The Gulf states will have to get used to working without the massive supplies of hydrocarbons that they enjoy today, but that inevitable requirement meshes with a need to move quickly to efficient use of energy in order to reduce global warming. The global environment cannot put up with the casual burning of a precious resource which also pushes a lot of carbon into the atmosphere.
And this is something that every individual in the UAE can make their own responsibility and act on immediately. People and industry in the UAE use both water and energy in excess of what is actually needed, and this waste is a huge drain on the country's resources and damages the environment in the long-term.
In the middle of one of the UAE's modern cities, it is very easy to forget that the country is in the middle of one of the world's harshest desert environments, where water is at a premium and there are no rivers or freshwater lakes, and rain is minimal. The colossal expansion of the population over recent decades means that ground water cannot be a long-term part of the supply chain, which means that desalination is the only option. This very expensive way of producing fresh water demands a lot of gas, which should not be wasted.
The production of food is highly demanding of water and energy, and the substantial waste in all links of the food chain from supplier through the wholesaler and shops to our homes, means that valuable energy and water used in the production of the food is wasted.
Water, energy and food are all linked. Each of the three require the other two, so waste in one affects both the others. These means that any strategy to combat waste has to cover all three.
