Demographic trends and climate change will be two important themes of the 21st century. Both areas have been researched intensively, yet relatively little attention has been paid to the relationship between them. This book aims to describe that relationship.

The book is divided into two parts. In Part I, we discuss the climate outlook, demographic prospects, and economic perspectives on population, development, and the environment. These chapters take as starting points existing reviews of each field: the latest assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; Bruce et al., 1996; Houghton et al., 1996.; Watson et al., 1996); the documentation for the global population projections of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA; Lutz, 1996); and a chapter on economics, demography, and the environment from an assessment of the social scientific aspects of climate change (Rayner and Malone, 1998). In Part II we analyze three major links between population and climate change: the role of population growth and structure in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the effect of population growth and structure on the resilience of societies to the expected impacts of global warming, and the implications of global warming for population-related policies.

Chapter 1 reviews the natural science aspects of climate change and describes how the Earth's natural greenhouse effect is being enhanced by emissions of carbon dioxide and other GHGs originating from human activities – principally the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. In the absence of restrictive policies, continued population growth and increases in economic output are expected to drive emission rates higher in the future. How much and how fast climate will change as a result are uncertain.