Energy and GDP in 2050: To Have or Have Not

[GliderGuider]

I've just posted a new analysis of the world's national and per-capita GDP in 2050. This time I use changes in energy supplies, national economic energy intensities and national populations to look at the changing world income picture in 2050. That picture grows ever darker for those in the underdeveloped world.

Energy Intensity and GDP in 2050: To Have or Have Not

Conclusion

The conclusion is straightforward. By 2050 well over half the world's population will be desperately, abjectly poor, and even the rich will find themselves living in constrained circumstances. Just at the time when foreign aid is most desperately needed, the nations that will be called on to supply it will find themselves less able to deliver. The implications for life and death in the poverty-stricken regions of the world are dire indeed.

Current statistics from The World Bank indicate that over a billion people today live on a single dollar a day - the total number of people I identified above as comprising the poor of 2006. The growth in that population, coupled with the drop in per capita GDP, implies that several times times that number will be desperately poor in 2050 - perhaps as many as 4 billion. According to the same source, about half the world's population today lives on less than $2 a day. If the scenario developed in this article is close to being true, the coming demographic and economic earthquake could leave over 6 billion people - the size of today's entire global population - trying to survive on such a pittance. The social consequences of such a shift are literally unimaginable.