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113 comments on The Energy Scene in India

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HARM on April 10, 2008 - 4:09am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

It's astonishing that even on a board dedicated to worrying about a coming shortage of oil that the world is mostly blind to, the equation - (oil barrels produced)/(oil users) - only the numerator gets talked about.

Amen to that.

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Kiashu on April 10, 2008 - 6:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Only the numerator is talked about because oil consumption does not match population very much.

Germany has 82 million people, and uses 2.6Mbbl/day.

India has 1,100 million people, and uses 2.5Mbbl/day.

So it has 13 times the population, but uses slightly less oil.

Greenhouse gas emissions are much the same.

Germany produces 838Mt of CO2e. India, 1,0080Mt CO2e. 13 times the people, but only 20% more emissions.

Imagine that there are two houses along a street. One has one European middle-classed guy in it, he puts out 8 rubbish bins every week. The next house has 13 people in it, all south Asian and working class, except for one middle-classed person, the boy they could afford to send to university, they put out 10 rubbish bins.

The rubbish collector tells the street, "there are too many for us to collect, you need to reduce to just 1 rubbish bin each on average. There are 203 houses on this street, I don't care if it's one house with 203 bins or 100 with 2 bins each and 3 between the other 103, or what. Just get the average down."

The European says, "Tell those darkies next door should stop having so many babies. That'll sort it out."

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NC on April 10, 2008 - 9:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

No disputing your numbers but you are confusing quantity with quality.

The goal of humans should not be to determine the maximum population the earth can sustain. The goal should be to maximize the quality of life of each individual. Yes, that will require more energy consumption per person, just as historically the human species invests more energy per offspring than other species via one child at a time, not a litter of 10.

The human species needs to come to grips that we can't sustain an ever expanding population and still retain the essence of what makes us human. The key is to think multi generational into the future, not fixate only on the current generation.

Much better to have fully activated humans at low population for centuries than an enormous population barely surviving that dies off in a few generations. The first case actually allows for more total humans to inhabit the Earth, they just do it over many, many generations rather than all at once just before the resources run out.

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Kiashu on April 10, 2008 - 12:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The goal of humans should not be to determine the maximum population the earth can sustain. The goal should be to maximize the quality of life of each individual.

I agree.

And it turns out that if you reduce the quantity of people, you don't increase the quality of life; life was not better in the rubble of Europe, even if 30 million people had died. Whereas if you increase the quality of life - give relative prosperity and education to women - then they decrease the quantity of people themselves without any compulsion or genocide.

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FiniteQuantity on April 10, 2008 - 3:20pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

And it turns out that if you reduce the quantity of people, you don't increase the quality of life; life was not better in the rubble of Europe, even if 30 million people had died. Whereas if you increase the quality of life - give relative prosperity and education to women - then they decrease the quantity of people themselves without any compulsion or genocide.

You are using the aftermath of World War II to "prove" that less people is not better? Why don't you throw in the plagues of the Middle Ages while you are at it? If you really want to help your hypothesis, compare conditions before and after Noah's flood. Also, throw in Nagasaki and Hiroshima before and after a nuclear bomb was dropped on them - everyone would have to agree conditions were worse after the population declined...

If we only had 200 million people in this country - as we did in 1970 - think about how affordable housing would still be. Think about how much less oil, water, natural gas, coal, aluminum, phosphorus, etc. we would need. Think about how much better traffic would be. Think about how less congested our airports would be. Think about how much worse all of that will be when we make it to 450 million.

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HARM on April 10, 2008 - 6:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Why don't you throw in the plagues of the Middle Ages while you are at it?

Intersting aside: The Black Plague actually *did* drastically improve the quality of life for the serfs who survived it. They found themselves with an abundance of land and material resources and their (now scarce) labor highly in demand. As a result, the following decades were very prosperous for the serf class. It took a couple generations for the landed gentry to steal it all back.

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FiniteQuantity on April 10, 2008 - 3:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Only the numerator is talked about because oil consumption does not match population very much.

Germany has 82 million people, and uses 2.6Mbbl/day.

India has 1,100 million people, and uses 2.5Mbbl/day.

So your hypothesis is that if the populations of those areas were doubled - no significant increase in oil consumption - if the population of those areas were halved - no significant decrease in oil consumption? You feel oil consumption does not change with changes in population?

So it has 13 times the population, but uses slightly less oil.

The rate at which various populations use oil is separate from whether or not they use more or less if their population grows or declines.

Greenhouse gas emissions are much the same.

Germany produces 838Mt of CO2e. India, 1,0080Mt CO2e. 13 times the people, but only 20% more emissions.

It's good to know that India has volunteered to maintain a much smaller amount of C02 emission from now until eternity.

Imagine that there are two houses along a street. One has one European middle-classed guy in it, he puts out 8 rubbish bins every week. The next house has 13 people in it, all south Asian and working class, except for one middle-classed person, the boy they could afford to send to university, they put out 10 rubbish bins.

The rubbish collector tells the street, "there are too many for us to collect, you need to reduce to just 1 rubbish bin each on average. There are 203 houses on this street, I don't care if it's one house with 203 bins or 100 with 2 bins each and 3 between the other 103, or what. Just get the average down."

The European says, "Tell those darkies next door should stop having so many babies. That'll sort it out."

Imagine there are two houses along a street. One has 35 Indians living in it and they are adding 1 more every 6 months. The other has 4 English living in it and they are at a stable household level. The English tell the Indians they should stop adding to their household size. Some American steps in and declares that the English have no right making suggestions to the Indians since they throw out so much more trash. Then he sanctimoniously adds that his household has been increasing in size for decades as well, and save for the lack of space, long lines, and limited resources, it hasn't been a problem.

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Kiashu on April 11, 2008 - 1:02am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

So your hypothesis is that if the populations of those areas were doubled - no significant increase in oil consumption - if the population of those areas were halved - no significant decrease in oil consumption? You feel oil consumption does not change with changes in population?

Not at all. What I'm saying is that plainly lifestyle differ between countries, and these lifestyle differences are a more important factor than total population.

We with the prosperous and wasteful lifestyles prefer to focus on population, for obvious reasons.

The important thing is that, unless you commit genocide, population changes much more slowly than lifestyle. China's economic growth and growth in resource consumption and emissions is 9 or 10% annually; you're never going to get population rising that fast. The average Westerner could halve their energy consumption and impact tomorrow without pain, discomfort, or any expense, in fact saving money; but they find it inconvenient But absent nuclear war, the population is not going to halve tomorrow.

So if you want to deplete resources quickly, or reduce our impact on the Earth, the part to focus on is the part which can change quickly - and that's lifestyle.

Of course, we'd rather they changed their population than we changed our lifestyle.

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