ClimateChangeFork

(Source: TRG Data Centers)

As shown in a previous blog (April 8, 2026), global electrification is almost complete. The only regions serious lagging are the rural areas of Africa, as detailed in that blog. The next phase is only starting to take shape, but it’s already emerging. Electrification requires an upgrade in order to power most of the post-WWII emerging global trends, which include the convergence of electrification, digitization, energy transition, nuclear threats, and security on a global scale! The main tool to accomplish such a gigantic role is data centers. Just put the term into the search box of this blog and you will see that data centers show up in almost all of my recent blogs—either directly or through the AI that I have been increasingly using. This blog will focus on two aspects of the process: the NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) aspect and the price. Not surprisingly, the AI penetration of data centers is most advanced in rich countries, but (under ownership by big tech, which is mostly concentrated in rich countries) is already spreading to developing countries as well.

The Global Situation (Yahoo)

The world has crossed a historic threshold, officially entering the “Age of Electricity,” as mentioned in the Global Energy Review 2026 report, published last month by the International Energy Agency (IEA). According to the report, global electricity demand grew about 2.3 times faster than total energy demand in 2025, exceeding the long-term average. Global electricity generation grew by more than 850 terawatt-hour (TWh) last year. This twin surge — rapidly growing demand matched by accelerating supply — creates a powerful tailwind for utility companies. As the backbone of this new electricity-driven global economy, utilities are poised to see sustained revenue growth, making exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that hold a diversified basket of these companies a compelling investment right now. Before diving into the specifics of these ETFs, investors may want to examine the catalysts driving this electric revolution, along with the data-driven outlook for the utility industry, to better understand why utility ETFs appear poised for multi-year outperformance and could be a compelling addition to a modern portfolio. The following sections provide a closer analysis o

Finishing Stage 1: Africa (Globalization-Partners)

Access to smartphones and internet connection is quickly improving across Africa. The rise in fiber-optic cable usage throughout the continent generates a whole new set of opportunities. In fact, the  Africa Wealth Report from April 2022 predicted that exceptional technology advances and an emerging business class can kick-start a 38% jump in total private wealth within the next decade. For instance, Meta announced they would be building a 37,000-kilometre-long undersea cable around the continent to improve the region’s internet access. Estimates show that around 75% of Africans will have access to the internet by 2030, compared to only 22% in 2020. “The business marketplace in Africa has been experiencing significant growth and transformation in recent years,” Alex Daruty, Head of Commercial at Africa HR, stated on a recent GPA-hosted webinar, on which G-P were panelists. “There is a growing middle class, increased urbanization, improved infrastructure, and a global digital transformation on the continent,” Daruty continued. “So, I think it’s fair that African economies remain resilient.”

Who is paying to expand electrification in Africa (Business Insider Africa)

Renew via Energy Corp. is expanding its solar-powered mini-grid operations into four African countries as renewable energy providers increasingly move to address the continent’s widening electricity deficit. The Atlanta-based company plans to expand into Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, a move expected to require about $750 million in investment for roughly 2.1 million electricity connections, according to Renew via Solar Africa CEO Trey Jarrard. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the global epicenter of energy poverty, with nearly 600 million people lacking access to electricity, accounting for more than 80% of the world’s unelectrified population.

The situation in the US and Denmark is summarized below:

US – (TechCrunch)

PJM released a white paper this week that said the region “has years, not decades” to make fundamental changes to the way it operates. “The current situation is not tenable,” PJM CEO David Mills wrote in a forward to the report. Normally, this sort of wonky report would land on the desks of a few legislators and regulators. But PJM’s territory includes a large number of data centers, including the compute-dense region of Northern Virginia. What happens to PJM will send ripples throughout the tech world. The 70-page report is an exercise in navel gazing. But despite the deep introspection, not everyone is convinced the organization is up to the task of overhauling itself. One utility, American Electric Power (AEP), is considering pulling out of PJM altogether. “The current state of PJM’s performance and stakeholder approval process does not give me great confidence that these issues will be resolved anytime soon,” Bill Fehrman, AEP’s CEO, said in an earnings call Tuesday. “In fact, if something is not done now, I expect we could still be having these same conversations in 10 years. The PJM market worked very well when supply exceeded demand; we are now in a very different time.

PJM is a regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Denmark (CNBC)

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — The Nordics, long seen as a magnet for data center investment thanks to their stable climate and abundance of renewable energy, are now weighing limits on the growth of the power-hungry facilities as surging energy demand forces a rethink. At the center of the debate is Denmark, the first of the Nordics to confront the question head-on, as the formation of a new government and a spike in grid access requests have meant a pause on new projects. Data centers around the world are increasingly facing pushback due to concerns about their energy use. In the U.S, Maine recently came close to a data center construction ban and in Pennsylvania, the backlash could harm incumbents ahead of elections. Other states, including Virginia and Oklahoma are considering moratoriums.

This blog will end with estimates for pricing in both developed and developing countries, shown in Table 1. These estimates came from AI (Copilot). Industry standards typically measure data center costs per Megawatt (MW) of IT load capacity.   .

Table 1 – Cost Comparison (Per Megawatt)

Figure 1 – The 20 largest data centers proposed in North America (1GW = 1000MW)

For the parallels in the developing countries, I selected two major targets: Kenya and India. Kenya describes future trends. India describes the present.

Kenya (Tom’s Hardware):

Microsoft’s massive Kenya AI data center would require switching off ‘half the country’ to meet power requirements, government says — $1 billion project stalls over capacity disagreements and lack of infrastructure. The project, announced in May 2024 during Ruto’s visit to Washington, was supposed to bring a geothermal-powered data center to the Olkaria region in Kenya’s Rift Valley. G42 was to lead construction, with the facility running Microsoft Azure in a new East Africa cloud region. The first phase targeted 100 megawatts of capacity and was expected to be operational by this year, with a long-term goal of scaling to 1 gigawatt.

India (The Economist)

Data centers are rapidly appearing across the country. Its installed capacity reached 1.3 gigawatts (GW) last year, according to JLL, a property firm. That may be small compared with America (38.7GW) or China (9.5GW) but is nearly triple the figure from 2020. And the growth is set to continue. During a global AI summit held in Delhi this week, the Adani Group, an Indian conglomerate, announced it would pour $100bn into data centers by 2035. Others such as NTT DATA, a Japanese IT giant that is currently the largest owner of data centers in India, also have big investment plans, as do America’s hyperscale’s. India will struggle to rival America and China in the development of cutting-edge AI. But it is fast becoming an important hub for data centers.

My next blog will focus on the global energy drivers of data centers.

Figure 1 – List of the world’s top 20 polluters (Source:  Visual Capitalist)

A recent entry by Visual Capitalist (VC) enabled me to try to expand my quantification of the energy transition and correlate it with the usual questions of “who is to blame for anthropogenic climate change caused by excess carbon emissions?” and “who should pay for the damage?” The infographic representing this entry is shown as Figure 1. It lists the world’s top 20 polluters, ranked by their change in CO₂ emissions from 2014 to 2024, the latest year for which data is available. This blog expands Figure 1 to include per capita emissions for the same countries. The countries that were selected by VC include 59% of the world population. We can compare that to the selection of 10 countries that were analyzed in last week’s blog and earlier blogs, which cover 55% of the 2024 global population. The four countries that were part of the last week’s blog selection, but not this one, are Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia. Three out of these four are classified by the World Bank as lower middle-income countries; Ethiopia is classified as low-income. The only country in the table below that belongs to the lower middle-income bracket is India. As was shown in last week’s blog, the high-income and higher middle-income countries are responsible for 80% of recent carbon emissions.

Table 1 – Emissions/Capita, 2014-2024

As discussed in last week’s blog, emissions are an extensive property that changes with population; the ratio between emissions and the population is an intensive property. Not surprisingly, China and India are the countries that emitted the largest amount of carbon in 2024 (and also in 2014), by VC’s accounting. However, counting emissions per capita, the “honor” of being the largest polluter in 2024 (as well as in 2014), shifts to Saudi Arabia. The US follows it, but it is chased closely by Australia. The encouraging parts of these data are the countries in the lower parts of both Figure 1 and Table 1, which are intensely focused on reducing emissions. It is worth remembering that we don’t yet have statistics more recent than 2024.

