Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Climate change and its impacts: a short summary
- 2 Greenhouse gas emissions
- 3 Keeping climate change within sustainable limits: where to draw the line?
- 4 Development first
- 5 Energy Supply
- 6 Transportation
- 7 Buildings
- 8 Industry and waste management
- 9 Land use, agriculture, and forestry
- 10 How does it fit together?
- 11 Policies and measures
- 12 International climate change agreements
- Index
- Plate section
4 - Development first
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Climate change and its impacts: a short summary
- 2 Greenhouse gas emissions
- 3 Keeping climate change within sustainable limits: where to draw the line?
- 4 Development first
- 5 Energy Supply
- 6 Transportation
- 7 Buildings
- 8 Industry and waste management
- 9 Land use, agriculture, and forestry
- 10 How does it fit together?
- 11 Policies and measures
- 12 International climate change agreements
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
What is covered in this chapter?
Development drives greenhouse gas emissions through increased consumption of fossil energy, increasing populations, industrial production, and increasing consumption. It also shapes the way societies are able to respond to climate change and other challenges. Climate change as caused by greenhouse gases emitted as a result of development can undermine that same development. This chapter looks at how to get out of this vicious circle. The solution can only be found if development objectives are seen as the starting point. Alleviating poverty and providing people with decent living conditions has to remain central. The way to get there can and must be changed. Integrating climate change into development decisions and making development more sustainable is the way to go. But what does that mean in practice and how easy is it to reconcile conflicting priorities? These are some of the issues that this chapter will investigate.
Development and climate change
Chapter 2 pointed out that greenhouse gas emissions are driven by development: population growth, economic development, technology choices, consumption patterns, and energy and land use. Building a society around unlimited availability of cheap fossil fuels, leading to poorly insulated buildings, gas-guzzling cars, and inefficient industries (what most countries have done so far), makes it very hard to adjust to a situation that requires efficient use of energy and low greenhouse gas emissions. A transport infrastructure centred on the car and urban sprawl can only be changed over a long period of time.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Controlling Climate Change , pp. 78 - 104Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009