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Editor's Note: This is the first installment of a two-part report on the emergence of sustainable consumption as a major policy debate and how it will affect consumers, businesses and policymakers.
By Bart Mongoven
Energy planners in China, the United Kingdom, Finland and elsewhere recently announced they either are embarking on a major nuclear initiative or are beginning the process of major policy changes that could lead to the construction of new power reactors. Even the United States is clearly turning toward a new energy policy that addresses both oil consumption and climate change -- and also includes nuclear power generation. At the center of this new policy, which will evolve over the coming years, will be a cap-and-trade system that encourages conservation and the development of new energy technologies.
With oil consumption and climate change seriously being addressed -- and nuclear power poised to make a major comeback -- the near-term future of energy policy is becoming increasingly clear. In the longer term, the key phrase will be "sustainable consumption."
For most climate change activists, this means their life's work of making the world care about greenhouse gas emissions is giving way to a technical fight over how best to cut those emissions. Meanwhile, the activists who successfully kept nuclear reactor construction at bay will be forced to regroup and look for new strategies to achieve their goals.
As the United States, Europe and China come to recognize, to varying degrees, the growing strategic importance of finding new energy systems, the issue has moved from the domain of small fringe groups to the mainstream. The question, then, is: If climate change and oil use really are being addressed by the major energy consumers (including the United States, of all countries), will so many people and organizations remain intently focused on "saving" the climate?
The activists who first brought the current slate of energy issues to the fore are largely responsible for developing the structural remedies that industrialized countries are now turning to in response to strategic economic, national security and environmental concerns. As new players are now discussing these issues, however, the activists see themselves increasingly outside the decision-making process. The most idealistic of the lot, those who see their position eroding and their goals being co-opted, are about to launch the next major public crusade on energy policy -- one that focuses squarely on consumption and pays little attention to issues of power generation. The result will be a global energy conservation movement that could be bigger than the movement behind climate change. It could also offer tremendous financial rewards to innovators.
Successes and Failures
Realists and idealists in the environmental movement have long been on record calling for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that would slow and then stop global warming. They portrayed a rise of 2 degrees Celsius in the Earth's temperature to mean the possible end of humanity, or at least large portions of it. Activist groups stoked fears of the Chinese south coast, U.S. East Coast and much of Northern Europe under water. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore spoke of the beginning of a new ice age.
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