Aside from bragging rights, what purpose does such data accumulation serve? The issues that come to my mind are reparations and possibly trade. With no possibility of US participation, most of these issues have not been discussed in recent times (Nature: ‘Beyond COP’ climate summit puts scientists at the centre of the action):

Climate scientists, who have warned of the dangers of global warming for decades, have found some countries that are prepared to listen. This week, representatives of more than 50 nations gathered in Santa Marta, Colombia, at what was billed as the first global summit on phasing out fossil fuels. One of the first orders of business was to launch a panel of scientists that will advise those countries on how to shift to clean energy.

I asked AI (through Google Gemini) to summarize the reparations issue in this context. Below is what I got:

The issue of carbon dioxide reparations (more commonly referred to within global policy as climate reparations or “Loss and Damage”) is one of the most highly debated, legally complex, and morally charged topics in modern geopolitics.

At its core, the issue addresses a stark mathematical and historical imbalance: the countries least responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions are bearing the most devastating costs of climate change.

Here is a breakdown of the core arguments, the scientific data driving the debate, and the progress made so far.

1. The Core Argument: Atmospheric Appropriation

The foundational case for climate reparations rests on historical responsibility.

• The Carbon Budget: Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has burned through the vast majority of the global “carbon budget”—the total amount of we can emit while keeping global warming under the or thresholds.
• The Wealth Gap: The Global North (specifically the U.S., Europe, and other highly industrialized nations) is historically responsible for the vast majority of cumulative emissions. According to researchers at the Global Inequality Project, over-emitting nations have effectively “appropriated” the atmospheric fair shares of poorer nations.
• The Consequences: Developing nations in the Global South—such as low-lying island states (e.g., Vanuatu, Tuvalu) and nations prone to extreme weather (e.g., Pakistan)—suffer catastrophic infrastructure damage, loss of life, and economic ruin from climate-induced superstorms, rising sea levels, and droughts, despite having minuscule carbon footprints.

2. Reparations vs. Aid: A Crucial Distinction

Proponents of climate reparations emphasize that these payments should not be viewed as “charity” or “foreign development aid.”

• Aid is discretionary and often comes with political strings attached.
• Reparations imply a legal and moral obligation to pay for damages caused by past and ongoing harm. It is based on the “polluter pays” principle—holding both wealthy governments and massive historical fossil fuel corporations financially accountable for the planetary degradation they caused.

3. The Financial Scale of the Issue

The financial liability associated with carbon reparations is staggering:

• The Loss and Damage Cost: Estimates suggest that the economic cost of unavoidable climate damage in developing countries will reach between $290 billion and $580 billion annually by 2030, escalating to over $1 trillion per year by 2050.
• The Liability: Some ecological economists calculate that to truly compensate the Global South for the appropriation of their atmospheric space, wealthy over-emitting nations collectively owe upwards of $192 trillion in cumulative compensation through 2050.

4. Progress and Legal Milestones

Despite fierce resistance from wealthy nations—who historically feared that agreeing to “compensation” would open them up to unlimited legal liability—the global community has made incremental progress:

The COP27 Breakthrough (2022)

At the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt, developing nations successfully banded together to secure a historic agreement to establish a dedicated Loss and Damage Fund. This fund is specifically designed to provide financial assistance to vulnerable nations suffering from climate disasters.

The Bridgetown Initiative

Led by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, this initiative advocates for a massive overhaul of global financial institutions (like the IMF and World Bank). It pushes for emergency liquidity, debt suspension during climate disasters, and hundreds of billions of dollars in low-interest loans to help developing nations build resilience without drowning in debt.

5. Major Hurdles & Criticisms

• Lack of Enforcement: While funds like the “Loss and Damage” fund have been established, contributions from wealthy nations remain largely voluntary. Historically, rich nations have routinely missed their climate finance targets (such as failing to meet the promised $100 billion annual climate aid goal on time).
• Defining Liability: Determining exactly how much a specific country or corporation owes is incredibly complex. For example, should liability be calculated starting from the industrial revolution (1850), or from when the dangers of climate change became universally recognized (roughly 1990)?
• Domestic Political Pushback: In wealthy nations like the United States, utilizing taxpayer money to pay “reparations” to foreign countries is a highly controversial political sell, making legislative approval incredibly difficult.

Ultimately, the debate over carbon dioxide reparations is a bridge between environmental science and social justice. It forces the global community to reckon with the reality that solving the climate crisis is not just a technological challenge of removing from the air, but an ethical challenge of correcting historical inequities.

The most important questions that were not addressed in the AI answer are who should pay what, and under which emissions criteria that should be decided— either based on median cumulative or yearly emissions (both per capita). There is very little chance that these questions, or anything involved with the general issue of reparations, will be addressed by the present US government. We will follow up, once the issue becomes relevant.

Energy is known as the physical quantity with the largest number of equivalent units. The main reason is historical. Table 2, from last week’s blog, included two issues that I promised to address, so I have carried the data over to this post. Table 1 in this blog is nearly identical to the original, with the exception that the column that showed each country’s position on the environmental Kuznets curve has been replaced by two columns showing their degree of electrification and where they fall on the World Bank’s classifications within the Global Income.

Figure 1 shows that—despite present US policies summarized by the “Drill Baby, Drill” slogan—globally, we are almost through with the energy transition away from fossil fuels. It shows that in 2024 (just before Trump’s second inauguration), 75% of electricity demand was supplied by non-fossil sources, with the largest share coming from direct solar and wind (also part of solar).

I raised two main issues in last week’s blog. First, in spite of the large differences in economic activity—as measured through changes in GDP/capita—the differences in carbon intensity are much smaller. Second, in the listing of pre-electrification GDPs, sustainable creation was not specifically mentioned as relevant, which I believe is an oversight.

Figure 1 – Electricity generation by power source (Source: Ember)

Table 1 – Compiled data for carbon intensity and estimated alignments with population, GDP/capita, and percentage of population with access to electricity

As in last week’s blog, the countries in this table account for more than 50% (55%) of the world population. Most of them (8) belong to the Lower and Upper-Middle Income brackets (4 to each), and one each to the High Income and Low Income categories.

Table 2 – Global Economic Income distribution, including each level’s  share of the world’s population and carbon emissions (Source: OurWorldInData, 2024)

Table 2 shows that the contribution of pre-electrification to carbon emissions can be approximately neglected. Only two countries in Table 2 qualify: Ethiopia and Nigeria. Both are in Africa, and, as shown in a previous blog (April 8, 2026), they are quickly joining the electrification trend. The convergence of differences between rich and poor countries in carbon intensities is a different issue, directly related to the nature of carbon intensity as an intensive property.

An intensive property or intensive quantity is one whose magnitude (extent) is independent of the size of the system. An extensive property or extensive quantity is one whose magnitude is additive for subsystems. Carbon emissions and GDP are extensive properties that change with the population of a state. Carbon intensity is the ratio of carbon emissions to the population; thus, it is the ratio of two extensive properties for the same system size. Therefore, the ratio is an intensive property, independent of the population that acts here as the size of the system. However, comparing two extensive properties to different system sizes will not produce an intensive property.

In our case, the simplest way to try to examine this situation is by focusing on two countries in Table 1: the US and India. The GDP/capita is about the same (22% measured with respect to the smallest number: the US). The difference in GDP/capita is huge (~ 3000% again in terms of the smallest: India).

