Sustainability
Sustainability
Advances in modern medicine, healthcare and nutrition mean that life expectancy at birth has doubled during the last century.
One hundred years ago, the average life expectancy at birth was 46.4 years for men and 52.5 years for women. Nowadays, a newborn boy spends an average of 81.7 years on earth, while girls can even expect a life that lasts 87.8 years.
Recent years have been among the warmest on record. Research suggests that growing concentrations of greenhouse gases, which absorb solar radiation and warm the atmosphere, has influenced temperatures. The same research also suggests that many changes in atmospheric gas are human-induced.
The demographic influence appears primarily in three areas:
- Contributions related to industrial production and energy consumption lead to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use.
- Land-use changes, such as deforestation, affect the exchange of carbon dioxide between the Earth and the atmosphere.
- Agricultural processes, such as paddy-rice cultivation and livestock production, are responsible for greenhouse gas releases into the atmosphere, especially methane.
According to one estimate, population growth will account for 35 percent of the global increase in CO2 emissions between 1985 and 2100 and 48 percent of the increase in developing nations during that period.
Development of sustainable production and consumption processes are central to tackling these issues.
These graphs represent our global consumption patterns of renewable and non-renewable energy sources. They highlight increasingly unsustainable consumption trends over the last 25 years across non-renewable (fossil fuel) sources.
World consumption
Million tonnes oil equivalent
World primary energy consumption fell by 1,1% in 2009, the first decline since 1982. Consumption was weaker than average in all regions. While oil remains the leading fuel (accounting for 34,8% of global primary energy consumption), it continues to lose market share. Coal's share of global energy consumption was the highest since 1970.
Regional consumption pattern 2009
Percentage
Oil remains the world's dominant fuel, although it has lost market share over the past decade - globally and in every region. Natural gas has the leading market share in Europe and Eurasia, while coal is the dominant fuel in Asia Pacific. Regionally, oil and natural gas have the highest market shares in the Middle East; coal in Asia Pacific; and nuclear and hdyro in Europe and Eurasia.
Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2010
