EIA Predicts 50% Increase in World Energy Consumption by 2030
I stumbled upon this report this morning – or rather Timothy Hurst’s summary of it on “Red Green and Blue”
The key assumptions are that non OECD growth continues at a rapid pace and that there is no effective international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
And as the price of oil rises so “Unconventional resources (including oil sands, extra-heavy oil, biofuels, coal-to-liquids, and gas-to-liquids) from both OPEC and non-OPEC sources are expected to become increasingly competitive”. And of course in the case of oil sands – and actually the other sources too – these sources are themselves major CO2 emitters.
It is, of course, a lot easier to project forward from existing trends than to judge how the world is going to respond to this – meaning us, the planet’s reaction is all too predictable too, and has been predicted for some time, but so far nothing very effective is being done about the threat this poses to human survival. And the press that I have been reading over the weekend seems to be obsessed with the short term political outcomes – the impact of BC’s carbon tax and whether Stephane Dion’s announcement of a proposed equivalent – are the kiss of death to Liberal political hopes. On the whole I find it very hard to be concerned about that.
I think the only real question left is how bad does it have to get before we start to change? And by “we” I mean human beings in general and the largest consumers of fossil fuels in particular. And of course this is not a particularly original thought
I keep telling everyone that oil use and gas use won`t stop until we run out,as long as the corporations run goverments here and around the world nothibg will change.
Here is a little food for thought,mother nature only put so much oil and gas on earth, maybe thats the reason we will run out, mother nature didn`t give us enough oil to totally kill the earth.
So why conserve and burn it a little more slowly,lets just go to town on oil and burn it fast,the faster we deplete the supply the faster we will get alternatives.
Here is another mind boggler for you all——Everyone knows the power of a single atom,all the water that is on the earth is here, either in ice or liquid form,there is as much water on earth today as there was 100 million years ago. All we humans and weather do is shuffle the forms of water around.
The same goes for oil,all the oil we have burned is still here,all we have done is changed oils form into gas or exhaust or emissions and turned lots of it into plastics—-BUT ITS ALL STILL HERE ON EARTH———————————-signed……………………………………..Confucious
Grant G
June 30, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I agree wholeheartedly with the question “how bad does it have to get before we take serious action”.
I’d find the EIA report findings interesting except for the fact that they are ‘predicting’ gas prices getting up almost, but not quite, to $4 a gallon by sometime around 2030.
http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2008/06/26/future-gas-prices
Bob
July 2, 2008 at 3:13 pm