TECHNOLOGICAL TRAJECTORIES AND THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT by National Academy of Engineering

Author:National Academy of Engineering
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Engineering and Technology. Environment and Environmental Studies
Publisher: NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Published: 1997-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

Personal Security

Insecurity, driven by crime, confines people to familiar neighborhoods. People may stay at home more, using inexpensive electronics for security. Travel would then fall, with its related energy use declining by a far greater amount than the increases for security systems, home comfort, and convenience will demand.

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS

So far, consumer activities have meant increases in energy use worldwide. In the advanced industrialized nations, such increases have occurred for a long period at a more rapid rate than income growth; however, in recent years, the rate of increase in energy use has grown at a somewhat less rapid rate, as the saturation of certain activities may have taken place. Income-driven life-style changes during the last decades have raised energy use especially for comfort and mobility.

In the formerly planned economies, housing and service-sector comforts will expand greatly as the socialist housing system is replaced. In this case, much of the resulting increase in energy use will offset the one-time savings that appear because of the elimination of earlier senseless overproduction and the circuitous shipping of raw materials. Still, the overall energy intensity of these economies is likely to fall.

In the less-developed countries, income growth should increase demand for all energy services. Improved industrial performance in these countries means greater energy efficiency, but output is likely to increase rapidly. This will allow urban consumers with income to buy increasingly affordable household goods. Indoor comfort increases, and, with growing mechanized mobility, personal mobility will also rise. The reforming and industrializing countries appear to be on much the same track as today’s wealthier countries.

In all countries income development matters profoundly; it affects our ability to choose what we in fact do. Other factors hard to forecast also matter. Future levels of mobility may create most uncertainty. Large variations exist even now among relatively similar countries, and it is easy to envision a wide range of travel demand in the future, depending partly on direct costs but at least equally on a host of life-style choices that affect where and how often we move about and why. While a low-mobility future is neither likely nor desirable, it is probable that wealthy countries will take steps to confront users of their transport systems with the real costs of movement and will search aggressively for more environmentally compatible transport systems in the light of likely future growth.

In the absence of information on the efficiency with which primary energy is converted into final energy services to the consumer, it is impossible to conclude that the future will be more or less energy-intensive because of the evolution of consumer life-styles alone. Also, without information on how cleanly energy is generated, we cannot say how life-styles will affect the total environment. Still, we can see from the case of energy that, in the end, consumers and their lifestyles arbitrate the quality of the human environment in myriad ways. The driver’s license may matter as much as the dynamo.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.