Comparing the world before 1900 to today

For thousands of years before 1900, the population of the world hovered around one billion on the entire planet. In the short 200 years since 1900 the world population has “exploded” to the current 8 billion now living on this planet. What caused that quick growth from 1 to 8 billion?

Before 1900 most people never traveled 100-200 miles from where they were born. Life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between 20 and 30 years of age. Food shortages and insecurity were leading concerns in the 18th century, especially in Europe, and these were exacerbated by reduced harvests yields. Disease was another leading cause of death, with rats and fleas being the common carriers of disease, specifically plagues, during this era.

Questions pervade like:

Why didn’t the world have electricity before 1900?
Why didn’t the world have, a medical industry, electronics, communications systems, militaries, and transportation infrastructure like planes, trains, automobiles, trucks, and ships before 1900?
Why didn’t we have more than 6,000 products before 1900 that the wealthier and healthier countries now use daily?

One answer is that it could be that electricity is a secondary energy source that we get from the conversion of other sources of energy such as coal, natural gas, and oil. These sources are known as “primary sources, but electricity itself is not a “primary source”. Like electricity, the products used in industries and infrastructures are all dependent on products are manufactured from “primary sources” of energy like petroleum ‘

The causation of the world’s population exploding to 8 billion may be as simple as the fact that those products that are now used in every modern-day infrastructure and economy CANNOT be made FROM a “secondary” energy source like electricity. Those products need a “primary source” of energy for the manufactured derivatives that are the basis of those products.

Today, we are inundated by the gross fatalities being caused by humanity induced air pollution. These numbers are very important, but pale to the many other causes of fatalities that are impacting the 8 billion on earth.

While the pandemic has accounted for more than 600,000 fatalities just in America, the numbers pale when compared to those poorer countries that are experiencing 11 million children dying every year. Those infant fatalities are from the preventable causes of diarrhea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, preterm delivery, or lack of oxygen at birth as many developing countries have no, or minimal, access to those products from oil derivatives enjoyed by the wealthy and healthy countries.

When you include fatalities of “other than children” the world numbers get even worse…

More than 8,000,000 world cancer deaths per year.
5,000,000 tobacco related deaths per year, and current trends show that tobacco use will cause more than 8,000,000 deaths annually by 2030.
3,800,000 deaths every year because of household exposure to smoke from dirty cook stoves and fuels.
2,300,000 women and men around the world succumb to work-related accidents or diseases every year per.
1,800,000 from the coronavirus in 2020
1,230,000 world traffic deaths per year.
270,000 pedestrians killed on roads each year.
585,900 premature deaths caused by drugs per year.

After that slice of morbidity, I’d like to present a tad of relatively good news that may be of interest to supporters of zero-emission electricity, and that is the worlds usage of nuclear. Probably due to the safety of nuclear power reactors, today there are about 440 nuclear reactors operating in 32 countries around the world with 50 more new ones under construction. Significant further capacity is being created by plant upgrading of existing reactors.

Politicians and the media have been successfully suppressing from public knowledge the worldwide total of nuclear deaths – not annually, but from inception of nuclear – including Three Mile Island (March 1979), Chernobyl (April 1986) and Fukushima (March 2011) are LESS than 200 over 4 decades, versus the more than 50,000,000 annually from previous mentioned causes.

Many of the healthier and wealthier countries are mesmerized with subsidies for electricity from breezes and sunshine. Those countries are also slowing down efforts toward drilling for oil. By reducing the supply of oil, the supply chain to refineries is being reduced to manufacture the oil derivatives and fuels that are the basis of economies. Getting off fossil fuels is going to negatively impact lifestyles and the following industries and infrastructures that are dependent on “primary sources” of energy, after 1900:

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin sub-orbital spaceflight services company, for the very wealthy want-to-be astronauts.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic sub-orbital spaceflight services company, for the very wealthy want-to-be astronauts.
Commercial aviation, with 23,000 commercial airplanes worldwide that have been accommodating 4 billion passenger annually.
The 56,000 merchant ships burning more than 120 million gallons a day of high sulfur bunker fuel moving products worldwide worth billions of dollars daily.
The military equipment from each country consisting of aircraft carriers, battleships, destroyers, submarines, planes, tanks and armor, trucks, and troop carriers
The more than 300 cruise liners, each of which consumes 80,000 gallons of fuels daily, that have been accommodating more than 25 million passengers annually worldwide

Today, more than 200 years past 1900, the most important fact about today’s environmental movement, the book “Clean Energy Exploitations” explores how the healthy and wealthy countries of the United States of America, Germany, the UK, and Australia representing 6 percent of the world’s population (505 million vs 7.8 billion) could literally shut down, and cease to exist, and the opposite of what you have been told and believe will take place.

Simply put, in these healthy and wealthy countries, every person, animal, or anything that causes emissions to harmfully rise could vanish off the face of the earth; or even die off, and global emissions will still explode in the coming years and decades ahead over the population and economic growth of China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam that plan to build more than 600 coal power units and African countries that are planning to build more than 1,250 new coal and gas-fired power plants by 2030.

The healthier and wealthier countries fail to recognize that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than 6 billion in this world are living on less than $10 a day, and billions living with little to no access to electricity, These poor folks need abundant, affordable, reliable, scalable, and flexible electricity while The healthier and wealthier are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate “secondary” intermittent electricity from breezes and sunshine.

The book “Clean Energy Exploitations” helps citizens attain a better understanding that just for the opportunity to generate intermittent electricity that is dependent on favorable weather conditions, the wealthier and healthier countries like Germany, Australia, Britain, and America continue to exploit the most vulnerable people and environments of the world today.

Ronald Stein
Ron Stein is an engineer who, drawing upon 25 years of project management and business development experience, launched PTS Advance in 1995. He is an author, engineer, and energy expert who writes frequently on issues of energy and economics.