In the earlier sections of this paper, we have tried to investigate two of the three constraints, namely the environmental and economic. The economic argument is closely linked to the demographics issue. The population of the world is expected to increase significantly during the 21st century. Most of this increase will occur in the developing nations. Currently, some of these nations lag behind the developed nations by more than an order of magnitude in both per capita energy consumption and per capita GNP. In order to improve the standard of living of the developing nations and provide for an increasing population, world energy production will have to increase greatly. If this energy is produced by fossil fuel combustion, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will increase, leading to global warming due to the greenhouse effect.
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