Soaring population, climate change stress resources_美文

Soaring population, climate change stress resources

“There have been a series of very big natural gas finds offshore of the developing world. That becomes a huge opportunity to substitute for coal and to move to a greener energy mix in the short-to-medium term," Kyte says. "We’ve seen what gas has done for the U.S. emissions profile and for the U.S. economy and gas is changing the geopolitics of energy as a result.”

Infrastructure gap

The World Bank calculates there is a one-trillion-dollar gap in financing for infrastructure in the developing world. In spite of global economic uncertainty, Kyte says, ways must be found to cut investment risk.

She suggests, for example, tapping the $500 billion industrial nations spend for fossil fuel subsidies.

"You can take that $500 billion and repurpose it to make the kinds of investments in the green infrastructure that you need for the future and the competitive jobs that people need to have in the future."

Putting climate on political agenda

Scientists are predicting more extreme weather like the droughts, storms and wildfires that spread across the globe in 2012 as the planet heats up with man-made carbon emissions from factories, cars and buildings.

Kyte says more frequent and severe weather may be the impetus for more climate-savvy environmental policies.

“This is going to be a repeated pattern through 2013 and 2014, the intensity of these weather events. And nobody is immune. Nobody is immune. And so this will continue I think to push the [climate] agenda to the top of political priorities.”