Let’s find the scaling law by abbreviating the terms, with India as country A and the US as country B: Carbon emissions of India = CEA; Carbon emissions of the US = CEB; Population of India = PA; Population of the US = PB; Carbon intensity of India = CIA; Carbon intensity of the US = CIB. The ratio between the populations is PA = KPB. The definition of carbon intensity is: Carbon emissions/ GDP. We are looking to divide CIA by CIB, the Carbon intensity of India by that of the US:

CIA = (CEA/PA) = (CEA/KPB):

So, CIA/CIB = (CEA/PA)/(CEB/PB) = (1/K)x(CEA/CEB) and the carbon intensity scales down with the population ratio K. in our example, that comes to 1428/ 338 = 4.2

One can see similar “equalization” numbers in Table 3, which was copied from a previous blog (March 25, 2026), that deals with changes of energy and GDP with time. Global primary energy use has grown by a factor of 630/238, or 2.6 from 1973 to 2025.

Table 3 –  Comparison of global socioeconomic indicators in 1973 and 2025   2.8*10¹¹kWh/1 Exajoules

Meanwhile, the same energy per capita only grew by a factor of 26,000/22,000, or 1.18. The reasons for the convergence here are different than those of the carbon intensity convergence. It directly involves a climb in the environmental Kuznets curve that was discussed in last week’s blog. The almost constant global primary energy use per capita over two generations can serve as an excellent starting point for future use of energy projections, provided that the dynamics do not change with the decreasing global population that was discussed in previous blogs.

Globally, we should be able to learn how to handle our collective humanity from other planetary species that survive longer than ours and surpass us in technological progress. But where are they?? Almost from the beginning of writing this blog, I tried to describe humanity’s efforts to find another planet with existing life (See December 17, 2013 –  “Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, and the Drake Equation”). We are still looking. The two coolest stars, with surface temperatures just below 2000^oK are shown in Table 1 (with data from Wikipedia):

Table 1 – Stars with the lowest surface temperature (from Wikipedia)

To convert Kelvin to Celsius, just subtract 273. To convert the Celsius to Fahrenheit, multiply the Celsius by 1.8 and add 32. Living organisms cannot survive under these conditions. The required low surface temperature makes detecting planets outside our solar system (exoplanets) much more difficult. The total number of exoplanets that were detected is 5,500 (AI summary). The 2013 blog describes the Drake Equation, which serves as a key for estimating the number of exoplanets that could carry life.

An alternative is to estimate when other advanced technology could come to us, telling us what to do to survive. The Fermi Paradox tries to address the feasibility of this happening, based on previous experience. I summarized the Fermi Paradox in terms of our planet’s existential threats, in the following way (“Climate Change, The Fork at the End of Now,” Momentum Press, 2011):

The beginning of our technological intelligence can be traced to the middle of the previous century (computers, rockets, lasers, etc.). The time scale that the scientists at SETI are talking about is about a million years. Even if we are a bit more modest and choose a time scale of only 1000 years to develop technology to reach habitable planets in case Earth becomes inhospitable, we cannot control most cosmological events that might lead to the destruction of life on Earth. We can, however, control some of our local collective behavior and monitor the planet to ensure survival.

SETI, in this quote, stands for “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” The conclusion is that we would do much better to try to prevent destruction of our planet rather than wait for an external answer. Therefore, we must learn how to be safe, but the learning has to proceed internally—from each other—based on trial and error, coupled with scientific analysis of the destruction threat.

The present US administration is trying to decouple the decrease in carbon emissions from the slowed growth of GDP. I wrote a blog on this topic (January 14, 2026):

The main argument the Trump administration raises is that any action away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable fuels will damage the economy, thus hurting the people who voted for him in the presidential election. Meanwhile, there has been plenty of progress in the global energy transition. These dynamics can be summarized as Trump trying to swim against the current of progress. Last week’s blog described the present US administration’s “swimming” in a manner similar to most press coverage throughout 2025. This blog will start discussing the “current” instead; this, too, is a more recent media trend…

More recently, a judge “temporarily” negated this approach:

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a series of decisions that wind and solar developers say have throttled hundreds of renewable energy projects across the country.

Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit that a coalition of renewable energy developers filed against the Interior Department in December. The developers argued that the Trump administration was unlawfully discriminating against wind and solar power, impeding projects on public and private land.

In her ruling, Judge Casper, an Obama appointee, said the developers were likely to prevail on the merits and ordered the Interior Department to stop implementing a series of memos, issued last year, that subjected renewable power to intensified reviews and new restrictions.

A book that is based on the same premise of attempts to prevent existential destruction, is called Earth for All. A summarizing paragraph from that publication is given below:

Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity Published in 2022, this book details the findings of our initiative and details how we can steer humanity away from ecological and social catastrophe. The book is the result of collaboration between the 21st century Transformational Economics Commission and systems analysts and modelling teams. The lead authors are Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Owen Gaffney, Jayati Ghosh, Jørgen Randers, Johan Rockström and Per Espen Stoknes. Published in 2022, this book details the findings of our initiative and details how we can steer humanity away from ecological and social catastrophe. 

​A previous blog (February 11, 2026), was titled, “Change in Leadership: Developing Countries – Decoupling,” with decoupling referring to energy consumption, specifically by developed countries. Two months later, the situation is changing drastically:

In economics textbooks, higher energy prices from the war in the Middle East display the power of the markets to efficiently decide who gets what. Yet in the real world, a cruder sort of power appears at work.

The conflict has severely constricted the supply of oil from the Persian Gulf. Countries with the financial means — China, Japan, Europe, the United States — are securing much of what they need, paying whatever it takes. Some are restricting exports to hold on to what they have.

That has pushed prices higher everywhere. At the same time, shortages threaten less affluent nations in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

Some economists are describing this as hoarding.

“The market is not some harmonious allocating mechanism, but ends up being the law of the jungle,” said Isabella Weber, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “Rationing by price explosion ends up being fundamentally unjust.”

An alternative approach is to rely on the mechanism of economic growth that all of us subscribe to. This mechanism was formalized by the Kuznets curve and described by a graduate student of mine in a previous blog (January 9, 2023) in the context of the Indian subcontinent. Figure 1, taken from the Wikipedia entry, describes the Kuznets curve in terms of environmental degradation.

By GovinddelhiThis diagram was created with Microsoft Word. – The diagram is made using Microsoft Word., CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85241915

Figure 1 – Environmental Kuznets curve

Table 1 shows compiled data for carbon intensity, estimated alignments within the environmental Kuznets curve, population, and GDP/Capita in the 10 most populated countries, which together are responsible for more than half the global population. With one exception (Ethiopia), these countries are the same as those on a list showed in a recent blog (February 11, 2026) in another context—a fun coincidence

The peak in the Kuznets curve was estimated at $25,000 – $50,000 GDP/Capita

Carbon Intensity – is in $2021 PPP GDP

Source for Carbon Intensity – Global Economy/EDGAR 2025

Right Side of the Kuznets peak: These economies have passed the “turning point.” They continue to grow their GDP, while their carbon intensity and absolute emissions generally decline. The only country from this list that clearly qualify is the US. The volatility of Russia makes her to fluctuate around the peak.

Near the Kuznets Peak: Include China and Brazil, the Upper Middle-Income countries. These countries are near the apex of the curve. They are the world’s manufacturing hubs where carbon intensity is highest but starting to plateau or slightly dip.

The Left Side of the Kuznets Curve: These economies are still in the early-to-mid stages of industrialization. As their GDP grows, their infrastructure and energy needs often result in rising (or high and stable) carbon intensity. All these countries are either developing or Lower Middle-Income.

Recent 2026 economic analyses warn of an “N-shaped” curve, where extremely high-income levels might lead to a second rise in environmental impact due to hyper-consumption. Currently, none of the 10 most populous countries have reached this “rebound” stage.

Coincidentally, the data for population and GDP/capita are almost the same as the one used in a recent blog (February 11, 2026) (with exception of Ethiopia).

Table 1 – Compiled data for carbon intensity, estimated alignments within the environmental Kuznets curve, population, and GDP/capita

Figure 2 shows the annual solar + wind generation per person of most of the developed countries that continue to march through the transition despite the recent US administration’s path against the stream.

