Abstract
When energy is scarce or expensive, people can suffer material deprivation and economic hardship. When it is obtained in ways that fail to minimize environmental and political costs, these too can threaten human wellbeing in fundamental and pervasive ways. The energy problem today combines these syndromes: much of the world's population has too little energy to meet basic human needs; the monetary costs of energy are rising nearly everywhere; the environmental impacts of energy supply are growing and already dominant contributors to local, regional, and global environmental problems (including air pollution, water pollution, ocean pollution, and climate change); and the sociopolitical risks of energy supply (above all the danger of conflict over oil and the links between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons) are growing too. This predicament has many causes, but predominant among them are the nearly 20-fold increase in world energy use since 1850 and the cumulative depletion of the most convenient oil and gas deposits that this growth has entailed, resulting in increasing resort to costlier and/or environmentally more disruptive energy sources. The growth of world population in this period was responsible for 52% of the energy growth, while growth in per capita energy use was responsible for 48% (excluding causal connections between population and energy use per capita). In the United States in the same period, population growth accounted for 66% of the 36-fold increase in energy use. In the late 1980s, population growth was still accounting for a third of energy growth both in the United States and worldwide. Coping with global energy problems will require greatly increased investment in improving the efficiency of energy enduse and in reducing the environmental impacts of contemporary energy technologies, and it will require financing a transition over the next several decades to a set of more sustainable (but probably also more expensive) energy sources. The difficulty of implementing these measures will be greatest by far in the developing countries, not least because of their high rates of population growth and the attendant extra pressures on economic and managerial resources. If efficiency improvements permit delivering the high standard of living to which the world aspires based on a per capita rate of energy use as low as 3 kilowatts—about a quarter of the current U.S. figure—then a world population stabilized at 10 billion people would be using energy at a rate of 30 terawatts, and a population of 14 billion would imply 42 terawatts (compare 13.2 terawatts in 1990). Delivering even the lower figure at tolerable monetary and environmental costs will be difficult; each additional billion people added to the world population will compound these difficulties and increase energy's costs, making everyone poorer.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bleviss, D. L. (1988).The new oil crisis and fuel economy technologies: Preparing the light transportation industry for the 1990s. Westport, CT: Quorum.
British Petroleum (1990).BP Statistical Review of World Energy. London: Author.
Brower, M. (1990).Cool energy: The renewable solution to global warming. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists.
Brobst, D. A., & Pratt, W. P. [Eds.]. (1973).U.S. mineral resources. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Brown, H. (1954).The Challenge of Man's Future. New York: Viking.
Brown, L. R., Durning, A., Flavin, C., French, H., Jacobson, J., Lowe, M., Postel, S., Renner, M., Starke, L., & Young, J. (1990).State of the world 1990. New York: Norton.
Bureau of the Census. (1972).Historical statistics of the United States, colonial times to 1970. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Bureau of the Census (1989).Statistical Abstract of the United States 1989. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Carlsmith, R. S., Chandler, W. U., McMahon, J. E., & Santini, D. J. (1990).Energy efficiency: how far can we go? (Report ORNL/TM-11441). Oak Ridge, TN: Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Central Intelligence Agency. (1989).The World Factbook 1989. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Commoner, B. (1971).The closing circle. New York: Knopf.
Commoner, B. (1990).Making peace with the planet. New York: Pantheon.
Cook, E. (1976).Man, energy, society. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Darmstadter, J. (1968).Energy in the world economy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Deese, D. A., & Nye, J. S. (1981).Energy and security. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
Ehrlich, P. R. (1986).The Machinery of Nature. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Ehrlich, P. R., & Ehrlich, A. H. (1990).The population explosion. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Ehrlich, P. R., & Holdren, J. P. (1971). Impact of population growth.Science, 171 1212–1217.
Ehrlich, P. R., & Holdren, J. P. (1972. May). One-dimensional ecology.Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. pp. 16–27.
Ehrlich, P. R., Ehrlich, A. H., & Holdren, J. P. (1977).Ecoscience: population, resources, environment. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Energy Information Administration. (1989).International Energy Annual 1988. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Energy Information Administration. (1990).Monthly Energy Review (January). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Farinelli, U., & Valant, P. (1990). Energy as a source of potential conflicts.International Journal of Global Energy Issues, 2 31–40.
Gleick, P. H. (1989). The implications of global climatic changes for international security.Climatic Change, 15 309–325.
Gleick, P. H. (1990). Climate change and international politics.Ambio 18, 333–339.
Goldemberg, J., Johansson, T. B., Reddy, A. K. N., & Williams, R. H. (1987).Energy for a Sustainable World. Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute.
Graedel, T. E., & Crutzen, P. J. (1989. September). The changing atmosphere.Scientific American, pp. 58–68.
Haefele, W. (1990. September). Energy from nuclear power.Scientific American, pp 136–144.
Haefele, W. (1981).Energy in a Finite World: A Global Systems Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
Hall, C. A. S., Cleveland, C. J., & Kaufmann, R. (1986).Energy and resource quality: The ecology of the economic process. New York: Wiley.
Hall, D. O., Barnard, G. W., & Moss, P. A. (1982).Biomass for energy in developing countries. Oxford: Pergamon.
Harte, J. (1985).Consider a spherical cow: a course in environmental problem solving. Los Altos, CA: Kaufmann.
Hirst, E. (1990). Why the federal government should help improve US energy efficiency.Ambio 19, 96–98.
Hirst, E., Clinton, J., Geller, H., & Kroner, W. (1986).Energy efficiency in buildings: Progress and promise. Washington, DC: American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.
