GLOBAL ENERGY INEQUALITY LESSENS, BUT FOR HOW LONG?
The 18th century writer Adam Smith provided a workable
metaphor for the way society utilizes resources. In his book “The Wealth of Nations,” he
argued that even as individuals strive, through personal industry, to maximize
their advantage in life, they inadvertently contribute---as if under the
influence of a “hidden hand”---to an aggregate disposition of wealth. Well, if Smith were a physicist and alive in
the 21st century he might be tempted to compare people or nations to molecules
and to replace the phrase “hidden hand” with “thermodynamic process.”