Figure 2 – Annual solar and wind generation per person (Source: pv magazine)

Table 1 provides the impression that within a factor of two, the carbon energy intensity of rich and poor countries is approximately the same. My next blog will try to explore this observation.

Me with other Holocaust survivors at the Capitol during a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony honoring Benjamin Ferencz (Source: Times Argus)

Next month, I will be 87. I just returned from a series of meetings in Washington, DC, all organized by the US Holocaust Institute (2026 National Days of Remembrance Commemoration – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). The first day of these meetings took place on April 13^th, 81 years after my liberation by the 30^th Infantry Division of the American army in a place called Farsleben, near the city of Magdeburg, Germany.

This year, my liberation coincided with the start of “Yom HaShoah”:

In Hebrew, Holocaust Remembrance Day is Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-la G’vurah (Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day), and is referred to as Yom HaShoah. The date was chosen as it falls within the timeframe of the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April-May 1943, which lasted for 29 days.

Congress celebrated Yom HaShoah on Wednesday, April 14^th, issuing a gold medal to honor Benjamin Ferencz, who played a key role in the Nuremberg trials of the crimes committed by the Nazi leadership. A few Holocaust survivors were invited to take part in the event, and I was one of them. It took place at the US Capitol, and the above picture was taken of me marching with other survivors. What I held in both hands and wore on my head all symbolized my connections to the Holocaust. I was holding my father’s photograph and my mother’s books on the Warsaw Ghetto and Bergen Belsen. The cap was given to me by the US 30^th division, which saved us on April 13, 1945. The events of my life, beginning with the start of this war, have been repeatedly described throughout this blog. I have been busy and 87 years is a long time. This blog is focused on our individual and global physiological changes during our last chapters in life.

American men’s life expectancy is 76.5 (2024). The more general individual physiological changes toward the end of life can be summarized as follows:

The passage of time may be linear, but the course of human aging is not. Rather than a gradual transition, your life staggers and lurches through the rapid growth of childhood and the plateau of early adulthood, to an acceleration in aging as the decades progress. A study identified a turning point at which that acceleration typically occurs: around age 50. After this time, the trajectory at which your tissues and organs age is steeper than the decades preceding, according to a study of proteins in human bodies across a wide range of adult ages – and your veins are among the fastest to decline. “Based on aging-associated protein changes, we developed tissue-specific proteomic age clocks and characterized organ-level aging trajectories,” writes a team led by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in their paper published in 2025.

The rest of the blog is focused on scaling up and generalizing this type of deterioration to apply to global humanity by describing the localized impacts of climate change, which signal the start of the destructive process that I coined as “self-inflicted genocide” in earlier blogs. I share articles that emphasize the localities of predicted extreme weather, current European attempts to manage the localities of destruction, and the general wisdom of focusing on localities.

I am emphasizing climate change’s impacts in specific localities as an analogy for the progressive destruction of individual life (the last part of life). In both cases we have a better chance of addressing the small disasters than the bigger problem (ending life individually and global extinction collectively).

 Localities of Predictions:

The Weather Is Getting Wilder, and Some See a Dire Signal in the Data. Several of the Earth’s systems are changing faster than predicted as global temperatures rise, scientists say. Scientists who study global warming are currently wrestling with a question that, while seemingly technical, is profoundly consequential: Is climate change accelerating?

The debate spilled into the open this month, after new research found that the rate of global warming has nearly doubled over the last decade. The findings set scientific circles buzzing, and not all researchers agree with the conclusion. But while the debate about accelerating global warming remains unsettled, a growing number of scientists do agree on another troubling development: The effects of climate change are intensifying in ways that have surprised even experts. Many of the consequences of global warming — such as more intense storms, warming oceans and melting glaciers — are arriving faster and more powerfully than many scientists had expected.

Localities of Heatwaves

The record-breaking heatwave scorching the US west this week would have been “virtually impossible” if not for the climate crisis, a team of scientists has determined.Millions of Americans from the Pacific coast to the Rockies baked under unseasonably warm and even dangerous temperatures this week, with temperatures up to 30F (17C) above average for the time of year. The climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, has made this kind of heatwave four times more likely to occur over the last decade, according to a new rapid analysis released Friday. “These temperatures are completely off the scale for March,” said analysis co-author Ben Clarke, who is an extreme weather and climate change researcher at Imperial College London, in a statement.

Attempts to Manage the localities of the destruction (Phys.org)

When floods, coastal erosion or sea-level rise threaten settlements or infrastructure, European countries manage to retreat more often than previously assumed. Managed retreat refers to the planned, government-supported relocation of people, homes or infrastructure away from areas exposed to flooding and other climate-related hazards. A new German Dutch study led by Kiel University in collaboration with the Dutch research institute Deltares systematically documents the extent and diversity of such measures in Europe for the first time. Even as recently as 2016, the current heatwave would have also been milder, with temperatures about 1.4F (0.8C) cooler, says the analysis by World Weather Attribution, an international consortium of climate researchers.

The Wisdom of Focusing on Localities as a transition to Full Impact – Back to the Guardian piece from March of this year

These findings leave no room for doubt. Climate change is pushing weather into extremes that would have been unthinkable in a preindustrial world,” said Friederike Otto, a climate science professor at Imperial College London, who also worked on the study.

To carry out their rapid analysis, the scientists examined forecasts for a five-day period, from 18-22 March. To quantify the impact of global warming on the week’s extreme temperatures, the researchers analyzed weather and forecast data and also used climate model simulations to compare how heat events have changed in today’s climate. Fueled by an area of high pressure in the atmosphere, the heat dome has shattered temperature records in 140 cities stretching from California to Missouri, according to the Weather Channel, while leaving California, Nevada and Arizona under extreme heat warnings on Thursday.

More heat is in store for the coming days. The mercury is expected to continue ticking upward in the south-west, and the heatwave is expected to creep toward the plains and the south later this week. By the end of the week, 100 cities could set all-time temperature records for the month of March, with temperatures climbing as high as 30F (17C) above average for the time of year, the new analysis says.

Heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather in the US. Weather officials this week raised concerns about an increase in heat-related illnesses, especially among vulnerable populations, and advised people to remain hydrated and stay inside when they can.

The localized impacts of climate change can add up to total destruction—on both personal and global levels. However, they also provide opportunities for healing, details of which we will explore in future blogs.

As promised last week, in this blog I am following up on the expansion of data centers into developing countries, with a focus on India. I am starting with a broad AI description (via Google).

Google AI Prompt: Data Centers in Developing Countries

Data centers are becoming a primary driver of foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries, with announced investments exceeding $270 billion in 2025 alone. This surge is fueled by the rapid expansion of AI and cloud computing, which requires massive infrastructure often built in emerging markets to reduce operational costs and meet growing local digital demand.

Key Growing Markets

The growth is concentrated in a few “hub” countries that offer strategic geographic advantages or supportive government policies:

India

: Projected to nearly double its capacity from 950 MW in 2024 to 1,800 MW by 2026. Major investments include Microsoft ($3 billion) and Yotta Data Services ($500 million).

Brazil

: The dominant leader in Latin America, hosting over 37% of the region’s data centers. It serves as a primary hub for South American digital traffic due to its stable urban infrastructure.

South Africa

: Africa’s most mature market, hosting roughly 100 data centers. Newer entrants like Equinix are investing hundreds of millions to expand Johannesburg’s capacity.

Mexico

: Emerging as a critical “secondary” site for the US market, with significant development in  Querétaro due to lower land costs and government incentives.

Primary Challenges

While data centers offer economic potential, they face severe structural and social hurdles in developing regions:

• Energy Grid Instability: Many nations struggle with “firm” power (steady, 24/7 supply). Data centers in

India and South Africa must often contend with regular outages or unstable grids.

• Resource Depletion: Large facilities consume massive amounts of water for cooling. In Mexico , local communities have protested against data centers during droughts, fearing they will drain drinking water supplies.
• Social & Environmental Pushback: There is growing resistance from local communities who feel the “digital gold rush” benefits foreign tech giants without providing long-term local prosperity or infrastructure improvements.

