With or without the threat of human-caused climate disruption, it’s clear the world lacks the menu of energy options it will require to avoid trouble as the human population heads toward 9 billion people (more or less), all seeking a decent life. The definition of decent life, of course, depends on who’s doing the defining. But clearly such a life would not necessarily include children being required to walk two hours a day to collect firewood or a bucket of potable water (instead of, say, going to school or helping plant a crop or just being a kid). Needless to say, a decent life also does not necessarily require three cars, 5,000 square feet of house, and 100,000 frequent-flier miles a year.
Even if you trim off the ends of the curve of squalor and overindulgence, you end up with a huge energy gap, which may already be what is helping drive up oil and coal prices (keep in mind most experts on fossil fuels I talk to see no signs of “peak coal” any time soon).
By some credible estimates, triple today’s fossil-based energy supply is likely to be required by mid-century. The Group of 8 meeting and the brief followup session on climate organized by President Bush touched on the need for both energy security and climate stability. My print story today assessing the outcome of President Bush’s effort to extract climate plans from the “major economies” (aka “major emitters”) includes a description by Gwyn Prins of a moment when those imperatives seemed to clash. A meeting one morning, he said, was devoted to lowering fuel prices, and one the same afternoon was all about the merits of a carbon cap or tax to raise fuel prices.
Which do you think will win out in the short run if fuel prices stay where they’ve been of late?
Can the human species be sophisticated (mature) enough to keep in mind a looming challenge (decarbonizing the energy system, which will happen eventually anyway) even as it deals with a real-time problem (avoiding energy-related economic turmoil)?
Sooner or later, whether forced by climate disruption or fossil-fueled wars, we’ll have to move off the coal and oil steps on Loren Eiseley’s “heat ladder.”
Source :http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/global-warming/
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