Atlantic Energy Effiiciency Workshop...

Carol Ness reports on an earlier talk by David Roland-Holst:

Climate change: David Roland-Holst uses bubbles, big and small, on a chart to demonstrate a fundamental truth.... [E]nergy use against per capita income; the bubbles represent countries by population. Floating high on both axes are the medium-to-small bubbles of the United States and the rest of the industrialized world, rich countries that use a lot of energy. Hanging near the bottom are two giant bubbles, China and India, where both energy use and income are low — and rising. ARE economist David Roland-Holst's chart — which one of his graduate students calls his 'demonic bubble bath' — shows the tight relationship between energy use and prosperity, a key climate change issue. Based on World Bank and International Energy Agency data, the vertical axis plots per capita energy use in terajoules/year; the horizontal is per capita income as measured by the GDP. Bubble sizes represent population.

The relationship between income and energy use is no coincidence, and recognizing that simple fact is an essential part of getting past the current stalemate and finding answers to climate change.... Roland-Holst’s slides illuminated — from an economist’s point of view — China’s stand against limits on greenhouse-gas emission.... “[E]nergy is prosperity,” and economic growth is China’s top priority, asserted Roland-Holst. To maintain full employment, he said, China needs to generate 30 to 40 million new jobs every year. China’s power use will triple in the coming decades, mainly from coal-fired plants. And as China grows wealthier, car ownership will rise exponentially, from just 18 per 1,000 people today (in the U.S. the number is 800). The environment is a less immediate concern, he said. “We have to recognize it, we have to understand it, we need more experience in trying to devise cooperative solutions among very discordant interest groups, multinationally,” Roland-Holst said. “Until we do that, there will be deaf ears in the negotiations”...

And consider that India right now has twice and China four times the energy intensity of GDP of the United States...