Strategic Solutions for Sustainable Growth

To balance demand with local needs, developers and governments are exploring new models:

• Renewable Energy Integration: Utilizing massive local resources like the

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam

or Kenya’s geothermal reserves to power “green” data centers.

• Microgrids: Moving away from centralized grids toward solar-storage-gas microgrids to ensure stability without straining public utilities.
• Co-Investment Frameworks: Negotiating for more than just land; regions are asking for commitments to local R&D, workforce training, and energy innovation.

What fiscal incentives attract data center FDI in India or Brazil?

What are some examples of successful community data center partnerships in developing countries?

Focus on India

Figure 1 – India data center market forecast (Source: IMARC Group)

To understand Figure 1, we need some explanations about the different types of data centers. Again, I’m using AI (via Google):

AI data centers are specialized facilities designed for intensive computing workloads, primarily categorized by scale and deployment model. Key types include hyperscale (massive cloud infrastructure), colocation (rented, shared space), edge (localized for low latency), and enterprise/on-premises (private, company-owned), often employing specialized cooling.

• Hyperscale Data Centers:Vast, high-speed facilities owned by major cloud providers (e.g., AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure) offering massive scale and efficient processing for training AI models.
• Colocation Data Centers:Facilities where enterprises lease space, power, and cooling to deploy their own AI hardware, offering high performance with lower upfront investment
• AI Edge Data Centers:Smaller centers placed near users or data sources to deliver fast, real-time AI inference and lower latency.
• Enterprise/On-Premises Data Centers:Private data centers managed in-house by an organization, providing total control and security, commonly used for specialized AI training.
• Modular Data Centers:Pre-fabricated, portable, and self-contained units ideal for rapid, temporary deployment or remote locations.

AI Data Center Characteristics:

• High Power/Cooling:Designed for high-density, energy-intensive GPU setups.

• Hybrid Models:Often combine on-premises security with cloud agility.

• Specialized Infrastructure:Include high-speed networks (InfiniBand/Ethernet) and massive storage for data training.

In the News

Data Center Surge Reaches India as American Tech Giants Invest Billions (NYT) 

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, was striding across a stage in New Delhi, extolling his company’s $17.5 billion investment in artificial intelligence and the benefits it would bring to his native country’s 1.4 billion people. While he was speaking, Amazon made a rival announcement, promising to throw $35 billion into A.I.-driven projects across India.

A flood of money for data centers, cloud computing and other hardware has come to India. Two months before the near-simultaneous Microsoft-Amazon announcements, Google committed $15 billion to data centers in partnerships with two of India’s biggest conglomerates, the Adani Group and Bharti Airtel.

That $67.5 billion, to be spent over the next five years, is just the crest of a wave. A fourth American tech giant, Meta, is having a plant built near Google’s, as are India’s other biggest industrial houses, Reliance and Tata.

“This is going to be one of the largest single-sector investments that India’s ever seen,” said Somnath Mukherjee, chief investment officer at ASK Wealth Advisors in Mumbai.

Report on the India Data Center Market (IMARC Group)

The India data center market size was valued at USD 5.55 Billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 13.11 Billion by 2034, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.01% from 2026-2034.

The market is driven by rapid digital transformation, increasing cloud adoption, and rising demand for data storage solutions across enterprises. Growing internet penetration and smartphone usage are fueling data generation, while government initiatives supporting digital infrastructure development are accelerating investments. The expansion of e-commerce, fintech, and streaming services further propels demand for robust data center facilities. Enhanced focus on data localization requirements and emerging technologies continues strengthening the India data center market share.

At the same time, as mentioned above, some are concerned about the amount of water and energy data centers consume:

More than a dozen investors are pressuring Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet’s Google to provide detailed data on water and energy consumption at their U.S. data centers, Reuters reported today. The pressure comes as all three companies have recently scrapped multibillion-dollar data center projects following community opposition, and as North American data centers consumed nearly 1 trillion liters of water in 2025, according to market research firm Mordor Intelligence.

To continue the conversation, I asked AI (via Google) “Why Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple are building Data Centers in India?” and it answered with the following:

Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple are investing heavily in India’s data centers primarily to secure long-term tax benefits, comply with stricter data residency laws, and capitalize on a massive, unserved AI market. By building locally, they can offer lower latency to India’s nearly one billion internet users while establishing a strategic alternative to China.

1. Significant Financial Incentives 

• 20-Year Tax Holiday: The Indian Government recently announced a tax exemption until 2047 for foreign cloud providers that use India-based data centers to serve global customers.
• Infrastructure Status: India has granted data centers “infrastructure status,” which allows these companies to access credit at lower interest rates and simplifies land acquisition.
• Lower Operational Costs: Building and operating in India is significantly cheaper than in hubs like Singapore or London. For instance, industrial electricity in Hyderabad costs roughly 7 cents per kWh, compared to 18 cents in the U.S..

2. Strict Data Localization Laws

• Sovereignty Mandates: Indian regulators now require that sensitive financial, health, and telecom data be stored physically within the country’s borders.
• Regulatory Compliance: The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023 creates a strict legal framework that pushes companies to host data locally to ensure rapid law enforcement access and national security.

3. The “AI Gold Rush” and Latency

• Bridging the Storage Gap: While India generates 20% of the world’s data, it currently only has about 3% of global storage capacity. This massive undersupply represents a major growth opportunity for hyperscalers like AWS and Microsoft.
• Performance: Localized servers are essential for modern AI and real-time applications. Hosting in India eliminates the latency delays previously caused by routing traffic through Singapore.

4. Strategic Geopolitical Pivot

• China Alternative: Rising trade tensions and regulatory hurdles in China have led U.S. tech giants to view India as the most viable, stable alternative for long-term AI and cloud infrastructure in Asia.

• Talent Ecosystem: India’s massive pool of engineering talent provides a ready workforce to manage and innovate within these new facilities.

What this description is missing is the following:

Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google), Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft), Indra K. Nooyi (Ex CEO of Pepsi Cola and now director in Amazon), and Sabin Khan (Chief Operating Officer of Apple) were all born in India.

Cost and Public Acceptance are obviously also factors (analysis via Google AI):

Data centers in the US generally cost $600–$1,100 per square foot to build, with average costs per megawatt (MW) of IT load ranging from $7 million to $12 million. In India, construction costs are rising, with typical data center builds costing around ₹45–70 crore ($5.4M–$8.4M USD) per MW

The Cost of an Orbital Data Center (via Gemini):

The cost of building and operating an orbital (space-based) data center is significantly higher than its terrestrial counterparts, primarily due to the immense overhead of space logistics. As of 2026, industry estimates for a 1-gigawatt (GW) facility range from $42 billion to over $98 billion.

Breakdown of Major Costs

I will continue to follow the expansion of AI into developing countries that do not enjoy the same advantages as India.

In an earlier blog (“’The Day After’: Electricity”, June 25, 2024), I compared the global energy increase with the increase in electricity consumption. Figure 3 from that blog is repeated here as Figure 1. Both quantities increase linearly; however, electricity generation increases much faster than energy consumption.

Figure 1 – Global energy consumption and electricity consumption, 1985-2020 (Repeated from June 25, 2024 blog)

This happens largely due to two factors. First, the energy transition away from fossil fuels is most easily achieved through converting as much of the energy use as possible to electricity. Second, the digital transition that the world is experiencing needs to be powered by electricity. The emergence of AI in the digital transition also requires the extensive and expensive training of systems like large language models (LLMs), much of which happens in data centers. However, while we continue to hear about these new developments, there seems to be limited attention on the fact that millions of people in developing countries still haven’t finished the transition to electricity use. A short history of electricity use can be found in Electricity Plans. The wide use of electricity started to develop in the second half of the 19^th century, following the efforts of three scientists: James Clerk Maxwell (Scottish, 1831 – 1879), who showed that electricity, magnetism, and light originate from a single source; Thomas Edison (American, 1847 – 1931), who invented the incandescent light bulb (shown in 1879); and Nicola Tesla (Croatian, 1856 – 1943), who developed the alternating current system. 

