Sustainability and policy - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 478

from the 1970s to the Chernobyl incident in 1986 nuclear-generating capacity was
growing at between 25 and 30 GW year − 1 . After Chernobyl capacity typically grew
between 1 and 5 GW year − 1 . However, this belies a more complex picture revealed
by the number of nuclear reactors starting to be constructed. These peaked before
the Three Mile Island nuclear plant incident in 1979 and declined markedly after
it (Worldwatch Institute, 2003). There is little doubt that these two incidents under-
mined global confidence in nuclear power. Consequently, the contribution nuclear is
likely to make in the future is uncertain, although the potential is there.
Nonetheless, even the broad-brush picture that Table 8.3 portrays provides a couple
of illuminating points as to our species' near-future relationship with the carbon cycle
and climate. First, without taking any action to combat carbon emissions and to con-
tinue as we are, anthropogenic carbon emissions are set to approximately double
between 2000 and 2025. Second, even with the adoption of major greenhouse meas-
ures (developing non-fossil fuels, enhancing energy efficiency, reducing deforestation
and engaging in some reforestation) we will barely stabilise emissions.
The IPCC 2001 report, based on the then-peer-reviewed science, is quite clear as to
what a B-a-U future without greenhouse-combating measures will look like. By 2025
global temperatures will have increased by 0.75-0.9 ◦ C above 1990 temperatures and
by the century's end temperatures will have risen by 1.4-5.8 ◦ C. The IPCC's 2007
report did not substantially change this assessment. At the high end this would take us
well beyond Quaternary climates and the likelihood of the IPCC's warning of climate
surprises becomes very pertinent (see Chapter 6). With greenhouse measures by the
end of the century the temperature is still likely to exceed anything seen during our
own time (that of H. sapiens ) and especially the past 11 700 years (the Holocene).
Our world will change.
8.3 Energypolicyandcarbon
It is the human influence on the carbon cycle that is changing our world, above and
beyond the direct impacts of our species' physical presence. Of course these impacts
are affecting the global carbon cycle through land-use change, but beyond this it is
fossil fuel emissions that are by far the dominant factor (see Table 1.3). Consequently
no exploration of the human ecology (the way our species relates to others) of climate
change can be complete without looking at the energy dimension and energy policy
in carbon (and non-carbon) terms. This itself is a huge subject worthy of a number
of topics in its own right.
However, it is perhaps worth looking at five case studies. The first relates to a
country whose inhabitants emit the most carbon when taken as a combination of a
per-capita basis and as a nation: the USA. (Although of course if looking purely at
a per-capita basis there are smaller nations that consume more.) The second is about
Canada. The third is the UK, whose citizens along with a number of their Western
European peers (and a number of other developed nations such as Japan), emit a
little over half that of their US counterparts. Then, we briefly examine India and
China. Their citizens each release less carbon than North Americans and Europeans
but because they are developing and because India and China's populations are 1.1