How will humanity manage peak oil and climate change impacts and promote an ordered and gradual transition to low carbon economies?

The strong environmental effects of greenhouse gas emissions derived from oil use and the negative socio-economic consequences of future oil scarcity make it urgent to shift to alternative affordable energy sources. A recent assessment of the International Energy Agency, an OECD prestigious institution, alerts that oil shortage and increased energy costs can easily be an immediate reality after the current financial crisis if massive and strategic investments in oil industry are not rapidly and massively implemented.

Multiple economic, scientific, technological and political pathways should be implemented to achieve this global energy transition. States should empower their national strategies to improve the efficiency in energy generation, transmission and consumption and thus reduce progressively carbon emissions. States should also facilitate the massive deployment of renewable energies and public transport, promote the progressive electrification of the car industry, and globally shift to sustainable strategies in many other economic sectors. At the international level, governments should rapidly promote multilateral and bilateral cooperative agreements on energy and climate policies. In addition, states might promote the creation of a United Nations international programme to facilitate and coordinate a world-wide ordered and non-traumatic transition to low-carbon and energy-efficient economie. This UN international programme could develop or facilitate multilateral regulatory agreements to avoid the emergence of speculative dynamics and volatility on oil prices that ultimately damage economic stability and increase ongoing global food-security crisis. Finally, I advocate for a much greater scientific effort urgently placed on the interactions between peak oil, climate change and global society change. The scale, urgency and severity of peak oil and climate change mean that no action is too small to matter, too large to contemplate, or too soon to begin. There is not much time left.

What is the best fit trajectory of development to balance economic growth, natural resource use and low carbon emission in the less developed and emerging economies of Africa, Asia, and Latin America?

To increase economic growth and reduce the number of the poor, the low income and emerging economies of Africa, Asia and Latin Ameria are going to strive more vigorously to achieve higher economic growth in the coming decade. This implies that they are going to explore every resources (importantly, natural resources)to do this. It is clear now, judging from current levels of knowledge on the state of the earth, these contries must not follow the development trajectory of todays’ developed nations, otherwise the planet earth (and all of us) will be in greater jeopardy in future. It is critically important now to ponder on what is the optimum developmenent trajectory that should be followed to balance sustainable use of natural resources, achieve low carbon economy, and record the levels of economic growth that can take majority of population out of poverty, in a win-win fashion. Specific country level (and local level)investigations using cross discipline methodologies may be required. It may also require radical spatial/land use re-organization which may be in conflict with existing social organization.