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Getting Energy Communication Right for 7 Billion People

November 9, 2011 by Christine Hertzog
with 246 views
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We marked a milestone on October 31, 2011 by hitting a human population total of 7 billion. Most of the world’s population lives in cities, and nations have been planning to make them as livable, sustainable, and resource-efficient as possible. For instance, China now has more than 220 cities that number over a million inhabitants. Contrast that to the USA, which has 9 cities and 41 urban counties that reach that mark, or Europe which has 35 such population centers. More than 100 Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai have signed on to projects to build smart cities – which leverage Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to build egovernment infrastructures that deliver cost-effective and convenient services to citizens. Smart cities, like Smart Grids, are subsets of the Internet of Things (IoT), and China and Europe have much activity ongoing in forms of policy development, standards development, and actual pilots while the USA lags behind. [read more]

Countdown to 7,000,000,000

May 4, 2011 by Lou Grinzo
with 702 views
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The latest UN population projection is out, and people are preparing to flip that leading digit as we hit 7,000,000,000 people on October 31, 2011. From the press release [PDF]: The current world population of close to 7 billion is projected to reach 10.1 billion in the next ninety years, reaching 9.3 billion by the middle of this... [read more]

Britain’s energy future – political and technical considerations

March 18, 2010 by Barry Brook
with 439 views
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Although the BraveNewClimate science blog has an unashamedly Australian flavour and focus, the climate and energy issues covered herein are very much international problems. As such, I’m strongly convinced that the solutions I canvass will be required for most nations this century. In this spirit, I’d like to present a detailed... [read more]

Tom Friedman on “What They Really Believe”

November 18, 2009 by Joseph Romm
with 117 views
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If you follow the debate around the energy/climate bills working through Congress you will notice that the drill-baby-drill opponents of this legislation are now making two claims. One is that the globe has been cooling lately, not warming, and the other is that America simply can’t afford any kind of cap-and-trade/carbon tax. But... [read more]

Let’s talk (carefully) about climate and population

November 18, 2009 by Marc Gunther
with 201 views
5

Have you heard that we’re getting new neighbors? Demographers expect that the number of people living on earth—now about 6.8 billion—will grow to between 8 and 11 billion by 2050. Whether population tops out at the high or the low end of those projections will have a huge impact on climate change. So population control is again claiming... [read more]

Lester Brown on his must-read new book “Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization”

October 13, 2009 by Joseph Romm
with 177 views
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Notwithstanding the Superfreaks, a lot of good books on global warming and its solutions are coming out right now (see “The Invention of Lying about Climate Change“).  One of the best is Lester Brown’s “Plan B 4.0:  Mobilizing to Save Civilization.”  In his book, Brown lays out the too-little-discussed but devastating... [read more]

Us vs. Them

August 28, 2009 by Lou Grinzo
with 83 views
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I’m astonished by how quickly the divisions over climate policy have become pointed between the East and the West, the Rich and the Poor, the Developed and the Undeveloped, or whatever other pair of euphemisms you care to trot out so you don’t have to say Us and Them. A perfect example comes from a Guardian article, Leave population out... [read more]

The (7 billion) Population Problem

August 23, 2009 by Ken Levenson
with 119 views
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The world is headed toward 7 billion people and soon. As reported by Jeremy Hance at Mongaby.com (here) – in 2011 to be precise. That’s just 12 years after hitting 6 billion in 1999. 12 years earlier still we were at 5 billion. As the article notes: “The great bulk of today’s 1.2 billion youth—nearly 90 percent—are in developing... [read more]

The Cruel Hoax: Growth and Equity Cannot be Sustained

May 16, 2009 by Michael Tobis
with 232 views
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Via a perceptive summary at Bristling Badger, Jared Diamond addresses the Tobis tautology:China’s catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent. If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates... [read more]

The coldest equation

May 13, 2008 by Lou Grinzo
with 92 views
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Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit... [read more]