"Other main targets include: – reduction of emissions from coal burning industries and vehicles2 – boost cleaner and more efficient use of coal – promote the use of electricity and natural gas in place of coal – support for wind, solar and bio power sectors; increase in proportion of clean energy – encourage the use of waste straw as a resource – reduction in-field burning – implementation of control measures to deal with air pollution
...
By 2020, he said, the intensity of water use per unit of GDP will fall by 23%, energy intensity by a further 15%, and carbon intensity by 18%."
What about U.S.? It's people saying "as long China and India get a pass... Even if the US disappeared off the face of the map, its still to late... so let it happen."
You're the problem. Even if the rest of the world disappeared of the map, U.S.'s carbon emissions and pollution still exceed world's capacity to absorb it. Do you know how much of the world's environment is scorched to produce raw resources to produce goods for consumption in the U.S.? You're not taking it seriously.
It's going to be the story of this century: the people least responsible for climate change are going to disproportionately suffer for it. Meanwhile those most responsible will demonize them for their efforts to survive it.
I feel the better arguement is that per capital these countries are lower polluters and we need to all strive to reduce pollution to an acceptable per-capita level. And as a global population need to look at how we lift everyone lifestyle while reducing environmental harm. This 'you had your turn polluting the world and now it's mine' lacks logic and will not solve the problem.
Except the better tech tends to be more expensive and less labor intensive. A country with a huge cheap labor force would handicap itself by not using the most cost effective means to grow their economy, negative externalities notwithstanding.
Or in other words - it explains it, but doesn't justify it. We as mankind can do better
Have an example? I thought it was a war in Syria.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-links-...
Sadly people in this part of the world seem to only see said events in either the rosy "Arab Spring", or some version of "Islam is fundamentally evil/unstable" sense.
Syrias civil war began after billions of dollars where somewhat clandestinely spent on fomenting violent revolution there - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawma...
Libyas security collapsed after its infrastructure, including its world class irrigation system was bombed out under the guise of implementing 'no fly zone'
No I am not the one making two sentence cryptic and insulting, dishonest accusations.
I'm done with this.
If we wont stop attacking people, we wont stop wrecking the environment.
Also, we have neither infrastructure for storing power at this level, nor would it be economically feasible.
Hydro and geo-thermal are better sources in this sense, but neither are abundant and have their own drawbacks.
'- promote the use of electricity and natural gas in place of coal' - Only valid if the electricity is produced by means other than burning fossil fuels, otherwise you are just moving the problem up the supply chain.
Same way with electric cars, if the electricity is still being produced by dirty means, it is not all that impressive a reduction in poluttion or emissions, it's just moving the problem up the chain.
Not trying to sound defeatist or anything, it's just not a complete solution, still seem like band aid attempts by themselves.
Technically feasible, yes, agreed. The simulations tell us this much, that at point T+x, we could have a green electricity grid, but you have to take into account the process of getting there and that means economics and politics. And there's a lot of half-measure that seem green, but just kick the can.
Ok, from the engineering side, the flexible, dispatchable sources will be required like I said, can't fully remove them. They can be hydro, which is clean and great, but it's not universally available and were it is, it's expensive to setup and tends to wreck local ecosystems. In most developing countries, the flexible source will remain what is already available most likely, at least in the short-medium term, and that is coal and gas. (this will be mostly for economic reasons)
... “renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the United States.” ... That's why the time frame is 30+ years and that's in the US. What about less developed countries ? What's the time frame there ?
What I'm saying is: we will get there eventually, we really need to, our survival as a race might well depend on it, but it's going to be one hell of a ride, it's going to take a while and it will occur at different paces in different places.
And that you need a combined approach in terms of policy as well: investments, direct grants or subsidies for large producers for new and existing renewable plants and transmission infrastructure / public-private partnership projects (depending on your countries economic preferences), incentivizing individuals to go green (ex: subsidies on solar panel purchases by homeowners in Germany, government backed buybacks of old cars, subsidies for electric cars), better environmental standards, incentives for green certifications and an actual independent third-party validation of the companies that receive/offer said certificates, increased power to government environmental agencies (don't overdue it, point is not to shrug Atlas through punitive measures, but to get them to work towards going green), tax-breaks for companies that can prove low-emission is an option, but would probably be a bureaucratic nightmare, carbon-tax and myriad of other tweaks and measures.
And the 'Free Market' doesn't like any of this. Politics and economics, not just the greatest engineering challenge we have undertaken to date.
Germany has had an interesting approach to solar, where they subsidized solar panels for homeowners. I think it is the smarter approach because you incentives individuals to go green, rather than trying to implement a top down solution.
And even so, we will need to keep power plants on call for redundancy and high load purposes.
There is a video about peak power usage in England which I found fascinating (though this is a rather unique case) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=slDAvewWfrA
And, the defeatist attitude that no one takes it seriously, lets just do nothing and hope it works out is dangerous. As far as I can tell, the island nations will be the first affected, not to mention harsher weather, more storms, followed by massive shortages of food and water. I wouldn't be surprised if that leads to more wars than funding research and innovation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru_National_Sola...
