Growth in energy consumption correlates to (or drives?) population growth...
Here's another fascinating visual tidbit. Energy and population growth rates show a strong visual correlation (the mathematical correlation is 0.84).
I think the growth in energy use is a fundamental driver of population growth, because energy is the primary the main expansionary influence on civilization. The implication is that if we want to reduce population growth, we need a sharp drop in energy supplies first. And if we were to hold energy consumption steady (zero energy growth), population growth would likewise fall to zero.
The other implication is that while energy per capita may be a measure of prosperity, the overall need for energy is based on the size of the entire civilization (which is composed of cumulative capital investment plus population) when viewed from a thermodynamic perspective.
Tim Garrett of the University of Utah has taken this approach, and has found a constant relationship between energy consumption and the cumulative size of civilization, of 9.7 milliwatts per dollar (in 1990 constant dollars) of accumulated wealth. I've been digging into it, and he seems to be right...
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1010.0428v3
The implication seems to be that we can't reduce our energy use without the whole enterprise beginning to fall apart - capital investments decay, and people die. The ongoing energy requirement inherent in our built-up civilization, along with the recent 60-year history of zero decarbonization of world energy makes avoiding dangerous climate change while still maintaining a healthy global civilization seem improbable. In the extreme.
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It would be hard to question a theory that says that "more people" drives "more energy demand". A causal link in the other direction would be pretty hard to justify (absent divine intervention). Maybe in areas of severe energy poverty... but I doubt it (since they tend to have larger manual labor needs).
Energy => people => energy => people => energy => etc. Same loop happens with food.
There is actually an aspect of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that implies that life arises in response to energy gradients (in the presence of the right physical conditions), and then develops greater complexity in order to be come more efficient. It looks a bit like divine intervention, but it's really just a consequence of the teleomatic aspect of 2LoT. That creates life with its teleonomic qualities, which in turn develops into the teleological (goal-seeking) behaviour of humans. It's like a layer cake, where each higher layer is built on the qualities of the underlying one.
I'm coming to think that this aspect of thermodynamics "shapes" the way we see the the world, that it's the reason why humans collectively always make decisions that increase our impact on the world if at all possible. It may be the reason we can't "make anything happen" when it comes to de-growing any of the structures, systems or institutions we create when they turn out to be deleterious.
Like COP 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 for example:
The reason the idea seems a stretch may be that we still haven't completely internalized the implications of the Copernican/Galilean revolution. We still tend to think that we're "more or less" the center of the universe, and that nothing important or meaningful happens unless we will it to happen. I no longer think that's true, and see the idea of "free will" as a quaint delusion that we use to comfort ourselves during the long dark nights.
