History shows that energy demand keeps growing even in...
Climate change is best solved by energy efficiency, not CCS
Vaclav Smil, PhD, Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba, stated the following in his May 2006 statement "Energy at the Crossroads," during the Conference on Scientific Challenges for Energy Research in Paris, available at www.home.cc.umanitoba.ca: "The obvious question is why it should be even attempted given the fact that a 10% reduction in CO2 emissions could be achieved by several more rational, mature and readily available adjustments... [T]technical fixes cannot provide a lasting resolution. History shows that energy demand keeps growing even in the most energy-saturated affluent societies: encouraging worldwide diffusion of this trend (new China, and then India, aspiring to replicate the US) and trying to fill the supply through scientific and engineering ingenuity is not a formula compatible with maintaining a viable biosphere. Obviously, poor countries need more energy; but the rich ones should, sooner, rather than later, think about engineering rational reductions in energy use. All economies are just subsystems of the biosphere and the first law of ecology is that no trees grow to heaven. If we are not going to engineer thoughtful, gradual reductions, we run a considerable risk that the biosphere may do the scaling-down for us in a much less desirable (if not catastrophic) manner."