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I had the pleasure to be one of the speakers at the 2010 World Forum on Enterprise
and the Environment, held by the Smith School of the University of Oxford. The
participants, drawn from academia, industry, government and NGOs, were asked
to explore the challenges and offer pathways to a sustainable, low carbon transportation
future. To continue that spirited set of discussions and focus groups, a
number of the participants have contributed to this volume on Energy, Transport
and the Environment.
The topic of the forum is part of the larger energy and environmental challenge
we face today. The Industrial Revolution and all that followed over the past 250
years liberated us from the constraints of human and animal power. In this brief
instant in the history of human existence, we achieved remarkable advances in
prosperity, but our success has brought challenges as well as opportunities. This
revolution has sustained an approximately tenfold increase in the world population,
from 700 million to an estimated 7 billion people by the end of 2011. It
elevated the living conditions of an ever increasing fraction of humanity to heights
that were unimaginable to the kings, queens, and emperors of earlier times. Our
homes are warm in winter, cool in summer, and lit at night. The mobility of
information, goods, and people has been fueled and transformed by our use of
energy. We travel to a local market under the pull of more than a hundred horses to
buy produce grown halfway around the world. We fly across continents and oceans
using engines that have the power of a hundred thousand horses. |
