Can We Really Cut CO2 Levels By Leaving Fossil Fuels In The Ground?
Population growth in the world’s developing economies, particularly Africa and Asia, has been and will continue to be a primary driver of demand for energy resources into the near and distant future. As more babies are delivered into the world, they will eventually crave consumer goods derived from mined commodities such as iron ore, copper, potash, uranium, nickel and rare earths. The babies grow up to buy homes, start businesses, and migrate to cities, all powered from energy, whether that energy is from hydro, wind, solar, natural gas, coal, nuclear or oil.
The International Energy Agency estimates that between 1990 and 2008, as world population increased 27 percent, energy use rocketed 39 percent. The Middle East was the biggest energy glutton, with an increase of 170 percent, followed by China at 146 percent, India at 91 percent, Africa 70 percent and Latin America 66 percent. 2009 was the first time in 30 years that world energy consumption declined, and that was only due to the financial crisis that killed growth across the entire global economy.
Unfortunately, as we all now know, the seemingly boundless demand for energy has put the earth’s inhabitants in a kind of prisoner’s dilemma with regards to how to meet the need for power, while at the same time stemming emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, that most scientists say is among the man-made culprits causing the planet to warm inexorably.
The problem of rising emissions has created a polarized debate among policymakers, with one side calling for action to stem climate change through international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, and the other arguing that emissions limits are part of a liberal agenda to cripple the coal, oil and gas industries that have provided well-paying jobs and steady shareholder income and growth for decades.
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