The Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 1 million square kilometres from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges – at its peak accounting for 10% of the world population. Developing some 5,200 years ago, the culture slowly disintegrated some 3 to 4,000 years ago, migrating toward the east.

This, the world’s earliest urban civilization in an area now covered by India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh appears to have been brought down by climate change, according to researchers. This vast Indus civilization was completely forgotten until the 1920s, and there are still many things we don’t know about them.

It was around 100 years ago that archaeologists began finding many instances of Harappan settlement remains along the Indus River and in a vast desert region bordering India and Pakistan – proof found that sophisticated cities had existed, with sea links to Mesopotamia, arts and crafts, and writing that is still undeciphered.

Cities were ordered into grids – exquisite plumbing not seen again until the Roman empire established itself – in what appeared to be a much more democratic society than Mesopotamia and Egypt, without large structures built in honour of kings. Harrapan people were so-called after one of their largest cities, and lived next to rivers, in the main

Speculation had been rife  about the links between this mysterious ancient culture and its rivers, the landscape of the where this long-forgotten civilization developed now reconstructed, shedding light on what happened, the research pointing to one of the clearest examples of climate change causing the collapse of a civilization.

The researchers collected data on geological history, having analyzed satellite data of the landscape and influenced collected samples of sediment to determine origins and ages and develop a time-line of landscape changes. The Harappan heartland got water from a glacier-fed Himalayan river – the Sarasvati, sacred river of Hindu mythology – which previous studies suggest may actually have been the Ghaggar, an intermittent river flowing only during strong monsoons.

Archaeological evidence suggested the river was home to intensive settlement during Harappan times. In the beginning, this monsoon-drenched river was prone to devastating floods, but over time, monsoons weakened, so agriculture and civilization flourished for nearly 2,000 years.

As solar energy in the region varied over several thousand years, less rain got into the regions affected by monsoons, and eventually, these monsoon-based rivers held too little water and dried, forcing the enterprising Harappans to flee east toward the Ganges basin, in pursuit of the reliable monsoon rains.

This change was undoubtedly disastrous for Indus cities, which collapsed, though smaller agricultural communities flourished, though urban arts like writing faded away.  How monsoons will react to modern climate change remains uncertain, but what climate change caused once before in the Indian sub-continent could quite easily be repeated again elsewhere.

During the past century the water temperatures in the ocean have risen by 1-2.5 degrees. Although this doesn’t seem a lot of difference, many problems can start to occur in this small difference. The increase in temperature, is slowly melting the polar caps; resulting in the rise of the sea levels, and having a inverse affect on the environment in many areas.

Also during the past decade there has been a dramatic increase in natural disasters, occurring on this planet; hurricanes, cyclones, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes: you name it, this is no coincidence and is something the leading powers of the world should get worried about.

Evidence of Global Warming:

Water on Earth has a high heat capacity, meaning that a lot of energy is required to change the temperature of water. Meaning that water’s temperature doesn’t change that easily. The slight rise in the temperature of oceans, shows the colossal impact of the global warming, on Earth there are some 1.35 trillion-billion litres of water and man kind has managed to change the temperature of this great body of water. This shows that there has been a great negative impact of global warming and that it does exist.

Now, WHAT IS THE CARBON TAX?

The Australian government’s policy on climate change is pricing carbon. Many commentators and politicians have refereed to this as the ‘Carbon Tax’. The idea is that polluters will have to pay per tonne of carbon they release into the atmosphere. The cost will initially be set at $23, and increase gradually until 2015, when we will shift to a trading scheme that will let the market set the cost. This idea is widely thought of the most inexpensive and effective in handling the ‘global warming’ crisis.

How will the Carbon Tax AFFECT ME?

The carbon tax, is designed to impose a tax on large polluters, this will eventually lead to the increase in price of certain goods and services; which the consumer will have to pay more to maintain their needs. The treasury estimates that an average family will pay $9.90 more per week, in the first year of schemes introduction.

However, there have been measures taken to reduce the sudden impact of the introduction of the tax. Firstly, the tax-free threshold will be more than tripled from $6,000 to $18,200, exempting 1 million people from the need to pay income tax or file a tax return. People earning less than $80,000 per year will also receive a tax cut, which for most will equal approximately $300 per year. Secondly, generous assistance will also be provided to households through welfare payments.

