07/21/10 Vancouver, British Columbia – China is now the largest energy user in the world, the International Energy Agency announced this week. The country consumed 2.252 billion tons of “oil equivalent” last year. The US – formerly the largest – managed to burn just 2.17 billion tons.
So it goes… Another inevitable milestone of Asian growth and Western decline. Like most facets of this takeover, the changing of the guard has been swift:
Yet here is one of the most convincing charts we’ve ever seen…a riff off one Frank Holmes – another Symposium speaker – has been toting around for years:
“40% of the world’s population – China and India – uses two barrels of oil per person per day,” Frank Holmes beamed in his presentation yesterday. “In the US, we use 25.”
If you’ll allow us to paraphrase Frank, that appears to be one of the few slam-dunk investment theses of this generation. China and India need only become half the energy consumers we are in the US and explosive gains would follow…if you own the right stocks.
Ian Mathias
for The Daily Reckoning
Ian Mathias
Ian Mathias is the managing editor of Agora Financial’s Income Franchise, where he writes and researches about retirement, dividend and fixed income investing. Much of his work is featured in The Daily Reckoning and Lifetime Income Report – Agora Financial’s flagship income investing advisory.
Previously, Ian managed The 5 Min. Forecast, a fun, fast-paced daily look into the future of global markets and macroeconomics. He’s also worked in public relations, where media outlets like Forbes, AP, Yahoo! and MSN Money have syndicated his writing. If he’s not at work, you’ll probably find Ian on a bicycle, racing up and down the “mountains” of Baltimore County. Ian has a BA from Loyola University in Maryland.
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i would not interpret the numbers a sign of western decline especially for the reasons you note later in the article.
on the other hand, the west is in decline but for reasons which have little to do with energy consumption.
it would be interesting however to understand the per capita decline in usa energy consumption. is it due to declining economic activity or to better conservation? i think it is more of the former than the latter, which is indeed a cause for alarm.