Energy Use in the New Millennium by the International Energy Agency published on 10 September draws a gloomy picture of efforts made by the 26 IEA member countries to control their energy consumption since 1990, the reference year of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
“Final energy-use increased by 14% between 1990 and 2004. This increased energy-use fed directly into the level of CO2 emissions, which also rose by 14%.”
“These findings confirm the conclusions of previous IEA analyses – that the changes caused by the oil-price shocks in the 1970s and the resulting energy policies did considerably more to control growth in energy demand and reduce CO2 emissions than the energy efficiency and climate policies implemented since the 1990s.”
What this tells us is that either we, as individuals, must take globally responsible initiatives to reduce our energy consumption, or we will all be faced with increasing shocks, in pain and frequency, to societies increasingly withdrawn from nature by modern conveniences.
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