Abstract

Research over the past 20 years has shown that the relationship between energy use and economic growth is not linear, as previously thought. These assessments are extended by analyzing the historical relationship between economic output and emissions of carbon dioxide for different countries. Carbon intensities are shown to differ widely, even among countries with similar levels of industrial activity. In industrial economies carbon intensities have, in general, continued to fall, whereas trends in some poorer, less stable economies of the south have been more chaotic.

The Need for New Measures of Development

Throughout history, human societies have organized themselves in diverse ways to meet the needs and wants of their members. Since World War II, a paradigm of development has evolved which has focused entirely on the economic component of human activities while largely ignoring many environmental and social consequences. As an exception, Western development assistance during the 1970s concentrated on assisting “the poorest of the poor” in developing countries through rural development projects which sought to address the basic human needs of the rural poor (Morss and Morss, 1986). More recently, the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) has focused attention on “sustainable development” that emphasizes the interrelationship between the environment and economic development. It has been difficult to provide an operational measure that effectively illustrates this useful concept in practice (Lele, 1991). In this chapter we suggest an approach that links traditional economic measures with their environmental consequences, and we illustrate the methodology by examining the specific example of the relationship between economic development and fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions.

Although only about one-fifth of the world's present population is firmly imbedded in an industrial economy, development is to a large extent measured by the degree of industrialization a society has achieved.