Read this post on Josh’s Substack: Powering Spaceship Earth.
Josh Barro has an excellent essay on international energy and wealth comparisons. A big reason that the US has a higher carbon footprint is that we are much wealthier. As Barro points out:
The average home in the UK or France or Germany is about 1,000 square feet, about half the size of the typical American home. Less than 10% of homes in those European countries are air conditioned. European households have fewer cars, and the cars they do have are smaller — you won’t find a lot of big-ass trucks parked in driveways in Berlin, if the homes have driveways at all.
You can see this in comparisons of total energy use per person. Americans will use as much energy this month as Indians will use this year.
It’s not enough to look only at energy use per person to judge welfare. And it’s worth noting that energy consumption and overall economic production (GDP) may be decoupling. But because greater agency over energy has far-reaching ripples, they are deeply intertwined. It’s clear that prosperity is energy-intensive:
- It takes 7 calories of energy inputs to feed you a single food calorie.
- Cement, fertilizer, steel, and other everyday materials of modernity are energy hogs.
- European countries, including the UK, are driving industry out with high industrial energy costs.
Barro is right to note that looking at European countries for guidance on an environmentally friendly, abundant, industrial future is incorrect. The positive lessons we may learn are much more narrow. For example, the French nuclear fleet might make you greedy for such a nuclear-powered America. The innovation that companies like Octopus have brought to British electricity customers is another case study of what we should take away from the UK.
Draw on Europe’s bright spots, yes. But don’t lose sight of America’s drive to live large.