Because energy is used to transform and transport matter and energy must be extracted from the environment and then returned to it in waste form, energy use can be seen as a rough proxy for environmental impact in general. Of course, some forms of energy use are more environmentally disruptive than others and some things we can do with energy are worse then others. There is a clear linear relationship here between the logs of income and energy use per capita. There is again no sign of an environmental Kuznets curve.
I can see how energy use functions as a better proxy for environmental impact than local pollution, considering direct energy use - assumedly highly correlated to income - can't be off-shored like manufacturing (and therefore isn't masked by indirect/international impact of increased income/consumption in the same way).
ReplyDeleteI also highly suspect that variables suggesting an EKC for certain countries omit the global/external environmental impacts of