Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction
- 1 Overview
- 2 Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Global Warming, and Water Resources
- 3 Population, Environmental Impacts, and Climate Change
- 4 Carbon Cycle and the Human Impact
- 5 Peak Oil, Energy, Water, and Climate
- 6 Oil Consumption and CO2 Emissions from Transportation
- 7 Oil, Economy, Power, and Conflicts
- 8 Energy Alternatives and Their Connection to Water and Climate
- 9 The Water Cycle and Global Warming
- 10 Fresh Water Availability, Sanitation Deficit, and Water Usage: Connection to Energy and Global Warming
- 11 Rivers, Lakes, Aquifers, and Dams: Relation to Energy and Climate
- 12 Water Contamination, Energy, and Climate
- 13 Geopolitics of Water and the International Situation
- 14 Water Alternatives
- 15 Global Climate Change: Observations, Modeling, and Predictions
- 16 Energy and Water Challenges and Solutions in a Changing Climate Framework: Commonality, Differences, and Connections
- References
- Index
1 - Overview
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction
- 1 Overview
- 2 Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Global Warming, and Water Resources
- 3 Population, Environmental Impacts, and Climate Change
- 4 Carbon Cycle and the Human Impact
- 5 Peak Oil, Energy, Water, and Climate
- 6 Oil Consumption and CO2 Emissions from Transportation
- 7 Oil, Economy, Power, and Conflicts
- 8 Energy Alternatives and Their Connection to Water and Climate
- 9 The Water Cycle and Global Warming
- 10 Fresh Water Availability, Sanitation Deficit, and Water Usage: Connection to Energy and Global Warming
- 11 Rivers, Lakes, Aquifers, and Dams: Relation to Energy and Climate
- 12 Water Contamination, Energy, and Climate
- 13 Geopolitics of Water and the International Situation
- 14 Water Alternatives
- 15 Global Climate Change: Observations, Modeling, and Predictions
- 16 Energy and Water Challenges and Solutions in a Changing Climate Framework: Commonality, Differences, and Connections
- References
- Index
Summary
The unsustainable use of oil and water by a rapidly growing world population is creating serious environmental security challenges and geopolitical problems never before faced by humankind. As demonstrated throughout this book, changes in climate that are already underway and that are predicted to significantly increase in the next decades will exacerbate these challenges, thus playing a pivotal role in the overall environmental security equation.
Oil, Water, Climate, and Population: An Interactive System of Immense Complexity
Oil, water, climate, and population are strongly linked and can be considered as factors of a system in which all components are interconnected and interact among one another in multiple ways. Oil, water, and climate security problems cannot fully be understood in isolation, nor can they be considered independently from demographic perspectives. Their various interconnections and dependencies can be highlighted when discussing the evolution of energy, population, climate, and water. The increased use of fossil fuels, particularly oil, in the last half of the 20th century, has provided the energy required to develop highly efficient technologies, relieving humans from heavy physical tasks and vastly increasing agricultural production, thereby enabling explosive population growth. In turn, population growth over the past few decades, projected population growth until at least 2050, and the rapid increases in the demands for energy and water resources needed to pursue global economic development race are the root causes of the unsustainable use of oil and water.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Oil, Water, and ClimateAn Introduction, pp. 4 - 13Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008