#34,
So on the one hand, you want unlimited energy for all, and if you get that, then somehow if this happens, then our global population drops from 7 going on 9 billion folks to....3 billion? I know that in industrialized nations, growth rates have dropped to below replacement values, but do you have any idea how much consumption would take place if everyone on the planet raised their energy consumption to US standards in order to get there? You're talking about a serious bottleneck, John, and here's why:
What we do with our energy in the US is "stuff." You know, build houses, buy and operate cars, have jobs, raise and feed families, and the rest, right? On a very, very coarse level, all of that "stuff" leads to more than consumption of energy, it leads to consumption of materials, right? You know, the stuff that houses, cars, food et. al are made of. The US Geological Survey thinks in this very coarse way, and if you go to this site:
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/raw_material_consumption_global_trends_and_us_shareyou'll see that the US consumes around 3 billion tons of stuff in a year, as compared to 10.25 billion for the rest of the planet. There are 7 billion consuming folks wandering around the planet, but only around 320 million of them live in the US, or about 4.5% of the total number. Now the thing is that if everyone was consuming the same amount of energy we consume per capita, chances are that they'll be doing "stuff" with that energy. And if that "stuff" consumed the same amount of raw material at the same rate as we do per Joule consumed, then we're talking about 7 billion folks consuming 66 billion tons of stuff per year, if I used the calculator on my phone correctly.
How can this be possible? Clearly it cannot be, as we are already bumping against serious shortages of a wide variety of raw and processed materials. Increase that amount almost 7 times, and you've basically churned up the entire earth's crust in short order, let alone done irreparable damage to the living biosphere. Hence the nature of the shrinking bottleneck.
Now the planet would be able to recycle much of our consumption in its geological and biological elemental cycling and sinks, but to funnel that much of the earth/biosphere through our activities is clearly untenable. We clearly need to learn how to live more sustainably within the existing biogeochemical cycling of our planet, or face major disruptions of those cycles, which will threaten our own sustainability as a species.
