Reducing emissions in Canada, however laudable, is irrelevant to fighting climate change unless doing so results in creating clean technologies to help power the developing world
Our piece on Canadian climate policy ran in today's Ottawa Citizen, the leading newspaper of the capital. Here's an excerpt:
As the human population increases from 6.5 billion today to roughly nine billion in 2050, and as developing nations grow richer, global energy consumption will roughly triple. This, by and large, is a very good thing, for higher levels of energy are strongly correlated with longer life spans, better health outcomes, and higher levels of prosperity.
Indoor plumbing, functional sanitation systems, hospitals, schools, roads, air conditioning and transportation all require using huge quantities of energy.
At the same time, there is a scientific consensus that if we were to triple energy consumption using mostly fossil fuels, global temperatures will rise by two or more degrees, which could worsen food and water shortages, especially in poorer countries, lead to resource wars, and melt polar ice caps enough to flood many coastal parts of the world.
Given this, the relevant question is this: How can we triple global energy consumption without reaching dangerous levels of global warming?
Click here to read the full op-ed.
