Guest
Column
Sustainability in a
World of Scarcity
Jes B. Christensen, Managing Director, Danish Board of District Heating (DBDH)
vice minister of China’s State Environmental
Protection Administration, China’s nearly
30 years of skyscraping economic growth
will actually be negative when the costs
for all the environmental damage sustained during the era of Chairman Mao
have been settled. This daunting announcement puts things into perspective.
Denmark was chosen to host the
United Nations Climate Change Conference
(COP15) in December 2009 because of
the impressive fact that over the last close
to 30 years, the country has experienced
an economic growth of 70 percent without increasing energy demand. In other
words, Denmark has proven it possible to
decouple economic growth from energy
consumption. This is one way of defining
sustainability.
In 2007, everybody talked about climate
change following the United Nations
Climate Change Conference (COP13)
Dec. 3-14 in Bali. A record 10,000-plus
participants attended the conference – from
189 official delegations to NGOs, press and
businesses. The conference culminated
with the adoption of the Bali Road Map,
which consists of a number of forward-looking decisions representing the various
tracks that are essential to reaching a
secure climate future. All eyes are on striking
an agreement at COP15 Copenhagen 2009,
the next United Nations Climate Change
Conference. (See www.cop15.dk/en.)
Why is a global climate agreement
important? Because the question of climate
change is not limited to a single sector nor
a geographically outlined area. When global
warming causes Greenland’s ice sheet in
some places to drop by one meter a month,
and icebergs the size of Maui are ripped
off, threats of rising sea level and floods
become everyone’s problem. When China,
the world’s biggest polluter of sulfur dioxide – the main component of acid rain –
increases its SO2 emissions by 30 percent
since 2000, caused by the increasing number
of coal- fired power plants, and California
becomes the ‘receiver’ of acid rain from
China, the problem is no longer only China’s.
Allowing unchanged development
and energy consumption in the world
would be both irresponsible and nonsus-
tainable. To gamble with the future of the
planet because of doubts about the conclusions of the Fourth Assessment Report
developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) would be at best
unwise and at worst devastating. Does the
slowing average annual global GDP growth
of less than 0.12, as calculated by the IPCC,
make addressing global warming too expensive? What would be the costs in 30 years
if we do nothing now? According to Pan Yue,
How Does a State Maintain
Sustainability?
Sustainability is really about optimizing the resources available in a society. The
issue is one of how to make human economic systems last longer and have less
impact on ecological systems – with particular focus on major global problems relating
to climate change and fossil fuel depletion. Fossil fuels are perceived as finite
resources; we therefore need to investigate the potential for renewable resources.
The word “renewable” implies immeasurable resources. We consider wind, sun and
The next United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009.
One of the city’s landmarks is Nyhaven (New Port), which was established in 1673 and today has been
restored, featuring homes more than 300 years old.