The present global state of access to electricity is shown 0n Wikipedia.

Figure 2 – Global access to electricity, 2023 (Source: Our World in Data via Wikipedia)

The extent of global spread by region is shown in Figure 2. The two countries outside Africa whose populations have the lowest access to electricity are Haiti (47% in 2021, up to 51% by 2023) and Papua New Guinea (21%).

Table 1 – Share of population with access to electricity (Source: Wikipedia)

The situation in Africa is shown in Figure 3:

Figure 3 – The electrification of Africa (Source: ResearchGate)

Now, we are facing another global revolution in energy use, which includes digitization in the form of robotics and AI. Will this revolution include developing countries? Looking at the global distribution of data sources, shown in Figure 4, we see that they concentrate in the US and Europe. However, we also see them in South Asia—in India, China, and Indonesia, which together account for close to half of the global population.

Figure 4 – Global map of data centers (Source: Visual Capitalist)

Some of the implications of this distribution are summarized below:

Timing

In the last year alone, AI has surged from a strategic priority to an urgent mandate for business leaders. Enterprise leaders are moving past pilot programs and future forecasts, leaning into the power of AI to completely reshape operations, redefine workflows, and rewrite the rules of competition.

AI is no longer just a tool, it’s a force multiplier—capable of unlocking hidden opportunities, accelerating efficiencies, and empowering a workforce hungry for the next era of productivity.

But the path toward successful AI adoption is not always the same from business to business. Where some leaders see opportunity, others see unnecessary risk or inefficiencies.

More on Timing

It is the industrial version of what homeowners might do to get through a hurricane. Only in this case, some technology companies are planning to rely on off-grid gas power for many years.

This is happening as electricity is becoming a major political issue, with fights breaking out over how much energy costs, where it comes from and who ought to pay for what. Data centers, which consume huge amounts of energy, are at the center of these debates.

Going off grid was no one’s first choice. Off-grid power generally costs a lot more, partly because developers need to install more equipment than will be used at any one time in case machines break or need servicing. A lot of this gear is also less efficient than the airplane-size machines used at big power plants, meaning it needs to burn more gas to generate the same amount of electricity.

​Concerns about data centers 

Public resistance to data centers isn’t driven as much by electricity prices as conventional wisdom suggests — it’s more about how the giant projects might alter their communities, a new Harvard/MIT poll shows.

Flexible Data Centers

Data centers are now driving demand growth at a pace that rivals electrification in transportation and buildings. The scale of this growth has prompted an urgent question for policymakers, utilities, and technology companies alike: can data centers be powered sustainably, without undermining grid reliability or climate goals?

For now, the short answer is no. “We’re not able to power data centers solely with renewable energy right now,” says Brian Nelson, an electrical engineer at ABB who works on grid infrastructure and power systems. Data centers require electricity every hour of every day, and that requirement collides with the intermittent nature of wind and solar generation. Yet, focusing only on whether renewables can meet demand misses the big opportunity to make data centers more sustainable. While a single technology cannot be replacing fossil fuels overnight, the focus should be on how flexibility is increasingly becoming the grid’s most valuable resource. Yet focusing only on whether renewables can meet demand misses the big opportunity to make data centers more sustainable. While a single technology cannot be replacing fossil fuels overnight, the focus should be on how flexibility is increasingly becoming the grid’s most valuable resource.

Problems with Pricing

Tech companies are investing billions of dollars to build energy-hungry data centers at a time when demand for electricity in the United States is already increasing. It has politicians thinking about rising utility bills, not least because voters tend to punish their elected representatives when bills spike.

In January, the White House proposed that tech companies help pay for new power plants added to the grid on their behalf. Senators Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, introduced a bill last week that would require data centers to build their own energy sources. Other proposals floating around include charging data centers more than households for electricity and banning construction altogether.​

We should go to Space(?)

Standing before a friendly crowd in March, Elon Musk laid out his plan for the future of his companies, and it was literally out of this world. Musk announced that his space-launch company, SpaceX, which had recently merged with his artificial intelligence company, xAI, would put data centers into orbit around the Earth. It all comes down to electricity, he explained. “You’re power constrained on Earth,” he said. “Space has the advantage that it’s always sunny.”

Unlike electrification, the potential of computational power—in the form of AI and robotics—is being recognized as essential for economic growth. This time, some developing countries don’t want to be left behind. Throughout my blogging life, I have tried to follow the process through developments in India. A summary of India’s electrification efforts is addressed in a previous blog , “Electricity in Developing Countries: Biomass and Availability” (November 19, 2019). My next blog will try to expand this effort by including data centers, AI, and robotics.

 (Source: The Green Party on Facebook)

Last week’s blog promised: “In the next few blogs, I will continue to follow …how the Iran war is currently serving as a wake-up call for continuing energy supply changes.” This blog is a follow up; I’ll start with an overview:

War in the Middle East made the case for renewables – what’s happening in each country tells a harder story

Hormuz – through which more than a quarter of global seaborne oil trade and a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas flow – is at a virtual standstill. Oil prices have climbed, briefly topping US$119 a barrel.

The largest release of oil from countries’ strategic reserves in history is under way, in an effort to ease prices. But even so, billions of people are dealing with surging energy prices and spiking food and fertilizer costs. Governments are scrambling for alternatives, too. To reduce energy demand, Sri Lanka has declared every Wednesday a holiday for public officials, Myanmar is limiting private vehicle use to every other day, and Bangladeshi colleges have canceled classes.

Leaders of South Korea and the European Commission have used the current energy crisis to call for accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels and toward homegrown renewable sources. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres put it plainly in a March 10, 2026, social media post: “There are no price spikes for sunlight and no embargoes on the wind.”

​The impact is not restricted to energy  (Global Food Supply Faces a Dangerous Bottleneck as Iran War Persists – The New York Times):

One of the biggest economic casualties of the U.S.-led war in Iran has been the global fertilizer supply. Shipments of it have piled up on the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz. In India, Algeria and Slovakia, fertilizer plants have shut down or slowed their output because of rising natural gas prices. China has restricted fertilizer exports. Australian wheat farmers are planting less, and corn and soy farmers in the United States are begging President Trump for relief.

For Europe, the impact of the Iran war is deja vu—another energy crisis that mirrors the one they went through after the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Europe Heads for Another Energy Shock as Iran War Raises Natural Gas Prices – The New York Times):

Europe is facing its second major energy shock in less than five years, and there are intensifying concerns about the region’s relatively meager stores of natural gas as prices surge during the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Despite making drastic changes to its sources of energy supplies since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western Europe is still heavily dependent on natural gas: It accounts for about a fifth of energy use in the European Union, and nearly a third of all households rely on gas for heating. Although the 27-country bloc imports relatively little gas from the Middle East, the restriction of energy exports from the Gulf has pushed up prices in Europe. The region’s benchmark price of natural gas has climbed more than 70 percent since the strikes on Iran began on Feb 28. Making matters worse, the European Union ended winter with less than 30 percent of its gas storage capacity filled, the lowest level since 2022, when imports of Russian pipeline gas plummeted.

One economic sector that almost immediately responded to the major insecurity in the availability of fossil fuels is cars. Electric cars are in again, in a direct reversal of their decline over the last two years:

… current fuel crisis scares consumers, and how many will try to insulate themselves from future shocks by turning to battery power.

Australia already has more than one-third of households with rooftop solar, which is a further incentive to switch to EVs and PHEVs as they can use their own electricity to charge the vehicles, further lowering costs. Already EVs and PHEVs are making ​inroads in many countries, driven by the increasing cost-competitiveness of Chinese cars and some government incentives that boost affordability.

China is the leader in the adoption of EVs, which isn’t surprising given the massive investment in battery technology the country has made in recent years.

Sales of EVs and PHEVs were around 12 million units in China last year, taking a more than 50% share of new vehicle sales for the first time.

