Synthesis & Analysis

Throughout the past two centuries the world has witnessed incredible economic growth and great improvements in the standard of living of industrialized countries of Europe, North America and Japan. Economic growth has been accompanied, if not caused, by energy technologies, which multiplied production of goods and services, which had previously depended mostly on human and animal labor. During this period world population increased rapidly, especially in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America where poverty and misery were mostly expected by experts to persist indefinitely.

This pessimistic assessment of the destiny of the developing world and the great majority of mankind has been overturned in the past 30-50 years with the miracle of economic development in Asia, especially in the most populous countries of China and India, which has also expanded to several other countries, such as Brazil. As a consequence hundreds of millions of people have escaped from the misery and obscenity of utter poverty to a decent standard of living. Hundreds of millions more people hope to join their ranks in the future.

Practically all this economic growth and improved standards of living have been based on increasing consumption of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) which, however, caused serious pollution and more recently fears of climate change which the great majority of scientists believe will have catastrophic consequences worldwide as early as the year 2050. Nevertheless fossil fuels supply 85-90% of the world's total primary energy consumption and projections to the year 2030 indicate considerable increases but do not foresee much change in their relative contribution.