BY ROBERT ZUBRIN

The world currently faces two energy crises: We have too little energy, and we have too much.

We have too little energy because the main problem that the bulk of humanity faces today, every day, is poverty. To provide a decent standard of living for all, humanity is going to have to generate and put to use many times more energy than it does today.

We have too much energy, because at the rate we are currently using it, we are measurably changing the Earth’s climate and chemistry, and if we keep increasing our use—which we must and will—we could change it in ways that prove catastrophic on a global scale.

Fossil Fuel and its Effects

Many have chosen to focus on the second problem, proposing to reduce the use of fossil fuels by taxing it, thereby making basic necessities less affordable. I believe that such approaches to the problem are unethical, and while people may debate their ethics, there is no debating the fact that they have not worked.

Indeed, they have failed spectacularly. Between 1990, when world leaders first mobilized to try to suppress CO2emissions, to today, total global annual carbon use doubled from 5 billion tons to 10 billion tons. This followed a pattern of doubling our carbon use every thirty years for more than a century. In 1900, humanity burned 0.6 billion tons of carbon per year. This doubled to 1.2 billion in 1930, doubling again to 2.5 billion tons in 1960, then yet again to 5 billion tons in 1990, to 10 billion tons now.1

The reason for this increase is simple. Energy is fundamental to the production and delivery of all goods and services. If you have access to energy, and the things made by energy, you are rich. If not, you are poor. People don’t like being poor, and they will do what it takes to remedy that condition. Despite the Depression, two world wars, and all sorts of other natural and human-caused catastrophes over the recent past, people have, on the whole, been very successful at finding such remedies. In 1930, the average global GDP per capita, in today’s money, was $1500/year. Today it is about $12,000/year, an increase closely mirroring the climb in energy consumption.

This rise in energy use has enabled a miraculous uplifting of the human condition, dramatically increasing health, life expectancy, personal safety, literacy, mobility, liberty, and every other positive metric of human existence nearly everywhere. But $12,000/year is still too low. In the U.S., we average $60,000/year, and there is still plenty of poverty here. To raise the whole world to current American standards will require multiplying global energy use at least fivefold—and probably more like tenfold once population growth is taken into account.

There is every reason to expect human energy production and use to double again by 2050, and yet again by 2080. Every person of goodwill should earnestly hope for such an outcome because it implies a radical and necessary improvement in the quality of life for billions of people. That, in fact, is why it is going to happen, whether ivory tower theorists wish it or not. Humanity is not going to settle for less.

Human energy production today is overwhelmingly based on fossil fuels. Were it to remain so, while we double and redouble our energy use, the effects on the planet would become serious.

It is unfortunate that the debate over global warming has been politicized to the point where opposing partisans have chosen to either deny it or grossly exaggerate it. Neither approach is helpful. So, I’m not going to indulge in the customary hysteria and tell you that we have only 18 months or 18 years to decarbonize the economy or face doom by fires and floods, catastrophic rainfalls and droughts, evaporating poles, or glaciers advancing rapidly together with unstoppable armies of ravenous wolves, or similar biblical plagues held by some to be responsible for the Great Silence of the millions of extraterrestrial civilizations driven to their extinction by their inability to pass successfully through the Great Filter of global warming.2

Nevertheless, global warming is certainly real. According to solid measurements, average temperatures have increased by about one degree centigrade since 1870. That, admittedly, does not sound like a big deal.

It is the equivalent to the warming that a New Yorker (NYC, that is) would experience if he or she moved to central New Jersey. So there is no climate catastrophe now. However, the climatic effects of continued CO2emissions at a level an order of magnitude higher than today would be an entirely different matter.

Moreover, while climate change will still take some time before it becomes an acute matter (in reality, as opposed to agitation), other effects of the emissions of fossil power plants are already quite serious. First among these is air pollution—not CO2—but particulates, carbon monoxide, nitric oxides, and sulfur dioxide. Worldwide, these emissions are currently killing people at a rate of over 8 million per year,3 and causing many billions of dollars of increased health care costs.