The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality by Heinberg Richard

Author:Heinberg, Richard [Heinberg, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BUS072000
ISBN: 9781550924831
Publisher: Perseus Books Group
Published: 2011-05-31T14:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 39. World Energy Use and GDP. Sources: US Energy Information Administration, International Monetary Fund.

Another often-ignored factor skewing the energy-GDP relationship is outsourcing of production. In the 1950s, the US was an industrial powerhouse, exporting manufactured products to the rest of the world. By the 1970s, Japan was becoming the world’s leading manufacturer of a wide array of electronic consumer goods, and in the 1990s China became the source for an even larger basket of products, ranging from building materials to children’s toys. By 2005, the US was importing a substantial proportion of its non-food consumer goods from China, running an average trade deficit with that country of close to $17 billion per month.23 In effect, China was burning its coal to make America’s consumer goods. The US derived domestic GDP growth from this commerce as Walmart sold mountains of cheap products to eager shoppers, while China expended most of the Btus. The American economy grew without using as much energy — in America — as it would have if those goods had been manufactured domestically.

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