Hacia El Futuro: Energy, Economics And The Environment In 21st Century Mexico (advances In Global Change Research)

HACIA EL FUTURO ADVANCES IN GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH VOLUME 26 Editor-in-Chief Martin Beniston, Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, Switzerland Editorial Advisory Board B. Allen-Diaz, Department ESPM-Ecosystem Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A. R.S. Bradley, Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, U.S.A. W. Cramer, Department of Global Change and Natural Systems, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany. H.F. Diaz, Climate Diagnostics Center, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOAA, Boulder, CO, U.S.A. S. Erkman, Institute for Communication and Analysis of Science and Technology – ICAST, Geneva, Switzerland. R. García Herrera, Facultad de Físicas, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain M. Lal, Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India. U. Luterbacher, The Graduate Institute of International Studies, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. I. Noble, CRC for Greenhouse Accounting and Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. L. Tessier, Institut Mediterranéen d’Ecologie et Paléoécologie, Marseille, France. F. Toth, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria. M.M. Verstraete, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, EC Joint Research Centre, Ispra (VA), Italy. The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume. HACIA EL FUTURO Energy, Economics, and the Environment in 21st Century Mexico by Maria Eugenia Ibarrarán Universidad de las Américas - Puebla, Puebla, Mexico and Roy Boyd Ohio University, Athens, OH, U.S.A. Preface by Mario Molina Nobel Laureat in Chemistry, 1995 A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN-10 ISBN-13 ISBN-10 ISBN-13 1-4020-4770-3 (HB) 978-1-4020-4770-1 (HB) 1-4020-4771-1 (e-book) 978-1-4020-4771-8 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com Photograph, “Nightime” by Oscar Ruiz Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2006 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. To Karla, Sara, Sharon, Jerónimo and Gustavo PREFACE The past 25 years have witnessed an increasing worldwide concern over the issue of climate change and the specter of immense environmental and economic damage which would accompany unmitigated global warming trends. National governments in the industrialized world along with numerous multinational organizations have made a strong case for curbing the use of fossil fuels as an energy source, and agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol have come about largely due to their efforts. Many groups of researchers in both the natural and social sciences have made great strides in understanding this complicated issue. To date, however, the vast majority of c