The end of global development as we know it | News | Engineering for Change.
Development professionals do their work under the assumption that the developing world will some day look a lot like the developed world. But there’s a good chance that they’re wrong. A practical look at the world’s energy supply, and interesting new research into the link between energy, culture and quality of life, shows that the reverse is probably true: The developed world will soon look more like the developing world. Here’s why that’s happening and what we can do to prepare for a big change right now.
From farmers to desk jockeys
Since the early 1990’s, the US government has not counted “farmers” as a category in the national census, and that is a symptom of energy consumption. Diesel fuel, chemical fertilizers and pesticides are all forms of energy that have supplanted human and animal muscle on the farm. This energy, that comes from cheap, accessible fossil fuels, has turned the agrarian serfs of the middle ages into today’s corporate, government, and academic “cubicle serfs,” in developed countries. And global development professionals are trying to shepherd the developing world along the same path.
Fossil energy has facilitated three doublings of the global population since the eighteenth century, while erecting a byzantine techno-social hierarchy in the developed world and in the power centers of the developing world.
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