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For many thousands of years, humankind subsisted with little effect on the biosphere. Just 5 centuries ago - in the time of Europe's Renaissance, China's Ming Dynasty, and India's first Mogul Emperor - the world was still thinly populated. Since then - spurred by revolutions in agriculture, industry and medicine - global population has grown nearly fifteen-fold.
Of today's more than 6 and a half billion people, many millions enjoy and unprecedented standard of living. But one-third of humanity has no access to electricity and still another third has only limited access. Huge populations exist in dismal poverty. Over 1 billion people are without safe water and 2.4 billion lack adequate sanitation. Each day 40,000 people - 25 per minute - die from disease that would be readily prevented by basic economic development.
In the next 50 years - as world population expands towards 9,000,000,000 - today's vast unmet human needs could multiply severely. Economic development is imperative not only to alleviate human misery but also to create conditions necessary to stabilize global population.
Today, in much of the developing world, a surging drive to meet these needs is generating an enormous rise in the use of energy. By 2050, global energy consumption will double.
Humanity cannot go backwards. A burgeoning world population will require vast amount of energy to provide fresh water, energize factories, homes and transportation and support infrastructures for nutrition, education and heath care.
Meeting these needs will require energy from all sources. But the world's energy "mix" must quickly evolve - away from indiscriminate use of fossil fuel. Reducing consumption of fossil fuel will preserve the environment - and irreplaceable resources - for future generations.
Stabilizing the accumulation of atmospheric greenhouse gases requires that worldwide emissions be cut by 50%. This challenge is made even greater by the need to raise living standards in poorer countries. Even if developing countries embrace conservation and clear-energy technologies, their enormous populations will soon emit more greenhouse gases that the existing industrial world.
In order to 'make way' for these increased emissions - while reducing the global total - today's industrialized countries must cut emissions by 75%. To curb emissions while expanding energy supplies the world urgently needs a massive introduction of low-emissions energy technologies.
Conceivably, tomorrow's mega-cities could function with few direct emissions - by using electricity, electrically charged batteries and fuel cells using electrically produced hydrogen. But electricity is only a way of distributing energy. The key is to generate vastly expanded supplies of electricity cleanly.
Further ReadingWorld Energy Needs and Nuclear Power