11 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
11 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
-1-
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INTRODUCTION: ENERGY AND HISTORY
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THE SIMULTANEOUS ONSET of climate change and the peaking of global oil supply represent unprecedented challenges for human civilization.
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Global oil peak has the potential to shake or even destroy the foundation of global industrial economy and culture. Climate change has the potential to rearrange the biosphere more radically than the last ice age. Each limits the effective options for response to the other.
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The strategies for mitigating the adverse effect and/or adapting to the consequences of climate change have mostly been considered and discussed in isolation from the relevant to peak oil. While awareness of peak oil, or at the least energy crisis, is increasing, understanding of how the two problems of climate change and peak oil might interact to generate quite different futures is still at an early stage.
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Over the last thirty-five years the climate-damaging impacts of fossil-fuel burning and other sources of "green-house gases" has shifted from being a worrying hypothesis of some climate scientists to one of the primary drivers of environmental awareness from the schoolroom to the boardroom. Rapid economic growth in developing economies, especially in China and India, addictive consumer economies in the long-affluent West, and ongoing population growth are driving emissions ever higher. Meanwhile the evidence of actual climate change is accelerating, with the alarming rates of Arctic sea-ice melting being the most dramatic. This is belatedly creating an urgency in the halls of government
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