Although the introduction to the new legislation may be daunting to some citizens, even though Julia Gillard promised “there would be no Carbon Tax under my party”. The long run of this scheme may provide many benefits to this world that we all share.

Julia Gillard giving her speech.

A recently released book revealed that more than half of all Americans now live alone – a phenomenon that has never existed before. The tendency to live alone is also affecting just about every developed or developing country. There are various factors which can explain this fact: people have to move to find work, they may enjoy solitude, they may not be able to afford a house in which they could accommodate a family, demographic change and so forth. The fact remains that more single person households exist and this means increased use of energy and, hence, higher carbon emissions and contribution to climate change.

The root cause of singledom, of course, is the capitalist system: everything that used to be considered ‘natural’ and a part of normal human life, such as space, water, the forests, family, is turned into a commodity which must be paid for in the market. To access nature, we pay fees to enter a national park; to go to the city we pay traffic fees, to find friends we sit in front of computers and subject ourselves to endless advertising to establish personal relationships. In Japan, for example, it is possible to hire people by the hour who will act as pretend mothers, older sisters or brothers or any other kind of relationship which, in contemporary life, it is so difficult to find and which we are endlessly guided away from because of the pressures to consume.

Returning families to joint households would be beneficial not just for those people who find themselves lonely and unhappy but also for energy usage reasons. Consequently, people concerned with fighting climate change will be interested in ways in which we can return to multi-person households, preferably by choice – not all families are happy, of course and it would not be helpful to try to force people to live together who do not wish to do so. This probably means providing a range of incentives for people to live together (which might be addressed through the provision of suitable housing by the government – the market usually fails in this area – as well as the tax code) and fostering a sense of communalism which would help people to want to live together. This latter point is more likely to be successful when it comes from the bottom up – being told to love one another and live together is all very reminiscent of Big Brother. The Occupy movement has helped people rediscover the pleasure and satisfaction of working and joining together in the sense of mutual solidarity – and the incredible violence unleashed by the state to crush the movement shows how seriously the ruling elites take such a threat to their hegemony. There is a need for a flowering of the communal spirit.

What exactly are the causes of global warming? There are plenty actually. But you can sum all reasons under one heading: man’s misuse of the planet’s resources.  In the name of economic development, man has been exploiting the earth’s resources without regard to the planet’s ecological balance.   Massive use of fossil fuels and products that emit toxic materials like carbon dioxide, methane gas, and others has taken its toll on our environment.   Land, water and air have been polluted to a point that the earth’s natural mechanisms of protecting itself are no longer working.

The great amount of toxic gases from industrial plants, cars, household appliances all contribute to the gradual increase in the earth’s surface temperature.  There are now fewer virgin forests that could have absorbed the carbon dioxide thrown into the atmosphere.  Much of our trees have been cut to make furniture, paper, cartoons, etc… Carbon dioxide and other gases have formed a thick barrier in the atmosphere preventing the heat coming from the sun from escaping into space where it could not do harm.

Every year more people are added to the world’s population which makes global warming even worse. Lands that are devoted to agriculture are being cleared for housing projects. Plants and trees are increasingly being replaced by concrete structures that tend to make the earth’s surface even hotter.  The use of fossil fuels and production of toxin containing products such as plastics continue to rise to meet the demands of an ever-increasing population.  This means more gases and more non-degradable waste materials to pollute our air, land and water systems, to fuel climate change. For the last decades, powerful natural calamities triggered by the climate change phenomenon, have resulted in huge losses in lives and property throughout the globe.

Of course, there  are things people can do to arrest global, at least prevent it from getting more dangerous to people. They can start right at home by consuming less energy and not using products that release harmful chemicals into our environment.

The conundrum of uneven development has occupied some of the world’s finest minds for many years without ever being fully resolved. The basic issue is that some parts of the world are more developed than others – but not just at the national scale. There is unevenness at the regional level, the local or provincial level, the community level and even within households, at the very lowest scale levels. Of course, there are many explanations of why this occurs: the distribution of resources, for example, which favours some parts of the world over others but this in itself is insufficient: there are many countries with rich resources that are either wholly or partly poor.

Another possible explanation that some people prefer relates to virtue – this view has it that the people who are successful tend to be better, more industrious, more intelligent or just generally holier people than those others. This is a view that has no basis in reality.

