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The Importance of Energy Conservation
Many people are focused on energy conservation. There is even a "World Energy Conservation Day." This is a narrow perception of global problems. The reality is that energy conservation is a small issue, maybe of no importance at all, compared with the source of energy problems, which is human population growth. The population reached seven billion early in 2012, and the widely accepted estimate is for a population of nine billion by 2050. The fundamental problems is this: although more than 12% of the world population is starving, the world population continues to grow at the rate of nearly 2%. But the energy consumption growth rate is much higher than the population growth rate! The current growth rate might seem small at 1.14% but the world population increased by 53 million people in the last six months. The astonishing fact is that, while the world population increased 27% from 1990 to 2008, the energy consumed per person during that period increased by 10%.
This might lead one to think that reducing energy consumption per person would help to solve the problem. But this is a mistake. The reason it is a mistake is related to the distribution of wealth. People pay premium prices for energy, and the USA is the best example which shows that people will continue to increase their energy consumption in spite of increasing energy prices. If the price of energy were lowered by producers, then the consumption would increase at a higher rate. Even if people reduced the energy consumption growth rate to zero the total energy consumption would still continue to grow exponentially because the population grows exponentially. Therefore, population growth is the source of all environmental problems. Energy conservation can only be accomplished by reducing the human population. Finally, it is apparent that human beings are obsessed with technology, and it seems very unlikely that they will sacrifice their gadgets to save energy!
references:
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/nuclear_waste_storage/nuclear_waste_storage.html
http://www.nays.com.pk/world-energy-conservation-day-december-14th/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population