The Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller Virtual Institute has an interesting graph that I wish more people were aware of.
Fuller noticed while reviewing available global statistics that as an area’s per capita energy consumption increased, the average birth rate for that area decreased!
This fact has held true for every country of the world as it went through the process of industrialization. As the world’s energy per capita goes up, the world’s birth rate will go down.
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
2 responses to “Energy Use Up – Population Down”
One possible explanation: as the use of artificial power increases, the need to have lots of kids to do the work decreases,
I suspect you’d see a similar graph if you plotted energy use v. slavery over the centuries.
Charlie,
In fact Bucky makes the slavery connection explicitly.
He devised a unit of energy measure called the “energy slave”.