Further explanations adopt mixed or eclectic paradigms (i.e. more than one answer at the same time) or relate to the nature of the capitalist system as being one that, through its very processes and nature, promotes different forms of uneven development which change in nature and extent over the course of time. This is clear when looking at any town or city and how different parts become richer or poorer over the years as fashions and trends change.

When it comes to climate change, then, what are the implications for uneven development? One thing which is certainly evident is that it is changing the demand and hence the price for land. Low lying areas which are threatened by rising sea levels and which may have been desirable and expensive before are losing value, while upland areas are increasing. New money will find its way into these upland areas and that will mean the exit of those people, especially the poor people, who used to live there, through the process known as ‘gentrification.’

Other changes will be less predictable: since the results of climate change at this period are unpredictable, it is impossible to say what kind of changes in society will occur. Those areas or locations which have resources or characteristics that are better adapted to change will appreciate in value and those which are not will depreciate. This applies as much to people as to inanimate objects. Rich men, for example, might well find they are choosing different kinds of women to be wives than they are at present owing to some aspect of climate change. 

China, one of the fastest growing countries in the world with a population of over 1.3 billion has a huge demand for energy. Although it has some renewable projects such as the HEP station at the 3 Gorges dam, the majority of its supply comes from fossil fuels. It also has to import large amounts of energy. Russia is creating a large and controversial pipeline called the ‘East Siberia Pacific  Ocean’ or ESPO pipeline to supply china and Japan with energy. Connections like these have to be developed in order to distribute excess energy to countries that need it more. However these connections can also cause conflicts. For example Kazakhstan has a large supply of uranium, the fuel for nuclear power stations. Both China and Japan are in conflict over who Kazakhstan supplies. As reserves become smaller conflicts like this are likely to become more common. This is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Countries such as Russia have a huge dominance in the supply of energy. Due to the Siberian gas fields, and the large amounts of oil it effectively has a monopoly over the European supply of gas. This has allowed it to harass eastern bloc countries such as Ukraine with huge increases in energy prices following a cut off of supply on several occasions when the counrty refused to pay. This example is just one of the potential issues that the world will have to deal with as energy reserves run out.

The North and South poles are the last explored areas of the world. But it just so happens that they contain huge amounts of oil. In the arctic circle, this has prompted a ’second cold war’ over who owns the oil there. Russia has laid claim to this territory by planting a flag underwater on the Lomonosov Ridge. They claim the ridge is part of the continental shelf of Russia and so, by territorial law, they can claim it as their own.  Conflicts like this are only to increase as strain on resources also increases, forcing countries to exploit sensitive areas of the world such as the arctic. This is just another issue that the world will have to deal with more often in the future.

Finally, the issue over peak oil and gas is also one that needs to be addressed. Peak oil and gas is when output of these resources reaches its maximum. When the current levels of extraction of reserves are measured, and then compared with the predicted peaks, you will find that the world is very close to those peaks already. The estimated year the peak will be reached is 2020, just 9 years away. The future of fossil fuels is undoubtedly short and so in the next 15 years an alternative source must be found. This can either be in the form of not so pure fossil fuels such as the tar sands in Canada which, despite this, are already being exploited. This is much more costly. It costs $15 a barrel to extract oil from the tar sands compared to $2 a barrel for conventional crude oil. This alternative source would cause high prices and environmental issues as the extraction damages the environment massively. Therefore a more ‘green’ solution would be favourable. Even so after the peak, oil production will drop by 3% a year. This will lead to large and deep recessions as businesses will have to make cuts to compensate for higher energy bills. This will undoubtedly cause economic problems for many countries.

So to conclude, the issues associated with energy security are hard to combat and will have devastating consequences if they are not properly managed. With oil and gas becoming more expensive countries are looking for new and alternative sources. These can come from renewable sources such as wind power, HEP and solar. However for countries such as china, this is far too expensive to fully rely on. Nuclear power is also an alternative, though with the recent accident at Fukushima people are becoming more sceptical and afraid of the dangers associated with it. This leaves the world with huge problems to solve. New solutions must be created or existing ones adopted before our reliance on fossil fuels brings us to physical conflict over resources.

