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Bringing a more robust theory of consumption to the sustainable energy agenda
Panel: Presentations
Author:
Harold Wilhite, University of Oslo, Centre for Development and the Environment
Abstract
The specters of climate change and resource depletion create an urgent need for deep reductions in energy consumption in the rich countries of the world. This is a huge task given the global track record of the past century, at the end of which we find a small fraction of the global population enjoying enormous wealth (in terms of both economic and environmental capital), but where the majority are still living without access to adequate basic services (for example electricity, health and education) and in degraded environments.
One way to illustrate the dilemma is the concept ecological footprint: a rough indicator how much we are consuming of the earth‘s resources and emitting in the form of pollutants. According to WWF (2008), the global ecologocial footprint surpassed the earth‘s carrying capacity in the mid-1980s. We are now consuming and emitting as if we had access to 1,5 worlds of biosphere. To put it another way, our global society is in deep ecological debt, and since there aren‘t any more worlds of biosphere available, the debt will have to be repaid.
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