THE THIRD WORLD
An analysis of the position of the third world shows the dangers to them. Currently the population of the third world is growing at about 2% per annum, and industrialisation is getting under way. History teaches us that the early stages of economic development are highly energy intensive. A study of the acceleration of the energy demand of the United States at the turn of the century is indicative of this. More recently the enormous acceleration of energy demand in the Pacific Basin countries illustrates that one new area of industrialisation alone can transform the world's energy demand.
over the next 30 years India expanded industrially, to the situation that the new developing Pacific Basin countries have already
reached, there would be an increase of 11% in the world demand for
energy. Or an increase equal to the whole of OPEC's present oil production. If China and Africa moved to similar positions the
energy demand purely resulting from their industrialisations would
be an astronomic factor in world energy demand.
Many of these countries have little in the way of conventional fossil fuels, and they must import.
Declining fossil fuel resources combined with increasing world
demand will create a price pressure upon gas, coal and oil prices which would make the energy requirements of the third world quite
beyond their means. The real challenge of the next decades is to
see whether we can develop energy resources which will enable the
third world to develop their economies and so eradicate poverty.
will not be done without cheap energy.
I f
It
International agencies and energy forecasters have assumed that by
about 2030 nuclear power would need to supply at least 15 to 20% of
the world's energy needs. If it were decided this would not happen and we needed to replace nuclear power with other forms of power
which are available, to provide the required increase in oil supplies we would need to discover new oil reserves of the scale of
the North Sea every two years.
Or if we decided to turn to coal we
would need to discover a new coal field of the scale of the vast
Discoveries on this scale
Columbian coal fields every six months.
could not happen.
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