I've noticed this discussion pops up occassionally on TOD, but I haven't seen a long thread about it...I recently discovered Richard Smalley, who wrote a very interesting paper in which he discusses what the GLOBAL energy needs of the world would be if all humans lived at the standard of living that N. Americans/Europeans do:

http://cohesion.rice.edu/NaturalSciences/Smalley/emplibrary/120204%20MRS%20Boston.pdf

Of course, the amounts of energy the world would need for all humans to live like comfortable westerners are staggering. Yet, it seems most PO discussions focus on what WE in the west are going to do in the face of declining resources. In a sense, the world's PO predicament was exasperated by the west's voracious consumer appetite; and now most of our worry seems to be how WE are going to maintain some semblance to this standard of living - the rest of the world be damned! (Of course, nobody says rest of the world be damned - but one can argue that the lack of attention to how poor nations will fare creates this attitude anyway.) It seems grossly unfair, doesn't it? Of course I don't have any solutions here, although Smalley thinks it's possible to rectify the situation.

I find myself very preoccupied with the growing have/have-not division in the world. So what are your thoughts on this gross energy inequality? Sometimes I think that the humans will never get out of this feudal-type relationship with one other - that poor will always be around, to feed the needs of the rich...

(FYI - I discovered Smalley in one of Matt Simmons's presentations.)