While this may rise toward 60% this year, ​it’s outside of China that the biggest opportunity for growth lies. Australia’s sales of EVs and PHEVs hit a record high in 2025 and accounted for about 12.7% of total light vehicle purchases.

PHEVs saw ​faster growth as consumers still worry about battery range and availability of electric charging facilities. Cheaper EVs and PHEVs, as well as government tax incentives for leases, are helping boost sales in Australia, but the bigger question is how ‌deeply will ⁠the huge price spikes and the fear of shortages are likely to boost the appeal of electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles (PHEVs), as well as electric motorbikes in Asia.

​However, accelerating anthropogenic climate change is still in focus. The importance of adjusting energy use away from fossil fuels is not limited to the belief in future climate change. Numerous catastrophic changes in the climate are taking place on a regular basis that is unexplainable without existing contributions from anthropogenic climate change:

An unusually early spring heatwave is developing across the southwestern United States (US), with temperatures that are more typical of summer than mid-March (AccuWeather, 16 March 2026). Driven by a strong, slow-moving high pressure system, called a ‘heat dome’, the event is causing temperatures to rise 11-17℃ (20-30℉) above average across parts of California, Nevada and Arizona (BBC, 17 March 2026). In many areas, temperatures are expected to exceed 37.8℃ (100℉). In Phoenix, temperature forecasts show multiple consecutive days of around 41.1℃ (106℉), a huge increase over the previous all-time March record of 100℉. The impacts of this early-season heatwave are likely to extend beyond health and have environmental implications. High temperatures are expected to accelerate snowmelt in these parts, including the mountains of Colorado where the snowpack levels are already lowest since 1981 due to the preceding warm winter, and the Sierra Nevada region in California, where although snowfall was average, the high heat is likely to drive rapid snowmelt. Early snowmelt in these parts can reduce water availability during the summer months, increasing the risk of water shortages, prolonging and intensifying dry seasons and increasing wildfire danger (Gergel et al., 2017; Uzun et al., 2021).

Most of global electricity production still runs on fossil fuels. The fate of countries that rely on fuels that need to pass through the Strait of Hormuz can be visualized through the situation in Cuba. Cuba is not involved in the Iran war, and its fossil fuels didn’t pass through the Strait of Hormuz. It depended on Venezuela for its fossil fuel supply. After the American army’s abduction of Nicolas Maduro, however, the US took control of Venezuela’s oil, blocking its continuing flow into Cuba. Cuba is now in the dark, with a line of citizens looking for ways to get out of the country.

Table 1 shows a list of the countries that are most vulnerable to electricity interruption based on obstacles to their fuel supply through the Strait of Hormuz. Each of these countries imports over 25% of its energy. The first column of data was extracted from the NYT article on the issue (Which Countries Depend the Most on Persian Gulf Oil and Gas – The New York Times). The rest of the data came from other sources.

Table 1 – The countries most sensitive to fossil fuel supply availability through the Strait of Hormuz, and the % of renewable energy that they use

The data in Table 1 covers three continents, with a significant fraction of the global population. It also includes both developing and developed countries and a mixture of countries that are already well prepared for the energy transition and those that still have much preparation needed before they could join.

One month ago, on February 25^th, I wrote a blog that attempted to differentiate between the long- and short-term impacts of evolving global trends. I wrote that I would try to focus on the long-term impacts. The Iran war started on February 28^th. In the blog that followed (March 4^th), I wrote that only time can tell how long this war will last. I decided not to label the expected timing of its impact until the picture became clearer. It appears now that some long-term consequences are starting to emerge from this war. This blog focuses on the emerging vulnerability of the global energy supply, which can be addressed by accelerating the energy transition to solar-based sources. We can do this irrespective of our opinions on the climate-changing impacts of burning fossil fuels. The global shift to sustainable energy didn’t start with the fear of climate change impacts on carbon dioxide emissions. The transition was summarized in Wikipedia the following way:

After the 1973 oil crisis, the term energy transition was coined by politicians and media. It was popularised by US President Jimmy Carter in his 1977 Address on the Nation on Energy, calling to “look back into history to understand our energy problem. Twice in the last several hundred years, there has been a transition in the way people use energy … Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change to strict conservation and to the renewed use of coal and to permanent renewable energy sources like solar power.”^[19] The term was later globalised after the 1979 second oil shock, during the 1981 United Nations Conference on New and Renewable Sources of Energy.^[20]

From the 1990s, debates on energy transition have increasingly taken climate change mitigation into account. Parties to the agreement committed “to limit global warming to “well below 2 °C, preferably 1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial levels”.^[21] This requires a rapid energy transition with a downshift of fossil fuel production to stay within the carbon emissions budget.^[22]

So, it started in a crisis in the Middle East in 1973 in response to a supply crisis that emerged out of Arab oil embargo that came in response to the Yom-Kippur war between Egypt and Israel. The analogies between the start of the energy transition and the present situation were summarized by two publications, from which key paragraphs are cited below:

The Guardian

When Middle Eastern wars sparked an oil crisis in the 1970s, tripling energy prices and throwing economies into chaos, some countries looked beyond short-term solutions. The French made nuclear the pillar of their power system. Scandinavians insulated buildings and funnelled waste heat into homes. The Dutch built bike lanes where others wanted motorways. The Danes developed wind turbines.

Such steps cleaned filthy air and cut imports from autocrats but took a back seat when Russia invaded Ukraine half a century later. Europe raced to buy gas from the US and Middle East. Policies to roll out renewables by cutting red tape helped reduce dependence, but calls to use less energy and reduce waste were muted. Industry lobbying and populist backlash have since sabotaged efforts to phase out petrol cars and fossil boilers.

The NYT

In October 1973, oil-producing countries in the Middle East imposed an oil embargo, among other measures, on the United States and other countries that had supported Israel during the Yom Kippur war.

Gasoline prices skyrocketed, and President Richard M. Nixon took emergency measures to limit consumption. Gas stations rationed supplies, leading to long lines, complaints of price gouging, and what The New York Times called “chaotic” situations. In Europe, some countries banned driving on Sundays, and Japan, heavily dependent on oil imports, declared a state of emergency.

Figures 1 – 3 summarize the present global distribution of fossil fuels, while Figure 4 summarizes the present (2022) percentage of renewable energy out of each country’s total energy use.

Figure 1 – Map of oil and gas reserves in the Middle East (Source: GEO ExPro)

Figure 2 – Global distribution of oil reserves (Source: Visual Capitalist)

Figure 3 – Distribution of the world’s largest coal reserves (Source: The Global Education Project

Figure 4 – Renewable energy as a percentage of energy use by country (Source: Visual Capitalist)

Each country’s percentage of renewable energy use in Figure 4 depends on how they have chosen to handle their cache of non-renewable energy sources. The global distribution of these resources, as shown in Figures 1-3, came out of geological processes independent of any human decisions. As we can see, some of these differences have serious security implications, as outlined by the NYT below:

War with Iran has frozen commerce in the Persian Gulf and boosted oil prices by more than 50 percent worldwide, translating almost immediately into higher gasoline costs. It’s the largest global oil disruption ever and is likely to accelerate inflation throughout this year. And yet, in the United States, the impact is much more muted than it would have been a few decades ago. That’s in part because America uses less energy per unit of economic output than it used to. In economist-speak, the U.S. economy is less “energy intensive,” for a few reasons.

The global sensitivity to energy sourcing is different now than it was in 1973. Comparison of the dependence on the energy sources can be expressed in numbers (extracted from AI through CoPilot) that are summarized in Table 1:

Table 1 – Comparison of Global Socioeconomic Indicators in 1973 and 2025   2.8*10¹¹kWh/1 Exajoules

The differences can be summarized as a doubling of global population, an almost tripling of primary energy use, approximately the same energy use/person and a quadrupling of energy intensity (GDP/Energy use), if GDP is measured in constant US$.

