Energy Inequality

This graph also takes its source data from the BP Annual Review as well as data from the IEA's World Energy Outlook. In this case the energy is broken down according to the consumption of a number of states/regions as well as the fuels used. Note that this colour coding of the fuels is consistent throughout the presentation – red is petroleum, blue is natural gas, black is coal, pink/magenta is primary (heat) nuclear energy and light blue/cyan is large hydro-power (that's the huge dams on the world's largest rivers).

Rather than express the energy used in a particular country, the values have been divided by the population of the country in order to give a more equitable measure. The graph shows the energy used by the average individual in these states on the assumption that everyone on the planet has a right to share the Earth's 'common' resources (the air, geological resources, plants and animals) equally.

This graph clearly shows how, as outlined in section 1, the consumption of the world's resources is skewed towards the world's richest nations. The current debate about "who goes first" to make large cuts in energy and resource use is hung-up on this very point. To be successful the richest nations of the world must significantly cut their use of resources, but states like the USA point to the consumption of nation states, rather than individuals, in order to argue that the largest developing economies (China, India, Brazil, and Russia) must also make substantial cuts. In reality, this prevarication is meaningless if we assume that all people are equal – which begs the question as to how much weight the rich "democracies" of the globe put on the principle of global emancipation!

Britain uses about 80% of the average for all the rich (OECD) countries, although that figure is dominated by the consumption levels in the USA, Canada, Japan and Germany which are higher per person than in Britain. What complicates matters is that Britain has moved a large proportion of its manufacturing industry 'off-shore', and with it the energy consumed (and the carbon emitted) to make the goods we use. This could add, based on different measures, another 20% to 40% to the level of Britain's energy use – but right now we just blame the Indians and Chinese for using this energy to make the goods we demand.

Background Information

BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008 – http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId
=6929&contentId=7044622

IEA World Energy Outlook – http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/

Wikipedia, Tragedy of the commons – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Tragedy_of_the_commons

Energy in the UK, Free Range Energy Beyond Oil Project Sheet E.3, Free Range Network 2008 – http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/ebo/e03/

Energy and Climate, Free Range Energy Beyond Oil Project Sheet E.2, Free Range Network 2008 – http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/ebo/e02/

The Annotated 2-hour EBO Presentation Slides (3.7 megabyte!!) – a PDF file containing explanatory text and web links relating to each of the slides in the 2-hour Energy Beyond Oil presentation. http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/ebo/
ebo_annotated-2008.pdf

Large format EBO presentation slides (1.7 megabyte!!) – a PDF file with a larger copy of the slide images in the presentation. http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/ebo/
ebo_presentation-2008.pdf