11:43 am
Of Those to Whom Much is Given, Much is Required
A recent issue of Science magazine alerted me to a very interesting fact.
The Energy Information Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, has projected global energy needs based on three separate scenarios: low, medium, and high rates of growth. Disturbingly, each more or less assumes the need for a nearly 50 percent increase in global energy production by the year 2030 — a mere twenty years from now.
Not surprisingly, the countries most capable of increasing global energy production are the wealthiest and most technologically advanced. They also are the countries that have the least incentive to do so, since they currently hold a competitive advantage in terms of access to existing resources and technologies.
It isn’t obvious to me how one creates incentives that would attract the technical and financial resources necessary to enable the developing world to develop such production capabilities.