But look beyond fossil fuels for the most intriguing trends.…

But look beyond fossil fuels for the most intriguing trends. One is that the energy intensity of the world economy — the amount of energy it takes to produce one dollar’s worth of 1 — keeps falling, at a rate of about 2 percent. What this means is that even without any change in the 2 shares of fossil-based and fossil-free sources in the world’s energy mix, we could have 2 percent annual economic growth without increasing carbon emissions from energy use. Of course that is not enough to 3 climate change and we need more economic growth than that. It is 4 a stunning number, which refutes the claim by some environmentalists that permanent economic growth is fundamentally incompatible 5 finite physical resources.