Study Finds Energy
Limits Global Economic Growth

American Institute of Biological Sciences

January 7, 2011

The Obama Administration
from day one has created polices towards cutting energy supplies, driving down the
dollar, and giving free rain to speculators raising oil prices, so as to destroy
US and World Wide economic growth.  Socialists
and Muslims the world over strongly support this weakening of western governments
as this plays right into their hands. The Republican House will throw a monkey wrench
in all of these plans

A study
that relates global energy use to economic growth, published in the January
issue of BioScience, finds strong correlations
between these two measures both among countries and within countries over time.
The research leads the study's authors to infer that energy use limits economic
activity directly. They conclude that an "enormous" increase in
energy supply will be required to meet the demands of projected world
population growth and lift the developing world out of poverty without
jeopardizing standards of living in most developed countries.

The study,
which used a macroecological approach, was based on
data from the International Energy Agency and the World Resources Institute. It
was conducted by a team of ecologists led by James H. Brown of the University of New Mexico. The team found the same sort
of relationship between energy consumption per person and gross domestic
product per person as is found between metabolism and body weight in animals.
Brown's group suggests the similarity is real: cities and countries, like
animals, have metabolisms that must burn fuel to sustain themselves and grow.
This analogy, together with the data and theory, persuades the BioScience authors that the linkage between energy use and
economic activity is causal, although other factors must also be in play to
explain the variability in the data.

The study
goes on to show that variables relating to standard of living, such as the
proportion of doctors in a population, the number of televisions per person,
and infant mortality rate, are also correlated with both energy consumption per
person and gross domestic product per person. These correlations lead the
authors to their conclusions about the increases in energy production necessary
to sustain a still-growing world population without drops in living standards.
To support the expected world population in 2050 in the current US lifestyle
would require 16 times the current global energy use, for example. Noting that 85 percent of humankind's energy now comes from fossil
fuels, the BioScience authors point out that efforts
to develop alternative energy sources face economic problems of diminishing
returns, and reject the view of many economists that technological innovation
can circumvent resource shortages.

After noon
EST on 7 January and for the remainder of the month, the full text of the
article will be available for free download through the copy of this Press
Release available at www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/.

BioScience, published
monthly, is the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences
(AIBS). BioScience publishes commentary
and peer-reviewed articles covering a wide range of biological fields, with a
focus on "Organisms from Molecules to the Environment." The journal
has been published since 1964. AIBS is an umbrella organization for
professional scientific societies and organizations that are involved with
biology. It represents some 200 member societies and organizations with a
combined membership of about 250,000.

The complete list of peer-reviewed articles in the
January 2011 issue of BioScience is as follows:

Energetic Limits to Economic
Growth. James H.
Brown and colleagues.

Up in the Clouds: Is Sustainable Use of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests Possible in Malaysia?
Kelvin S. H. Peh, Malcolm C. K. Soh,
Navjot S. Sodhi, William F.
Laurance, Dylan Jeffri Ong, and Reuben Clements

What Does It Mean to Successfully Conserve a
(Vertebrate) Species? Kent H. Redford and colleagues

Biodiversity and Conservation of
Tropical Peat Swamp Forests. Mary Rose
C. Posa, Lahiru S. Wijedasa ,
and Richard T. Corlett

Recovery Plan for the Endangered
Taxonomy Profession. David L. Pearson,
Andrew L. Hamilton, and Terry L. Erwin

College Students' Understanding of the Carbon
Cycle: Contrasting Principle-based and Informal Reasoning. Laurel
M. Hartley, Brook J. Wilke, Jonathon W. Schramm,
Charlene D'Avanzo, and Charles W. Anderson.