     While microeconomic adjustments can sustain profit margins, the macroeconomy as a whole will need to see a fundamental restructuring to keep pace with long-term environmental demands. Gilding argues that this economic adaption will be stunted by disruptive influences in the free market. This is true, to an extent: in order to provide for the needs of consumers yet maintain a sustainable economy, the plight of materialism must be mitigated. In 2004, the average size of an American home was 2350 square feet. Compared to the 980 square foot average home size of 1950, there is a 140% increase in the average home size, (Porter 178). This has in turn prompted consumers to buy more goods to fill up their growing homes. Growing economic consumption of physical goods cannot increase indefinitely—eventually the rate of consumption will need to slow. Although there will always be an inherent level of consumption, this rate cannot be zero. However, excess consumption due to materialistic aims, will need to be curbed, or redirected into a sector with less environmental impact.

     Such an outlet for consumers is the growing virtual market. As the twenty first century continues to provide more ubiquitous access to advancing technologies, the market demand for virtual goods will subsequently increase. These goods are software, online services, and applications that can be developed once, but bought by a nearly unlimited number of consumers for minimal marginal cost to the producer. As the market for applications has grown, it has helped to satiate the rampant spending habits of some consumers, (Porter, 186). By diverting market demand from durable goods to virtual goods, there will be a slowing in the growth of physical consumption of resources required for manufacturing.

     Moreover, the advancement of technology facilitates the process of downsizing households by providing a wide range of functionality without taking up much space. As the human population increases, efficient living habits will become more of an imperative. Coupled with the push toward urbanized living, a reduction in the average carbon footprint of American households would allow for decreased carbon emissions despite the increasing population, (Calhoun 188). As the United States becomes more populous, more Americans will migrate towards cities for convenient location to public amenities and work offices. Having residents located close together allows for less individual transportation and smaller living spaces. This results in a lower carbon footprint per capita, which is synonymous to a smaller environmental impact per person in the United States.

     Paul Gilding effectively recapitulated the concerns of environmentalists and economic theory in The Great Disruption, while hypothesizing that the economy will fluctuate before stabilizing with environmental demands. His predictions of sudden economic disturbances were based on the climate models popularized by doomsday scenarios like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. The difficulty inherent with these models is their alarming inaccuracy, resulting in largely speculative climate forecasts. The most economically sound plan to protect the environment will be one that adapts to more reasonable estimates of global temperature change. While a long-term adjustment for sustainable, minimalistic living will be required by the U.S. economy, careful price discrimination can be used to lessen Gilding’s predicted disruptions. As prices of durable goods adapt, the continued growth of the technology market will fuel the economy until it stabilizes without need for further growth. This policy relies on the strength of the free market as the driving force behind adapting consumer behavior towards simplistic living. Throughout this process, there is great incentive for the development of new technologies which will bolster sustainability. With this economic approach, Gilding would be satisfied by the adaption of the economy to maximize social well-being rather than materialistic desires. Furthermore, it provides hope that, one day, the United States could develop a core practice of sustainability for future generations.

Works Cited

Calhoun, Yael. Environmental Policy. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005. Print.

Gilding, Paul. The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. Print.

Kowalski, Kathiann M. Global Warming. New York: Benchmark, 2004. Print.

Porter, Eduardo. The Price of Everything: Finding Method in the Madness of What Things Cost. New York: Portfolio Penguin, 2012. Print.

Williams, Mary E. Is Global Warming a Threat? San Diego, CA: Greenhaven, 2003. Print. 

     With the passing of environmental policy, there is always an economic tradeoff. This is especially evident in countries with developing economies. China, for example, has tripled its gross domestic product per capita to $7200 over the past decade, (Porter 117). Since 1990, the number of people living on less than a dollar a day has decreased from 60 to 16 percent, (Porter 117).  This rate of expansion was accompanied by a subsequent decline in the air quality of major Chinese cities. China made the decision to forgo environmental protection for their astounding economic growth. It appears that both costs and benefits were assessed to maximize national well being, trading some loss of environment for subsequent gains in economy. However, those gains and losses are not evenly distributed. With such rapid economic growth, it is expected to see greater income inequality among the population–higher paid employees will see more gains than low wage workers. The share of national income for the top 1 percent of Chinese workers doubled from 1986 to 2003 to nearly 6 percent, (Porter 123). Unlike economic gain, the environmental loss is evenly noticed by all the city residents. Thus, those who benefited from trading off the environment were employees (often company executives) who profited most from economic gains. It becomes apparent why many see the environment and economy as two separate, competing entities.

