Re:Governments 'not on track' to cap temperatures at below 2...
by semi-extrinsic on Monday September 03, 2018 @11:56AM
(#17903246)
I would counter that CCS is a hard requirement. We're not going to stop producing cement, steel or aluminium anytime this century. Those are just a few manufacturing processes that have significant inherent CO2 emissions that won't go away even if 100% of worldwide electricity comes from renewables. The emissions come from the chemical processes themselves. These cases will undisputably need CCS.
For power generation, we have basically two solutions for large-scale baseload generation until fusion comes along: nuclear, and coal/gas with CCS. I would prefer we go with nuclear, but environmentalists seem unable to make the right choice between tuberculosis and lung cancer.
On the other hand, I definitely agree that 'infinite growth' is a huge problem. Even 'sustainable growth' is problematic in itself. We need to change to a zero-growth worldwide economy, which has extremely far reaching consequences. For instance, it means we can no longer rely on growth making it easy to pay off debts, neither as people nor as nation states. Interest rates all become a bit weird. It would mean the entire economic system needs to be changed.
But addressing the problem in our economic systems goes much further, and entails foregoing the idea of 'infinite growth' and the overconsumption that comes with it. In terms of climate change it means most focus should go into reduction of the CO2 we produce in the first place.