The Global Energy Challenge

In a column this morning on global warming, Robert Samuelson puts the global challenge of energy and economic growth into the proper perspective:

From 2003 to 2050, the world's population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion, a 42 percent increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, carbon dioxide) will be 42 percent higher in 2050. But that's too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. Unless we condemn the world's poor to their present poverty -- and freeze everyone else's living standards -- we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050.

Our CEO, Skip Bowman, has been addressing just this challenge in a number of speeches he's delivered since joining NEI in January 2005. Here's part of what he had to say last November at a symposium sponsored by the World Nuclear Association:

The world is approaching a crossroads -- two possible futures -- in terms of energy supply.

Down one path lies a future I do not care to contemplate: A world in which we fail to supply the energy needed to ensure that most of the world'’s people are fed and sheltered, educated and employed -- —a world in which children yet unborn are condemned to a life of poverty and misery and sickness.

But down the second path lies a brighter world: A world in which energy development is managed in a sustainable way, a world in which we no longer fight wars with guns and bullets, a world instead in which we use science and technology -- —including nuclear energy technology -- —to fight poverty and sickness and environmental devastation.

Whenever anyone says that we can go forward while forgoing development of nuclear energy -- or any single energy source for that matter -- they're forcing us down that first, harrowing path.

Thanks to Blue Crab Boulevard for the pointer. More commentary, here.

UPDATE: Judd at Think Progress isn't happy with Samuelson.

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