Climate Change and Industrial Production
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| Summer School on Global Sustainability |
Industrialization is shown as a time-specific and spatially heterogeneous process. The description of industrialization paths uses two concepts along a functional/temporal and a spatial dimension: Technology clus- ters, i.e., a set of interrelated technological, institutional and social innovations, drive particular (historical) periods of industrial output and productivity growth. A spatial taxonomy reflects the different degrees of development and intensiveness of industrialization among core, rim, and periphery.
In an inductive approach, industrial growth is described through the
prism of changes in technology clusters and the spatially heterogeneous
diffusion of industrialization on a global scale. "Industrialization paths"
are discussed on the basis of the USA, Western Europe, Russia and
Japan. The quantitative description focuses on macro-level indicators
of industrial output, and the evolution of the productivity of factor
inputs labor and energy. Energy intensiveness and carbon emissions
are used as metric to assess changes in the environmental impacts of
various industrialization paths, concluding that improvements in the
efficiency of factor input use are part of the inherent incentive structure
of industrial evolution. However, historical improvement rates will
have to be considerably accelerated to lower absolute levels of indus-
trial emissions.
Finally, the implications of industrial productivity growth and its dis-
tribution in the form of rising incomes (consumption) and free time (lei-
sure) are discussed inter alia from an environmental perspective.
Please review the following papers before lecture: