Energy: Key to Survival

There's a helpful opinion piece in today's on-line edition of the New York Times.

Andrew Revkin offers some thoughts on the energy gap and climate crisis. Key thoughts: the world is well on its way to having nine billion inhabitants. Some two billion right now essentially have no access to energy. This will worsen as both China and India move toward an automobile-based transportation system.

Most discouraging is that our own basic research into energy is lagging. Take a look at the colored graph Revkin posts in his article. It makes the point.

A few years ago Public Radio's "All Things Considered" contacted a think tank that thinks about such things "what is the maximum population the world can sustain at a European standard of living?" The answer: we already have three times the population that could be sustained at a european standard of living.

Think about that.