IEA report, Part 1: Act now with clean energy or face 6°C warming. Cost is NOT high — media blows t

Must read IEA report, Part 1: Act now with clean energy or face 6°C warming. Cost is NOT high — media blows the story
When the normally conservative International Energy Agency (IEA) agrees with both the middle of the road IPCC and more … progressive voices like Climate Progress, it should be time for the world to get very serious, very fast on the clean energy transition. But when the media blows the story, the public and the policymakers may miss the key messages of the stunning new IEA report, “Energy Technology Perspectives, 2008″ (Exec. Sum. here).

You may not have paid much attention to this new report once you saw the media’s favorite headline for it: “$45 trillion needed to combat warming.” That would be too bad, because the real news from the global energy agency is

Failing to act very quickly to transform the planet’s energy system puts us on a path to catastrophic outcomes.
The investment required is “an average of some 1.1% of global GDP each year from now until 2050. This expenditure reflects a re-direction of economic activity and employment, and not necessarily a reduction of GDP.” In fact, this investment partly pays for itself in reduced energy costs alone (not even counting the pollution reduction benefits)!
The world is on the brink of a renewables (and efficiency) revolution.



“RADICAL AND URGENT” CHANGE NEEDED TO AVOID CATASTROPHE

Probably the biggest difference between the IEA and the U.S. Energy Information Administration is that the EIA lives in a fantasy world where oil production can continue growing forever and greenhouse gas emissions are not something an energy agency needs to factor into planning. The IEA, however, lives in the real world, as its new report makes painfully clear:

Unsustainable pressure on natural resources and on the environment is inevitable if energy demand is not de-coupled from economic growth and fossil fuel demand reduced.

The situation is getting worse…. Baseline scenario foreshadow a 70% increase in oil demand by 2050 and a 130% rise in CO2 emissions…. a rise in CO2 emissions of such magnitude could raise global average temperatures by 6°C (eventual stabilisation level), perhaps more. The consequences would be significant change in all aspects of life and irreversible change in the natural environment.


In short, business as usual energy policy leads to atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 1000 parts per million or more, and that is the end of life as we know it on this planet

http://climateprogress.org/2008/06/08/must-read-iea-report-part-1-act-now-with-clean-energy-or-face-6%c2%b0c-warming-cost-is-not-high-media-blows-the-story/

Interesting dialog between Pielke and Romm.

And they didn't even mention the hundreds of thousands of jobs that would be created by conservation and alternative energy technology growth.