This book explores the interplay between science, economics, politics, and ethics in understanding the challenge that climate change poses to the international community. A central theme is that climate change involves core issues of scientific uncertainty and intergenerational fairness that must be accounted for in the design and implementation of policy responses. Drawing together contributions from leading scholars in a variety of relevant disciplines, this volume provides a synthetic approach to this important topic that should prove valuable to a variety of readers. This series focuses...

This book focuses on the evolution of energy-using activities in a dozen industrialized countries and many developing countries as well, with particular attention paid to the energy-intensive branches of manufacturing, automobiles, air travel, home heating, and electric appliances. The authors draw scenarios of future energy efficiency improvements, based on their findings about past improvements, and their survey of the potential for change. The study concludes that only massive improvement in energy efficiency in the near and medium term can provide the world with breathing room to develop...