The Executive Secretary has made every effort to economize, as outlined in the preceding sections, guided by the firm intention not to request from Parties an increase of contributions in euro terms.

Some adaptation will occur naturally, as rising energy and other commodity prices generate incentives to economize or seek alternatives. But the un priced environmental externalities global warming and water depletion, for example will require serious attention, not myopic, reactive mindsets and approaches. nbsp

Efforts to economize on energy, storing it, and generating it by clean or low carbon methods deserve priority and the sort of commitment from governments that were accorded to the Manhattan Project (which created the atomic bomb) or the Apollo moon landing.

Some adaptation will occur naturally, as rising energy and other commodity prices generate incentives to economize or seek alternatives. But the un priced environmental externalities global warming and water depletion, for example will require serious attention, not myopic, reactive mindsets and approaches.

Education and values are the foundation of sound individual and, ultimately, collective choices. Without them, the incentives and policies that economists rightly argue are needed to increase energy efficiency, limit carbon emissions, economize on water usage, and much more will lack support and fail in the democratic decision making process.

The best way to reduce long term climate change is to reduce carbon emissions. There are at least three options shift to non carbon energy sources such as solar or nuclear energy capture and dispose of the carbon dioxide emitted at carbon based power plants economize on energy use, for example by shifting to hybrid automobiles and trucks.

These investments are needed in the short term to offset the decline in worldwide consumption spending that underlies the global recession. More importantly, they are needed in the long term, because a world crowded with 6.8 billion people (and rising) simply cannot sustain economic growth unless it adopts sustainable technologies that economize on scarce natural resources.

For example, the hydraulic model of aid the idea that if we simply pumped in more aid, better results would gush out ignores the fact that funds are often fungible. Even if aid is narrowly targeted at say, food or health, a government can simply economize on expenditures that it might have made anyway and redirect them elsewhere for example, to the military.

The benefits of information and communications technologies can be found in every area of human activity better farming using GPS and micro dosing of fertilizers precision manufacturing buildings that know how to economize on energy use and, of course, the transformative, distance erasing power of the Internet. Mobile broadband is already connecting even the most distant villages in rural Africa and India, thereby cutting down significantly on the need for travel.

By shifting to alternative energy sources, economizing on energy use, and capturing and safely storing the carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuels, global society can limit its emissions of carbon dioxide to prudent levels at an estimated cost of under 1 of global income. The changeover to a sustainable energy system will not come quickly, and will require new kinds of electrical power plants, new kinds of automobiles, and green buildings, which economize on energy use.