Why it's hard to reduce gross energy use

Good news: we appear to be near an inflection point:)

Our numbers are huge, and a good fraction of us are trying to improve standards of living in a way which increases per capita annual energy expenditure. But at least our population growth is slowing.

Stewart Brand in Technology Review:

...in 2002, [the UN] adopted a new theory that shocked many demographers: human population is leveling off rapidly, even precipitously, in developed countries, with the rest of the world soon to follow...

The world's women... had fewer kids because they moved to town.

Cities are population sinks-always have been... A global tipping point in urbanization is what stopped the population explosion...

The environmentalist aesthetic is to love villages and despise cities. My mind got changed on the subject a few years ago by an Indian acquaintance who told me that in Indian villages the women obeyed their husbands and family elders, pounded grain, and sang. But, the acquaintance explained, when Indian women immigrated to cities, they got jobs, started businesses, and demanded their children be educated.