The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future (38 page)

79
L. Hayflick, “The Future of Ageing,”
Nature
408 (2000): 267-269.

80
One-half the population is older than the median age, and one-half is younger. All age data from
World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision Population Database
, United Nations Population Division, viewed January 29, 2009.

81
Ibid.

82
In our least-developed countries this is also exacerbated by low life expectancy owing to poor health care, poor nutrition, and violence.

83
For example in Germany, a “rationing” of geriatric health care services is envisioned by 2050. R. Osterkamp, “Bevölkerungsentwicklung in Deutschland bis 2050 Demografische und ökonomische Konsequenzen für die Alterschirurgie,”
Der Chirurg
76, no. 1 (2005).

84
There is also the “youth dependency ratio,” defined as the number of individuals aged zero to fourteen divided by the number of individuals aged fifteen to sixty-four, and the “total dependency ratio,” defined as the sum of the youth dependency ratio and the elderly dependency ratio. The basic assumption behind these numeric ranges is that children under fifteen are in school and adults over sixty-four stop working, so both age groups are dependent, either upon working-age family members or upon state entitlement programs.

85
R. Hutchens, K. L. Papps, “Developments in Phased Retirement,” in R. L. Clark, O. S. Mitchell, eds.,
Reinventing the Development Paradigm
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

86
E. Calvo, K. Haverstick, S. A. Sass, “Gradual Retirement, Sense of Control, and Retirees’ Happiness,”
Research on Aging
31, no. 1 (2009).

87
“Japan’s Pensioners Embark on ‘Grey Crime’ Wave,”
The Independent,
April 13, 2006; “Report: More Elderly Japanese Turn to Petty Crime,” CNN Asia, December 24, 2008.

88
See note 79.

89
P. 22,
Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Intelligence Council, 2008), 99 pp.

90
“The People Crunch,”
The Economist
390, no. 8614 (January 13, 2009).

91
Direct material imports of 3.2 metric tons of fossil fuel, between 8 and 9 tons of renewable raw materials including water, and between 11 and 15 tons of ores and minerals. These estimates were calculated at the country level, but Sweden is 85% urban. V. Palm, K. Jonsson, “Materials Flow Accounting in Sweden Material Use for National Consumption and for Export,”
Journal of Industrial Ecology
7, no. 1, (2003): 81-92.

92
This materials accounting was monitored in 2004 for one full year. S. Niza, L. Rosado, “Methodological Advances in Urban Material Flow Accounting: The Lisbon Case Study,” presented at ConAccount 2008,
Urban Metabolism, Measuring the Ecological City
, Prague, September 11-12, 2008.

93
For unknown reasons this link between urban growth and natural resource supply has been historically ignored in urbanization research. Of particular importance to China’s cities are cement, steel, aluminum, and coal. L. Shen, S. Cheng, A. J. Gunson, H. Wan, “Urbanization, Sustainability and the Utilization of Energy and Mineral Resources in China,”
Cities
22, no. 4 (2005): 287-302.

94
Both factors have contributed heavily to the export economies of newly industrializing countries. Often heavy industries have expanded even faster than consumer manufacturing. Such countries are exporting not only T-shirts and computer components but also steel, machinery, and chemicals.

95
Malthus’ book was, in fact, hugely influential on the young Charles Darwin, helping him to arrive at his theory of Natural Selection some six decades later. The full title of the first edition, which Malthus published anonymously in 1798, was
An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other Writers
(London: printed for J. Johnson, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard). Later versions appeared under his own name. This landmark book is still in print and remains controversial to this day.

96
Ehrlich wrote
The Population Bomb
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1968), discussed in Chapter 1, and a number of other books. The late Julian Simon rebuts Ehrlich in
The Ultimate Resource
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981) and others, arguing that the only limit to human growth is human ingenuity.

97
This expansion of Malthus’ ideas beyond issues of food production began in the 1800s, including by British economist David Ricardo, who discussed mineral deposits, and W. Stanley Jevons, who, in 1865, predicted that limits to coal reserves would ultimately halt the country’s economic growth. Within a century Jevon’s predictions of “peak coal” proved correct.

98
Data sources for the World Reserves table are the
BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2008,
45 pp.,
www.bp.com/statisticalreview
(accessed February 12, 2009) (oil, gas, coal through 2007); and
World Metals & Minerals Review 2005
(London: British Geological Survey and Metal Bulletin, 2005), 312 pp. (through 2003). Natural gas is converted to LNG (1 metric ton liquefied natural gas = 48,700 cubic feet). “Titanium” is TiO
₂
. Platinum group includes platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, osmium, and ruthenium. Assumed human population is 6,830,000,000 (2010 estimate, United Nations).

99
A single cubic kilometer of average crustal rock contains 200,000,000 metric tons of aluminum, 100,000,000 metric tons of iron, 800,000 metric tons of zinc, and 200,000 metric tons of copper, so mineral exhaustion in the molecular sense is meaningless. D. W. Brooks, P. W. Andrews, “Mineral Resources, Economic Growth, and World Population,”
Science
185 (1974): 13-10.

100
For more on this discussion of mineral exhaustion and the perils of a fixed-stock approach to resource assessment, see John E. Tilton,
On Borrowed Time? Assessing the Threat of Mineral Depletion
(Washington, D.C.: RFF Press, 2002), 160 pp.

101
Matthew R. Simmons,
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
(Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 428 pp.