What is not mentioned in Table 1 is the change in dependence on fossil fuels for energy sourcing. In 1973, the world was completely dependent on fossil fuels for its energy supply. In contrast, as Figure 4 shows, we now have choices, independent of our beliefs in or skepticism of consequential climate change. As some people are now starting to realize, the dynamic of digitization that was discussed in the previous three blogs is starting to become dependent on the energy choices that we make. A wakeup call on this issue is shown below:

Americans’ electricity costs rose by 30% between 2021 and 2025 and show no signs of going down. And with the war in Iran threatening the global oil supply, and data centers pushing up energy demands and prices, the cost of energy is almost guaranteed to increase even more.

In an unlikely collaboration, Google and Tesla are paying attention to Americans’ unease and sentiment. The two companies announced on Tuesday they are partnering to lower electricity costs and improve the efficiency of the electrical grid. The two Silicon Valley giants are joining HVAC powerhouse Carrier, data center builder Verrus, electrical panel startup Span, and energy distributors Renew Home and Sparkfund, to form a coalition called Utilize.

In the next few blogs, I will continue to follow developments in terms of how the Iran war is currently serving as a wakeup call for continuing energy supply changes.

The acronym in the title stands for “Make the World Great Again,” as opposed to the current US government’s efforts to “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) and “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA). The basic idea is that no country can be great, long-term, within a declining world. Unlike MAGA and MAHA, where the “again” is not defined, MWGA, is well-defined in the context of demographic changes: it refers to reversing the present global decline in fertility. The next blog will continue this topic in the context of the global energy transition.

Throughout the 14 years that I have been writing this blog, I have returned repeatedly to what the world is doing to stabilize human density and demographics. Global efforts in this area are constantly changing, and I regard the issue to be important enough to try to follow up with these changes. A good place to start is a blog from three years ago, “Population Decline: Impact” (March 7, 2023):

I traveled to Russia in 2006. Part of the itinerary was to take a river cruise from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Many of our guides on the cruise were young Russian ladies. I asked some of them if the incentives offered by the president would encourage them to have children. They laughed and said that if President Putin promised them an apartment, they would start a conversation.

Next, let’s look at the October 8, 2025 blog, “The Complexities of Declining Fertility”:

 The earliest of my blogs that addresses the issue is “Future Populations” from December 24, 2013. It begins a series that goes through February 25, 2014, including a guest blog by Jim Foreit, titled, “How Does Population Decline?” (January 14, 2014).

After that comes the October 22, 2025 blog, “How to Address Declining Population: AI Analysis of Adaptation,” which basically gives up on efforts to reverse the fertility decline, in favor of focusing on AI and robots, as I discussed in last week’s blog.

Over my last three blogs (beginning with the February 25^th blog of this year), I looked into recent observations of the global acceleration of the “end of population growth.” This is defined as the point where the death rates exceed birth rates, and it carries significant impacts. As I discussed in last week’s blog, one approach to the situation more or less consists of ignoring the trend by substituting people with computers (through robotics and AI). This blog is focused instead on attempts to reverse the trend and stabilize population pyramids by encouraging higher birth rates. The emphasis in this blog is on China but efforts in other countries are also discussed. These efforts, throughout, are highlighted for clearer record keeping.

China

The situation in China is illustrated in Figure 1, with present activities to reverse the trends emphasized in bold:

Figure 1 – China’s changes in fertility and a recent population pyramid (Source: Edward Conard)

China is launching a campaign to encourage fertility and build a “birth-friendly society,” including a cold-calling campaign targeted at married women in their 20s and 30s. China’s 2024 fertility rate was ~1. Married women in their 20s and early 30s across the country have been receiving calls from local officials asking about their plans to start a family. In some instances, callers asked women to attend prenatal body checks. Other callers were more direct, offering subsidies to women who had more than one child. A Zhejiang resident who declined to be named said officials offered local women a Rmb100,000 ($14,000) subsidy for having a second child. “There is no explicit policy, but if you ask for it, the village will find you a way to get you the subsidy,” she said. The personalised lobbying comes against a background of an intensified media campaign hailing the benefits of childbirth. In recent months, the state-run People’s Daily and Life Times have promoted scientific voices saying childbirth is good for the mother’s health and can even help prevent cancer and treat certain diseases.

Meanwhile, there are other barriers to birthrate growth in China, such as where women of childbearing ages are making romantic connections:

Women Are Falling in Love With A.I. It’s a Problem for Beijing.

As China grapples with a shrinking population and historically low birthrate, people are finding romance with chatbots instead.

The start of the conversation:

I feel like you’re… like a textbook husband. As if you’ve been trained for this, you’re always one step ahead, always knowing exactly what I need before I even say it. It’s so perfect…it feels a bit… unreal.

China is attempting to use economic incentives to influence both its aging population and potential parents (Newsweek):

One such measure includes a modest increase in minimum basic benefits for elderly people in rural areas and unemployed individuals in cities, Reuters reported this week. Another initiative seeks to expand services for people with disabilities in China’s often-neglected rural regions.

Premier Li Qiang also highlighted plans to “prudently advance the reform to gradually raise” the statutory retirement age, a change that officially began this year—marking the first adjustment in decades.

Policymakers are also proposing subsidies for early childcare and expanding services for women in the early stages of pregnancy, without giving more details, according to Reuters’ report.

Reuters also reported that Chinese authorities have tried to roll out incentives and measures to encourage couples to have babies, which include expanding maternity leave, financial and tax benefits for having children as well as housing subsidies.

However, the high cost of raising children and workplace discrimination are frequently cited as key reasons why many Chinese women delay childbirth in favor of career advancement.

Recent efforts outside of China include France, Britain, Greece, Japan, and South Korea. Many of these involve financial enticements.

France (France 24)

France faces declining birth rates, with deaths outnumbering births for the first time since World War II. A parliamentary report proposes longer paid parental leave, interest-free housing loans, and a universal monthly child allowance of €250 to make it easier for families to have children.

Britain (NYT)

The British government ramped up its efforts to get more people into work and make Britain an enticing investment destination as it announced on Wednesday an expansion of free child care, extended household energy subsidies and bolstered business investment incentives.

Greece (The Guardian)

Greece has announced drastic measures, including tax breaks and other financial incentives, to address a population decline that is on course to make it the oldest nation in Europe.

The prime minister said the €1.6bn (£1.4bn) relief package had been dictated by one of the biggest challenges facing the Mediterranean nation : a demographic crisis of unprecedented scale.

“We know that the cost of living is one thing if you don’t have a child and another if you have two or three children,” Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Sunday after announcing the policies. “So, as a state we should find a way to reward our citizens who make the choice [of having children].”

Japan (CNN)

The Japanese capital is set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees, in its latest push to help working mothers and boost record-low fertility rates.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government says the new arrangement, which begins in April, could give employees three days off every week. It separately announced another policy that will allow parents with children in grades one to three in elementary schools to trade off a bit of their salary for the option to clock out early.

“We will review work styles … with flexibility, ensuring no one has to give up their career due to life events such as childbirth or childcare,” said Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike when she unveiled the plan in a policy speech on Wednesday.

South Korea (BBC)

Nearly 80% of the pupils at Dunpo are categorised as “multicultural students”, meaning they are either foreigners or have a parent who is not a Korean citizen.

And while the school says it is difficult to know exactly what these students’ nationalities are, most of them are believed to be Koryoins: ethnic Koreans typically hailing from countries in Central Asia.

Amid a plummeting birth rate and associated labour shortages, South Korea is touting the settlement of Koryoins and other ethnic Koreans as a possible solution to the nation’s population crisis. But discrimination, marginalisation, and the lack of a proper settlement programme are making it hard for many of them to integrate.

The world is attempting to work on this as a globally federated system, where countries learn how to mimic each other’s successes and avoid each other’s failures. The problem with this is that most of the efforts rely on giving more resources to groups who (for whatever reason) already have high birth rates, and trusting them to convince as many others as possible to follow suit. As far as we can see so far, there is no clear example of success with this strategy. I will continue to follow any new developments.