     This distinguished view between the economy and environment has caused many global warming activists to attack free enterprise directly and demand some form of action. Despite ongoing pressure from the public, placing at least equal value on the economy as the environment has allowed the United States to forgo passing radical climate change policy that would be detrimental to U.S. industry. The Kyoto Protocol was one such policy. The international treaty called for industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Countries like the United States were expected to reduce levels of greenhouse gas produced annually by 7 percent of 1990 levels by the year 2010, (Calhoun 100). When President Bill Clinton signed the treaty in November of 1998, the economy was still growing with more growth projected for the following decade, (Porter 120). Meeting these requirements would seriously inhibit industrial sectors of the U.S. economy. President Bush stated his concerns in a letter sent to the Senate in March of 2001: “As you know, I oppose the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80 percent of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy,” (Kowalski 80). While the president rejected the Kyoto Protocol, he was not blind to the issue of environmental protection. In 2002 President Bush announced his Clear Skies initiative, which called for the reductions of hazardous air pollutants such as mercury, (Kowalski 81). To satisfy demand for climate change policy, he also called for an 18 percent decrease in greenhouse gas intensity, (Kowalski 81). This meant that there would be less greenhouse gas emission per unit of economic productivity. Conservative estimates from economists state that the President’s decision in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and implementing his alternative policies saved the U.S. economy approximately $400 billion and over 3 million American jobs, (Williams 44). While this approach is temporary at best, it provides a baseline for environmental policy that coexists with the growth of the economy.

Kyoto is intended to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     One inherent difficulty when performing the cost-benefit analysis of environmental policy is determining even a reasonably accurate price tag on the environment. This is often difficult for many to reason. Is it even morally acceptable to put a price tag on the Earth where we live? Some would say that a pristine environment is priceless. However all economists should know that nothing exists with an infinite true value. This grey area between immeasurable and measurable value is where economists and environmental scientists debate and reason what is deemed a “fair” price tag on an environmental resource. The difficulty in quantifying an exact price on the environment has, at least to some degree, facilitated the over-consumption of some resources, (Porter 205). Take cod fishermen, for example. To the fishermen, the cod in the river are essentially “free,” a single fisherman can catch as much cod as he can one day and come back tomorrow to fish again. It is when all the fishermen come to the river that problems begin to arise. With many fishermen trying to obtain their maximum harvest, overfishing becomes a serious reality, (Calhoun 131). If continued, both the economic profitability of cod fishing and the cod themselves will be driven to extinction. This is the case with many “free” resources, including air and water. As a public utility around most of the world, the price of water is very little; it does not rise to account for growing scarcity or influence us to consume more carefully, (Porter 206). The perceived priceless natural resources are at risk simply because they are price-less and have no clear cost. With over-harvesting, the cost of losing a resource can become economically apparent, although measuring the environmental aftermath with dollar signs is difficult for even the most experienced economist.

     The question remains: is there effective policy to account for both the environment and the economy? The answer is controversial, complicated, and still under heated debate. Paul Gilding expresses that this path to balance will not be direct and smooth, but rather gradual and disruptive as the economy adjusts to environmental changes. He points out that the current materialist trend of rampant consumption as a foundation of our economy will undergo a radical restructuring. Society will eventually have to adapt to a zero-growth economy, focused more on the maximization of social welfare than profits, (Gilding 135). Throughout this process, Gilding argues that the appropriate environmental response will take effect by people increasingly demanding a better environment and businesses will respond accordingly to meet consumer demand. However, this pragmatic attitude departs from the original despondent message of The Great Disruption: the disruption of environmental change and economic action is advancing so quickly that even all our collaborative effort will be unable to stop it, (Gilding 102). Gilding believes the disruption is inevitable, but that it would be irresponsible not to be aware and active about the issue of climate change.