102
A very detailed analysis comes from the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan. The authors use the Goldman Sachs BRICs and G6 economic projections discussed in Chapter 2 to project future demand for twenty-two metals. K. Halada, M. Shimada, K. Ijima, “Forecasting of the Consumption of Metals up to 2050,”
Materials Transactions
49, no. 3 (2008): 402-410.

103
J. B. Legarth, “Sustainable Metal Resource Management—the Need for Industrial Development: Efficiency Improvement Demands on Metal Resource Management to Enable a Sustainable Supply until 2050,”
Journal of Cleaner Production
4, no. 2 (1996): 97-104; see also C. M. Backman, “Global Supply and Demand of Metals in the Future,”
Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A,
71 (2008): 1244-1254.

104
Unconventional oil is much more difficult to extract and includes materials that are often excavated, like oil shales and tar sands, and high-viscosity oils.

105
Based on their analysis of eight hundred oil fields, including all fifty-four “supergiants” containing five billion or more barrels, the International Energy Agency estimates the world average production-weighted decline rate is currently about 6.7% for fields that have passed their production peak, rising to 8.6% decline by 2030.
World Energy Outlook 2008,
OECD/IEA, 578 pp.

106
U.S. Crude Oil Field Production data, U.S. Energy Information Administration,
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus1&f=a
(accessed March 31, 2010).

107
This paragraph drawn from remarks by James Schlesinger, p. 31, summary of the National Academies Summit on America’s Energy Future, Washington, D.C., 2008.

108
This is not to suggest that these areas aren’t or won’t be developed. Turkmenistan, one of the last and most recent countries in the Caspian Sea region to be opened to foreign hydrocarbon development, had no fewer than fifteen petroleum companies seeking to launch activities in 2009, including China National Oil Corporation, Gazprom, Lukoil-ConocoPhillips, Midland Consortium, and Schlumberger, an oil field services company.
Turkmenistan’s Crude Awakening: Oil, Gas and Environment in the South Caspian
(Alexandria, Va.: Crude Accountability, 2009), 87 pp.

109
Drawn from remarks by former U.S. secretaries of energy James Schlesinger and Samuel Bodman to the National Academies Summit on America’s Energy Future, Washington, D.C., 2008.

110
This model projection by the International Energy Agency was revised downward from earlier forecasts to account for the 2008 global economic slowdown. It assumes that oil prices will average $100 per barrel during 2008-2015, then steadily rise to $120 by 2030.
World Energy Outlook 2008
, OECD/IEA (2008), 578 pp.

111
D. Goodstein,
Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), 148 pp.; M. Klare,
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict
(New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2002), 304 pp.; and
Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy,
reprint ed. (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2009), 352 pp.; M. Simmons,
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
(Somerset, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 428 pp.

112
On average, postpeak oil field decline rates are 3.4% for supergiant fields, 6.5% for giant fields, and 10.4% for large fields,
World Energy Outlook 2008
, OECD/IEA (2008), 578 pp.

113
A successful Al Qaeda attack on the Abqaia facilities would have shocked world oil markets, as it handles two-thirds of the Saudi Arabian oil supply. National Academies Summit on America’s Energy Future, Washington, D.C., 2008, p. 9.

114
There are major obstacles to a rapid transition to hydrogen fuel-cell cars, as will be described shortly.

115
Specifically from ozone and particulates. M. Jerrett et al., “Long-Term Ozone Exposure and Mortality,”
New England Journal of Medicine
360 (2009): 1085-1095.

116
Only if the electricity supplying the grid comes from clean, renewable sources does the plug-in automotive fleet become pollution- and carbon-free. But depending on the efficiency of the coal- or gas-fired power plant, and how many miles the electricity travels over high-voltage lines, the net balance of this trade-off still generally comes down on the side of plug-in electrics. Also, it is more feasible to recapture pollution and greenhouse gases from hundreds of power station smokestacks than from millions of car tailpipes, particularly with regard to carbon capture and storage (CCS) schemes.

117
Hydrogen is highly reactive and thus quickly combines with other elements, for example with oxygen to make water (H
₂
O).

118
Nearly all electric utility power is made using some outside source of energy to turn a mechanically rotating turbine, to spin a tightly wound coil of copper wire inside of a fixed magnetic field. This produces a flow of electrons in the copper wire that we call electricity. Windmills, hydroelectric dams, coal-fired power plants, and nuclear power plants all use variants of this basic idea to make electricity, the main difference between them being the source of energy used to spin the turbine. For example, heat generated by burning coal or from a controlled nuclear reaction can be used to boil water, producing pressurized steam, which passes over a turbine. Building a dam across a river creates an artificial waterfall, allowing the weight of water to fall upon turbines, and so on.

119
In hydrolysis, electricity is used to split water molecules into pure hydrogen and oxygen. It is a common way to obtain pure hydrogen.

120
In terms of radiative physics, tropospheric water vapor is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. However, owing to its short residence time in the atmosphere—on average just eleven days—it does not linger long before returning to the Earth’s surface. In contrast, carbon dioxide can persist in the atmosphere for centuries, so its concentration steadily accumulates over time.

121
Energy Technology Perspectives—Scenarios and Strategies to 2050
(OECD/International Energy Agency, 2006), 483 pp.

122
Ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline, so engines running on 100% ethanol require specially resistant plastic and rubber components and hardened valve seats. It also has lower energy content than gasoline, so can yield lower mileage results relative to gasoline. However, owing to its high octane of 115, ethanol can be used as an octane enhancer in gasoline instead of groundwater-polluting MTBE. R. E. Sims et al., “Energy Crops: Current Status and Future Prospects,”
Global Change Biology
12 (2006): 2054-2076.