> USA levels of consumption in the economic sense or just energy consumption?
Basically this is a false distinction. ( I did say first world originally not the US, which does seem to be somewhat profligate as a result of lower prices in the US, others tend to have high taxes on oil and coal).
Copied from my comment above:
> Some people try to argue that we can have high economic growth without more energy but cross sectionally and temporally this would be very novel. Living standards and energy use are highly correlated. The one apparent exception, first world countries recently is just a result of outsourcing manufacturing to LDCs. When you take into account the energy embedded in imports, the richer countries are continuing to grow energy use rapidly (and effective CO2 emissions as well).
The standards of life abruptly stop correlating with economic growth after a certain point. The whole first world has been far past that point from a while by now, economic growth only correlates with standard of life when it suddenly tanks hard in an economic crisis. Also Europe has the same living standards of the USA and a pro-capita carbon footprint that’s about 1⁄4. Part of it might be due to Europe moving a lot of polluting industries outside it’s borders, but it doesn’t seem even close to explain all the gap.
> USA levels of consumption in the economic sense or just energy consumption?
Basically this is a false distinction. ( I did say first world originally not the US, which does seem to be somewhat profligate as a result of lower prices in the US, others tend to have high taxes on oil and coal).
Copied from my comment above:
> Some people try to argue that we can have high economic growth without more energy but cross sectionally and temporally this would be very novel. Living standards and energy use are highly correlated. The one apparent exception, first world countries recently is just a result of outsourcing manufacturing to LDCs. When you take into account the energy embedded in imports, the richer countries are continuing to grow energy use rapidly (and effective CO2 emissions as well).
The standards of life abruptly stop correlating with economic growth after a certain point. The whole first world has been far past that point from a while by now, economic growth only correlates with standard of life when it suddenly tanks hard in an economic crisis. Also Europe has the same living standards of the USA and a pro-capita carbon footprint that’s about 1⁄4. Part of it might be due to Europe moving a lot of polluting industries outside it’s borders, but it doesn’t seem even close to explain all the gap.