, greetings from prof. Lawrence Kotlikoff and his warnings about the $205 trillion structural deficit).
I’m less impressed with moral denouncements of invariably other people than the denunciator. If they work their entire life to fulfill their dream of driving an SUV, well then good luck with it. Except that I know it is not going to last. Maybe it is a matter of temperament, but I don’t like moralizing. We have a huge problem that needs to be solved. The contours of the ‘solution’ are clear (solar economy), so roll up your sleeves and invent, construct, build. Maybe the world falls apart anyway, but it certainly falls apart if we do nothing. And I am not a fan of collapse or doom.