THE ANTHROPOCENE - Plastics and Environmental Sustainability - page 7

have local or global consequences. Plastics industry is intricately connected
and embedded in the various sectors that comprise the global economy. Its
growth, sustainability, and impact on the environment ultimately depend
on what the future world will look like. Therefore, to better understand
the impacts of the use of plastic on the environment, it is first necessary
to appreciate the anthropogenic constraints that will craft and restrict the
future world. The following sections will discuss these in terms of the future
energy demand, the material availability, and the pollution load spawned by
increasing global population and industrial productivity.
1.1 ENERGY FUTURES
Rapid growth in population accompanies an inevitable corresponding
increaseinthedemandforfood,freshwater,shelter,andenergy.Supporting
rapid growth of a single dominant species occupying the highest level of
the food chain must invariably compromise global biodiversity. Humans
naturally appropriate most of the Earth's resources, and to exacerbate the
situation, the notion of what constitutes “comfortable living” is also
continually upgraded in terms of increasingly energy- and
material-intensive lifestyles. Invariably, this will mean an even higher per
capita demand on materials and energy, disproportionate to the anticipated
increase in population. An increasing population demanding the same set
of resources at progressively higher per capita levels cannot continue to
survive for too long on a pool of limited resources.
Energy for the world in 2012 was mainly derived from fossil fuels: 36.1%
from oil, 25.7% from natural gas, and 19.5% from coal, with 9.7% from
nuclear power and about 9% from renewable resources ( Fig. 1.4 ) . The global
demandisprojectedbytheEnergyInformationAdministration(EIA)torise
from the present 525 quads/year 8 in 2010 to 820 quads/year by 2040; over
half of this energy will continue to be used for transportation 9 (Chow et al.,
2003).Eventhisestimateislikelyanunderestimategiventherateofgrowth
in China and the developing world. In the developing countries, residential
heating/cooling demands most of the energy followed by industrial uses.
The pattern is different in the developed world where transportation is
often the leading sector for energy use. How will this large annual energy
deficit of about over 295 quads of energy be covered in the near future?
Given our singular penchant for energy, this presents a particularly vexing
problem.Themostpressingproblemwillbethehugedemandforelectricity,