Economic Demolition

The roughly linear relationship on the log-log plot displayed below between per-capita GDP and energy use on a country by country basis clearly shows that economic output has a direct power-law dependence upon energy availability. Although GDP appears on the horizontal axis and energy consumption on the vertical, the dependence is actually economic output upon energy use. So cutting existing energy production in a modern economy, without replacing it, cuts-back its economic vitality.

The plot below shows the contributions of the various available energy sources to the total usage through time. It clearly shows that up since 1950 the expansion of fossil fuel energy reliance has left the alternative sources far behind. Oil was responsible for around fifty-three thousand terawatt-hours of energy production in 2019, while the highest-contributing ‘clean-energy’ source, hydroelectric, accounted for only 1/5-th of that amount. Clearly, for any administration to turn away from oil, coal, and natural gas without having developed-and-proof-tested commensurate replacement energy sources on-hand is either monstrously egregious mismanagement or massive sabotage.

In a recent post, I mentioned that China and India are both moving forward on developing industrial-grade Thorium-fission reactors to provide a new component of those countries’ energy needs while the west is doing nothing on this front. Thorium fission is attractive because it is a particularly safe form of nuclear energy that can serve to consume our extant radioactive waste. It was proven viable in test reactors in the US in the 1960s. Its reaction is based on Uranium 233, the world’s largest supply of which lies inside the US in Tennessee. But the Biden administration is not merely ignoring this trove of available energy fuel, it is using our tax dollars to destroy it by dilution, so that it will never be available for any future administration to harvest and utilize (ref. the video below at the 1:30 minute mark).

Their curtailment of our production of domestic fossil fuels is bad enough; it is increasingly harming ordinary Americans and will also significantly-weaken our national security. But to destroy this known-to-be-viable alternative fission fuel is to remove a very valuable and available option for our future national energy security. These people are destroying our existing and near-horizon energy production capabilities without presenting any alternatives that could take-up the production gap. That is either monstrously egregious mismanagement of one of our most fundamental and crucial needs, or it is purposeful sabotage of it.