ork--they can probably take an enormous amount of pressure off ecosystems and foster much quicker advancement for people. There are a lot of studies around the world showing that, when you move to a city, access to education increases, access to income increases, your energy footprint goes down.
It depends on the city, though. Some cities--as a recent study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research found--aren't the dream city, the environmentally efficient city. That study suggests that cities make choices that matter a huge amount to how this century can work out.
Projections by experts at the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggest that the growth in energy use to 2030 will happen in the emerging economies, like China and India, while the wealthier nations' use is more or less flat.
Looking at energy, and in particular climate, the IEA said that 98% of the growth in greenhouse gas emissions is coming in developing countries in the next 30 years. So that means mostly China and India. And that's a big deal, because the trend here in the U.S. is toward flatter, or slightly declining emissions for a long time, even without new policies.
The action is all still elsewhere. So even if the U.S. had a perfect policy--the most aggressive climate standard, where we turned off every engine and stopped driving and all started telecommuting and somehow afforded solar panels and geothermal--the climate system would barely notice, because all the action is elsewhere.
So that says, to have a realistic approach toward limiting climate risk in the coming decades, if you're not looking at energy issues in China and India, you're really missing the boat.
There's another side to this, which is that there is population growth here in the U.S., too. While many industrialized countries are shrinking, like Japan, the United States is an outlier. We're going to go towards 400 million or more Americans in just a couple or more generations, from 300 million or so now, mostly through immigration. When someone either moves here or is born here, they have a much higher energy footprint than someone born in Haiti or Bangladesh.
As we approach 9 billion people by 2050, what's something you want people to think about?
The key to me, in looking at these issues for a very long time, is that a new way of thinking is required. The old messages of "woe is me" and "shame on you" are so 20th century. They're not a good fit for the issues we face now.
If you look at an issue like energy--and you're always pointing at someone like Exxon or a politician--you're missing the reality that we all need energy. For instance, I have an oil-heated house, not because I would like that, but because there aren't options. And so if we want to really get busy and move off of the fossil fuels of previous centuries and go to something new and sustainable and renewable, then we have to take on that responsibility and get busy.
And I see that as a very positive prospect. We are so disinvested in things like basic research and development in energy that it would be really simple and easy and cheap to greatly increase it. A two-cent nudge in the gas tax--yes, I mentioned the word tax-- would triple our R&D for energy. If you could guarantee that money would go to that, I think a lot of people would actually like that idea.
I have a very optimistic sense of, at least, a chance of a fairly smooth ride past this mid-century peak that we're facing. And the question that we have to examine, which I wrote about on Dot Earth not long ago, is which comes first, peak everything or peak us? In other words, can we manage our way through a soft landing, a soft transition to a new relationship with the planet? Or are we going to have that change in our trajectory imposed upon us by limits? That's a function of how busy we want to be.
What's the most important thing you want people today to know about Earth Day in a year of 7 billion people?
That there's every chance the next 30-year period will be one of great innovation and collaboration around the world. It just takes a little bit of