I vote for politicians that take this seriously. I try to discuss the issue rationally and calmly with skeptical friends. I am trying to get involved with a project doing research on nuclear fusion. Beyond that, I try not to think about the fact that I could be one of the last human generations. Walking around every day feeling like the axe is over the neck of our species, and we are too divisive, petty, greedy and apathetic to do anything is just heart-rending. I truly envy people who don't believe (or care) this is real.
Wait, what? Is there any serious prediction of global warming causing collapsing civilization? How would that happen? Hordes of starving Americans abandoning their jobs and storming Canada? We've had big famines before and they were localized to the countries they happened in. Sea level rise won't swamp many places. We've got Syria wrecked by war and civilization is doing just fine in Europe despite refugees.
Population explosion used to be going to cause collapsing civilization. So was nuclear war. Global warming is the panic of our generation. Something else we haven't thought of yet will surely be gripping people's fear 2 generations down the line.
Civilization overall will grind on regardless, but you've got to admit that just the Syria refugees alone threw a massive kink in European politics. A lot of the countries that are predicted to suffer the most from climate change already are fairly poor. So the question is how much could climate change contribute to political unrest?
I agree that it does no good to talk about climate change in very strongly apocalyptic terms. That's part of the issue in the US -- the largely politicized hype tends to frame this issue in almost quasi religious terms. Either you believe in an Impending Apocalyptic Doom That Will Kill Us All, or you believe in A Vast Global Conspiracy Scam Designed To Enrich Crooked Elitist Climate Scientists. While I think there's plenty of evidence for concern, I do think the evidence points more towards a slow creeping collection of issues more than any sort of mass apocalypse.
For instance, the state where I live (Florida) is fairly vulnerable to sea level rises. What this means is that any infrastructure with a 50 to 100 year horizon has to now account for the potential that sea level could be much higher in the future if you want to really be safe (see http://www.southeastfloridaclimatecompact.org/wp-content/upl...). I don't expect Florida to be wiped out by climate change related sea rise but consider how much of Florida civilization is by the sea, I certainly expect some pain points. For poorer countries with much less resources, the pain points might be a lot harsher.
I would be more worried about US & Europe - Germany is shutting down nuclear plants, opposition of nuclear is strong everywhere in Europe, US has been very reluctant to participate in climate deals and has a lot of climate-deniers in power.
China has built huge numbers of hydroelectric dams, in fact this region is almost certainly the unmatched world center for hydroelectricity. It is also one of if not the most ancient center of large scale hydro-engineering, due to Dujiangyan.[0]
16 years ago when I arrived, there were very few such dams, and all at smaller scale, so the pace of change has been great. (IMHO Beijing has done an OK / not terrible job of balancing these energy/"national security" requirements with ecological protection efforts.) Also, foreigners are often unaware that e-bikes are the dominant form of personal transport throughout China already. In terms of long distance transport, China's ever-expanding railways (eg. permafost-floating railway to Tibet!) carry more freight than any other country's network, and they are lending assistance to neighboring countries (Laos, Myanmar) on similar hydro-electric and rail infrastructure projects.
Given these observations, I find it ridiculous to suggest that China is not doing its part. However, I do question the wisdom of allowing so many of its citizens to buy cars.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dujiangyan_irrigation_system
It'd help if our governments didn't kept screwing up their maintenance, but the news from Belgium and Spain just don't provide much confidence.
Furthermore, if people didn't oppose new reactors as vehemently as they do, there would be less pressure to continue lifetime of the old ones
And considering that the first reactor was designed to work until 2005, it's only natural that more parts will start to fail until 2025.
Furthermore, if people didn't oppose new reactors as vehemently as they do, there would be less pressure to continue lifetime of the old ones.
You're just reinforcing my point. If a government can be pressured into running a nuclear plant beyond its safety limits because it refuses to take the popularity hit of telling its citizens to choose an alternative, then that government can't be trusted to run any nuclear plant at all.
That's a good point, yes, you are right - the correct action is to shutdown the plant as planned - and gain trust to build new ones by executing that plan.
Just because 100 people are dropping candy wrappers at the park doesn't make it okay for you to dump a bag of garbage.
Presumably you'll stop driving, give up home air con and electricity, never fly anywhere, etc. Because those things aren't related to your GDP production.
Morally, it matters who makes things. The countries with high GDP who are responsible for the current extra CO2 in the atmosphere could always (you know, in theoretical fantasy-land) help out to make sure others produce as efficiently but reap the benefits. Instead of using the argument you make to pull up the living-standard ladder behind them.
CO2 emissions per capita(metric tons): US 16.4 - 1.6 India [0]
I see numbers like this, and I am surprised that in 2016, in the face of evidence and danger, we still have arguments like I will not do anything because you didn't do enough according to me. Let it all burn down.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
It's not like American's are just sitting there burning coal for the fun of it. It's being used to make stuff.
