Throughout most of human history, poverty has been the norm. Shockingly, a quarter of all children did not survive their first year of life [1]. However, we have made significant strides in reducing extreme poverty in recent decades. In 1981, a staggering 44% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, but by 2019, that number had dropped to just 8% [2]. Moreover, the global average life expectancy has more than doubled since 1900 and now stands at over 70 years [3].
Despite these remarkable achievements, we still face significant challenges in creating a sustainable future. One of the most pressing issues is reducing our energy consumption. Figure 1 clearly shows a direct correlation between energy consumption and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). No affluent low-energy societies exist in the world, nor do any low-GDP high-energy communities.
If we look at the relationship between these improvements and access to energy, the connection becomes even more precise in Figure 2 below based on data from gabminder.org [4].
We need energy to survive. All those advances would never have been possible without access to reliable energy. Without energy, everyone in the world would still be trapped in poverty. Billions of people around the world still live in poverty.
Access to large amounts of reliable energy is the foundation of our modern society with all the welfare, education, health, science, art, and material security that we Danes take for granted today. It is unrealistic that most citizens in industrialized countries like Denmark will accept the idea of a low-energy society, which will have to cancel welfare and modernity. It is even more unrealistic and downright immoral to want to lower energy consumption from a global perspective since most of the world’s population lives in developing countries, where the population wants to use significantly more energy.
Nuclear power can deliver goods.
Much of this progress happened with fossil fuels: Coal, oil, and natural gas, with a high energy density, reliability, and controllability. All the things we need to be able to develop and thrive. But it has also come with major negative impacts in the form of deadly particle pollution and emission of greenhouse gases.
Due to the high energy density and reliability, nuclear power can deliver enormous amounts of energy that are not dependent on the weather or geography. This can help to change the current energy consumption and clean energy while lifting billions of people in the world out of poverty.
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