Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
new lands to grow crops or convert to other uses. The
total human-caused emissions in the year
according
to the IPCC were
billion tons per year of CO
e,
climbing to
billion tons per year in
or very
roughly by
% per year. The energy sector is both the
largest and fastest growing source of emissions and this is
what I focus on here, but agriculture and land-use changes
are a large problem that I only touch on in a later chapter
on biofuels. Biofuels may be a case where the conse-
quences of adopting a self-serving proposal from agribusi-
ness have made things worse instead of better. Agriculture
and land use are problems that deserve much more atten-
tion than they are getting, but the main focus in the rest of
this topic is on the larger issue, energy usage.
.
Energy Now and in the Future
The use of commercial fuel drives the economies of
the world. Countries using the least energy per capita
have the least income per capita and their people are the
poorest. Countries using the most energy per capita have
the largest incomes per capita and their people are the
richest. The poor want to grow rich, the rich want to
grow richer, and so energy consumption everywhere in
the world continues to rise.
The very poorest countries are not now relevant to
world energy demand or to the greenhouse gas emissions
that drive climate change. There are about
billion
people who have no access to any form of commercial
energy. If they were magically given enough to run a
refrigerator, light their homes at night, and run their
schools, the added energy required would amount to only
.