> There is nothing we can do, as long China and India get a pass, 3.2 billion people in 2 country doing nothing.
This is what the OP said. I honestly don't get it, then why is India's (and China's) responsibility for climate change dragged in whenever the topic of climate change is brought up. Is it because, as you mentioned India has ~16 times less CO2 emissions (per capita, but still way less than US) and ~15 times less GDP?
Isn't there a fair responsibility to spearhead dealing with climate change problem when you are polluting more and have more resources to deal with the problem. While India and China, having their own problems are making efforts in this direction and US is still dealing with denial, conveniently.
Apart from a very few things (cement, steel, ammonia), producing things does not directly release any C02. What we need to do is stop burning fossil fuels to produce and consume energy. And that is already happening now. The biggest question is how fast can we make the transition and how much have we already fucked up.
You are right, the biggest question is how fast we can make the transition. In considering that question, you can't dismiss lifestyle changes (=current overproduction and overconsumption) as a tool a priori, and say that only options that don't affect lifestyle can be considered.
Consider the lifestyle changes done by a population during a war. A lot of the production and consumption today happens so that people have a workplace to go to, not because it's actually needed, as in a physical necessity.
(I am not sure what you mean by direct vs indirect emission or why it matters; but the primary purpose of reducing production would of course be to reduce energy use, because one is not able to switch over to green fast enough.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...
We need to apply system level thinking to this problem, what is a strategy that will lead to zero (acceptable) emissions? We need to focus 100% on that strategy. I believe lifestyle changes based on moral arguments are a distraction due to the following reasons:
1. Its completely unrealistic to change behaviour at that scale
2. Even if successful the effect is only a minor delay, not an actual solution. Any gains due to consumption reductions is more than offset by growth.
3. Focusing on such things may be counterproductive. First by creating opposition to the entire climate change agenda, telling people to change their way of life makes them oppose it any way they can, including denying the problem completely. Secondly we need to stimulate demand for zero emission technologies, reducing consumption is counterproductive to that.
The point about lifestyle changes wasn't moral BTW, point is they should not be dismissed if they buy time, in trying to make exponentially growing green energy overtake the exponentially growing problem with CO2 emissions. You are asserting such changes are unrealistic, in which case it is of course no point in arguing for them. (But if you look at WW2 and the oil crisis in the 70s there were large-scale lifestyle changes being made, once the crisis is easily visible and understandable.)
It seems like we need everything that can be thrown at the problem (and probably even then hopes are low). Do you believe any focus on reducing (or rather, stopping further increases of) energy consumption is actually hurting a move to clean energy?
Firstly, the number cited was ~10 times the CO2 output per capita, not ~16.
Secondly, it doesn't follow that GDP production in a primarily high tech, services, IP based economy should track the CO2 behavior of a different sort of economy. It's entirely possible that we're producing far and away more GDP and wasting CO2 production needlessly. (In fact, out GDP multiplier is 1.6 times higher than our CO2 multiplier, hinting that the two are at least partially decoupled.)
Google tells me 6.7M people work in tech out of 127M people with a full time job. Roughly 4%? Sure, the GDP per worker is higher, but suffice to say most of the GDP output of the US isn't due to sexy new low CO2 jobs.
Edit: Tech is ~7% of US GDP.
Similarly, industry-volume-for-industry-volume, the US should be more efficient in production, meaning that it should use lower CO2 even with the same level of industry.
Which is what we see: the US does use less CO2 to produce more GDP, precisely contrary to what the argument supposes (that they're exactly correlated).
I'm not saying that the US does make poor use of its CO2 emissions, merely that the argument I was responding to failed to show either direction -- the argument it made was fundamentally unrelated.
Ed: To put math on it -- the US is somewhere between about as efficient as India and less efficient than India, depending on how exactly that 40% aligns with actual CO2 production and how closely that 15% aligns with CO2 production. In the case of the 40%, the US is within rounding of not wasteful. In the case of 50%, the US is somewhat less efficient and probably is wasting CO2 production.
The problem with your analysis is that a) it was simply wrong about the numbers, and had a 1:1 CO2:GDP relationship, when the numbers don't bear that out (and hence didn't account for my objection) and b) it supposes a fact about comparing CO2 production to GDP that isn't true, because the composition of economies varies substantially.
I wasn't saying you were wrong. I was saying your argument was bullshit.
That is a sale that cannot be made. It looks like a transfer of (mythical) carbon credits from the US to other nations.
Do you have any number to show that developed nations cannot put a dent on global warming? Whatever I could gather in 5 minutes points otherwise [1]. Even if you believe so, they can still help by: (i) Using their technical expertise and money in helping developing countries develop and deploy green technology. (ii) They are the consumers of most of the manufacturing output. They can set stricter rules on ecological impact of produced goods. They can set local laws that will not allow companies to buy from polluting industries.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...