The United States in 2052: A Future of Energy Efficiency

1 / 4
US State of affairs, 1970-2050. Scale: Population (0-350 million people); GDP and consumption ($0-$18 trillion per year), CO2 emissions (0-6 billion tonnes CO2 per year); temperature rise (0 degrees Celsius-2.5 degrees Celsius)
US State of affairs, 1970-2050. Scale: Population (0-350 million people); GDP and consumption ($0-$18 trillion per year), CO2 emissions (0-6 billion tonnes CO2 per year); temperature rise (0 degrees Celsius-2.5 degrees Celsius)
2 / 4
Scale: Food production (0-1.3 billion tonnes per year); energy use (0-2.5 billion tonnes of oil equivalents per year); fraction renewable energy (0 percent-40 percent); investment share of GDP (0 percent-40 percent); unused bio-capacity (0 percent-100 percent).
Scale: Food production (0-1.3 billion tonnes per year); energy use (0-2.5 billion tonnes of oil equivalents per year); fraction renewable energy (0 percent-40 percent); investment share of GDP (0 percent-40 percent); unused bio-capacity (0 percent-100 percent).
3 / 4
Scale: GDP per person and consumption per person ($0-$50,000 per person-year); food per person (0-4 tonnes per person-year); energy use per person (0-9 tonnes of oil equivalents per person-year); sea-level rise (0-1.4 meter).
Scale: GDP per person and consumption per person ($0-$50,000 per person-year); food per person (0-4 tonnes per person-year); energy use per person (0-9 tonnes of oil equivalents per person-year); sea-level rise (0-1.4 meter).
4 / 4
In
In "2052," Jorgen Randers draws on global forecasting tools, his own experience in sustainability and the predictions of more than 30 leading scientists to guide us through the future he feels is most likely to emerge. Not to scare us, but to prepare us and sound a call for changing course.

What will our future on earth look like? In 2052, (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012) Jorgen Randers tries to predict what the world will actually be like in forty years, based on global forecasting tools, his own experience in sustainability and predictions of leading scientific and sustainable minds. The following excerpt from chapter 10, “Five Regional Futures,” explains the predicted economic health and energy efficiency of the United States in 2052.

Buy this book from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store:2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years.

Toward 2052: The United States

The US population will grow more or less in parallel with the world average and will peak at the same time, in the middle 2040s. Due to the aging of the population, the potential workforce in the United States, those aged fifteen to sixty-five years, will remain more or less stable at around 220 million persons. The support burden—defined as the total number of Americans divided by the potential workforce—will increase by a few percentage points, but not dramatically, because the growth in the number of old will be compensated for by a decrease in the number of young.

The economy will continue to grow for some decades, but not fast—only at an average growth rate of 0.6 percent per year over the next forty years. The rate of growth will decline and reach zero by the middle of the century. This is because the United States is already a mature economy—actually the most mature in the world, with the highest GDP per person on the planet (excepting some tiny special cases like Norway, Luxembourg, and Abu Dhabi). In other words, the gross labor productivity is already very high, and it will require substantial effort to make it grow further. In order to achieve higher growth, the United States must succeed in bringing a much larger part of those aged fifteen to sixty-five years into the workforce, or succeed in increasing labor productivity in services and care. Both are difficult and will not happen fast enough to avoid a continuation of the downward trend in productivity growth over the last forty years.

  • Published on May 7, 2014
Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368