For decades the prevailing assumption has been that a fossil-fuel-based economy would be constrained by oil, gas and coal depletion. Logical enough. But global warming has turned that paradigm on its head: It now appears that the atmosphere’s ability to assimilate fossil-fuel wastes will be the limiting factor. The question is no longer how much oil, gas and coal we have, but how much we can afford to burn.
A number of institutions and organizations, including Sweden’s Beijer Institute, the United Nations Environment Program, the World Meteorological Organization, Worldwatch Institute, the World Resources Institute, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Sierra Club, and the Woods Hole (MA) Research Center have independently concluded in recent months that the threat of warming is real and that action to deal with it is needed now.
Among options for such action are:
- A crash effort to step up research on the greenhouse effect
- Banning chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), gases used in refrigerants which are implicated in ozone depletion as well as warming
- Boosting the use of energy efficiency and renewable energy sources
- A global reforestation effort (trees remove carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, from the air)
- Helping developing countries to achieve their development goals with renewable rather than fossil fuels
Everyone would benefit if Third World countries moved toward sustainable economic development based on renewable rather than nonrenewable fuels. Why build coal-fired generating plants and power lines to send electricity to rural villages that could be more cheaply served with solar energy?
Recent advances in renewable technologies could allow Third World countries to leapfrog the dirtiest stages of the industri-alization process.”
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