Holdren, J. P. (1986). Energy and the human predicament. In K. R. Smith, F. Fesharaki, & J. P. Holdren [Eds.].Earth and the human future: essays in honor of Harrison Brown (pp. 124–160). Boulder, CO: Westview.
Holdren, J. P. (1987). Global environmental issues related to energy supply.Energy, 12 975–992.
Holdren, J. P. (1989). Civilian nuclear technologies and nuclear weapons proliferation. In C. Schaerf, B. Holden-Reid, & D. Carlton [Eds.].New technologies and the arms race (pp 161–198). London: MacMillan.
Holdren, J. P. (1990. September). Energy in transition.Scientific American, pp. 156–163.
Holdren, J. P., & Ehrlich, P. R. (1974). Human population and the global environment.American Scientist, 62 282–292.
Holdren, J. P., Anderson, K. B., Deibler, P. M., Gleick. P. H., Mintzer, I. M., & Morris, G. P. (1983). In C. C. Travis & E. L. Etnier [Eds.].Health risks of energy technologies (pp. 141–208). Boulder, CO: Westview.
Holdren, J. P., Berwald, D., Budnitz, R., Crocker, J., Delene, J. G., Endicott, R., Kazimi, M., Krakowski, R., Logan, G., & Schultz, K. (1988). Exploring the competitive potential of magnetic fusion energy: The interaction of economics with safety and environmental characteristics.Fusion Technology, 13 7–56.
Hubbert, M. K. (1969). Energy resources. In National Research Council,Resources and Man (pp. 157–241). San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Hughart, D. (1979).Prospects for traditional and non-conventional energy sources in developing countries. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (1990).Policymakers summary of the scientific assessment of climate change. Geneva: World Meteorological Organization.
International Energy Agency (1989).Electricity conservation. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Johansson, T. B., Bodlund, B., & Williams, R. H. [Eds.]. (1989).Electricity: Efficient end-use and new generation technologies and their planning implications. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press.
Lashof, D. A., & Tirpak, D. A. [Eds.]. (1989).Policy options for stabilizing global climate. Washington, DC: Environmental Protection Agency.
Lipschutz, R. D., & Holdren, J. P. (1990). Crossing borders: Resource flows, the global environment, and international security.Bulletin of Peace Proposals, 21 121–133.
Lovins, A., & Sardinsky, R. (1988).The state of the art: lighting. (Competitek report). Old Snowmass, CO: Rocky Mountain Institute.
Miller, A. S., Mintzer, I. M., & Hoaglund, S. H. (1986).Growing power: Bioenergy for development and industry. (WRI Study No. 5). Washington, DC: World Resources Institute.
Myers, Norman. [Ed.]. (1984).Gaia: An atlas of planetary management. London: Gaia Books.
National Research Council, Committee on Nuclear and Alternative Energy Systems. (1990).Energy in transition 1985–2010. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Ogden, J. M., & Williams, R. H. (1989).Solar hydrogen: moving beyond fossil fuels. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute.
Okken, P., Swart, R., & Zwerver, S. [Eds.] (1989).Climate and energy: The feasibility of controlling CO 2 emissions. Dorchtecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Office of Technology Assessment. (1983).Industrial energy use. (Report OTA-E-198). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Population Reference Bureau. (1990).1990 World Population Data Sheet. New York: Author.
Rosenfeld, A. H., & Hafemeister, D. (1988, April). Energy-efficient buildings.Scientific American, pp. 78–85.
Ross, M. (1989). Energy and transportation in the United States.Annual Review of Energy, 14 131–171.
Schipper, L., & Ketoff, A. (1989). Energy efficiency: The perils of a plateau.Energy Policy, 17 538–542.
Schipper, L., Howarth, R., & Geller, H. (in press). United States energy use between 1983 and 1987: The impacts of greater efficiency.Annual Review of Energy.
Schneider, S. H. (1989).Global warming. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
Schneider, S. H., & Londer, R. (1986).The coevolution of climate and life. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
Smith, K. R. (1987).Biofuels, air pollution, and health. New York: Plenum.
Solar Energy Research Institute. (1981).A new prosperity: Building a sustainable energy future. Andover, MA: Brick House.
Solar Energy Research Institute. (1989).The potential of renewable energy. [Prepared jointly with the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Sandia National Laboratories]. Golden, CO: Author.
Study of Critical Environmental Problems (1970).Man's impact on the global environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sweet, W. (1984).The nuclear age: power, proliferation, and the arms race. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly.
UN Environment Programme (1987).Environmental data report. Oxford: Blackwell.
Williams, R. H. (1990).Hydrogen from coal with gas and oil well sequestering of the recovered CO 2. Unpublished manuscript. Princeton University, Center for Energy and Environmental Studies.
Williams, R. H., Larson, E. D., & Ross, M. (1987). Materials, affluence, and industrial energy use.Annual Review of Energy, 12 99–144.
World Bank. (1983).The energy transition in developing countries. Washington, DC: Author.
World Bank. (1990).World Development Report 1989. New York: Oxford University Press.
World Energy Conference. (1983).Energy 2000–2020: World prospects and regional stresses. London: Graham and Trotman.
World Resources Institute (1990).World resources 1990–91: A guide to the global environment. [In collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Development Programme]. New York: Oxford University Press.
Yergin, D. (1988). Energy security in the 1990s.Foreign Affairs, 67(1 110–132.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Holdren, J.P. Population and the energy problem. Popul Environ 12, 231–255 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01357916
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01357916