     Human society is accustomed to disruption. Countries have dealt with economic collapse, war, natural disasters, social change, and more and still remain in one piece. The resiliency of collaborative societies is greatly underestimated and is equipped to deal with these environmental and economic changes. Even so, the disruptions of Gilding’s predictions may not be as large as he claims. The popular global warming doomsday scenarios flooding oceans, erratic weather, and significant temperature increase are highly speculative at best. Since climatology is based on long-term forecasting, there is a significant delay between predictive events and their occurrence—decades even centuries must pass before some hypothesizes can be tested, (Calhoun 79). The evidence supporting catastrophic global warming is primarily due to predictions of computer models that have been grossly inaccurately in the past, (Williams 43). Overarching policy should be implemented to accommodate the most likely scenarios. Since predicting climate patterns is speculative at best, a moderate approach considering the average of reasonable estimate. This would safeguard against, policy that could prove detrimental in the economic long-term.

Around the world there are something like 500 million farming smallholdings that support some two billion people. These smallholdings are not just essential for the farmers themselves and their families but also for society as a whole because the food and other agricultural products that they contribute to the country, some of which can be used as exports.

However, smallholders tend to farm the land that is most marginal – that is, the land that is least attractive because of geographical or climatic reasons. Smallholders may once have farmed the more attractive pieces of land but have been forced off that land by force, market forces or otherwise the power of the wealthy. As a result, not only have smallholders had to be more resourceful and wise when husbanding their land but they also have most to fear from climate change. This is because climate change will, in most cases, cause the land to degrade gradually: good land will slowly become poor land over a period of time that might allow farmers to adapt their practices to new conditions; poor land will become unusable much more quickly and the smallholders and their families will become refugees.

Already, the crop losses and deaths of livestock have increased significantly and at a pace too rapid for most smallholders to adapt. One of the main approaches to trying to deal with the problem is to enhance the resilience of the smallholders and their farming efforts to make them better able to adapt. To do this, it is vital to pay attention to what the farmers themselves have to say: throughout modern history, we have witnessed numerous attempts of scientists and bureaucrats descending on agricultural areas and, no matter how well-meaning they may be, inflict top-down, technocratic solutions that nearly always fail. This is because it is very often the farmers themselves who understand the very specific conditions applying on their land and, as recent research has indicated, they know the various interactions between plants and animals – and many of those plants and animals are unknown to science.

Any attempt to increase resilience must, therefore, start with full and proper consultation with the farmers and with other important stakeholders. It must also be the case that solutions are allowed to vary over the course of space and time: that is, what is likely to work on one patch of land may not work so well or even at all on another piece of land even a few kilometres away. Secondly, solutions will change with respect to the seasons and with the need to manage rotation of crops and animals over one or more cycles of time. Again, the farmers themselves will have an important input into understanding this – however, farmers alone will not have all the answers and science and technology should not be ignored simply for the sake of maintaining the traditions of the past.

For more details, see this page from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Providing free and reliable internet access to all citizens has become a meaningful goal for many governments – although it is clearly more expensive for those countries with extensive rural areas and mountainous or otherwise difficult areas of terrain than others. The benefits of the networked economy are evident in many fields: people can for example most government or banking services online and this is more convenient and efficient than having to travel to the relevant offices and fill in paperwork there. Although there are certainly security issues involved in conducting business this way, there are security problems with all physical transactions and people can be educated to reduce their exposure to risk.

The networked economy also contributes to creativity and innovation in the workplace – there is plenty of evidence to show that it is repeated interaction with other people that stimulates new ideas and thoughts in people. Usually, this takes place in cities because they are places where people have no choice but to keep bumping into other people all the time and so have the opportunity to observe and react to different styles, opinions and approaches to daily issues. In other cases, governments try to foster this kind of interaction by encouraging firms to locate close to each other in industrial estates, organizing trade shows and so forth.

However, interactions can also take place online and these too can foster creativity. Other research indicates that idea and opinion formation takes places better when people are exposed to ideas that they do not already hold – in other words, just like staying in the same communities and not meeting other people leads to lack of change and innovation, so too does hanging around with people who have exactly the same opinion as you. So, exploring the virtual world may sometimes seem disconcerting but it does bring its benefits to the open mind.

It is plain that the networked economy will bring about changes to people’s consumption habits and, therefore, their demand for and use of energy. The more that interaction is moved online, the less need there will be of transportation and this represents progress in fighting climate change. It is not an unalloyed good because some of the network use will take place in cities where transportation might be walking and hence there will be health and social issues. However, it has also been reported that people who are more gregarious online are also more gregarious in the real world.