Earth Equity News

International Energy Agency: The Time for Hard Choices is Now. By Jad Mouawad, NYTimes, November 11, 2009. "As the world heads for tough negotiations over a global climate deal next month, an influential forecasting agency said on Tuesday that current energy policies were not sustainable, and that a vast transformation of energy use was required to fend off the worst consequences of global warming. In the absence of a global deal to limit the emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas blamed for climate change, energy consumption will soar over the next decades. This would result in a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, according to the International Energy Agency, an adviser to industrialized nations that is based in Paris... The warning was contained in the annual World Energy Outlook [PDF, 62 pp excerpt], a 698-page publication that focuses this year on policies needed to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide... The cost of reducing carbon emissions -- through energy efficiency, more investments in renewable power, electric vehicles, expansion of nuclear power, and building carbon capture and storage technology for coal-burning power plants -- would be high. But for each year of delay in an agreement, the world will eventually have to spend an additional $500 billion to cut emissions, the agency said."