Tanada wrote:Thus if you live anywhere outside North America or Europe your standard of living is very much dependent on how much you pay for energy and cheap coal remains cheap coal in Asia, Africa and South America where 7 Billion people live on little income.
You're exaggerating though.
Just looking at Asia, for example:
As of April 2015, China was 23rd on the list, and had an average per capita income well over $15,000. So, for all the countries above China in Asia, a large percentage will have access to incomes over $20,000. Taking a sampling of those countries' recent populations, we're talking several hundred million people. Even in China, the percentage will be considerable (say, roughly a third for 2017 as a rough guess), so 800 million people just in China. Even in India, there's likely to be a couple hundred million or so out of it's 1.2 billion plus population to a $20,000+ income. And again, that's just Asia.
I'm not saying this isn't a serious issue for much of the global population, but let's not say it's almost the whole globe please, because it's not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A ... per_capitaHopefully by the time green energy can be built up in much of the world for the billions that can afford it, enough scale will be achieved to make it at or below the price of fossil fuels, and thus able to continue to grow as a percentage of global energy production.
(Unlike the super greens, I'm NOT going to claim that it's cheaper or even close to parity with coal and NG, and then out of the other side of my mouth scream that even more government subsidies are needed for it -- that's lunacy). I'm just trying to make a realistic assessment of where the economics are likely to take us in the next couple/few decades.