> Could we really build enough solar and wind at today's level of technology (assuming sufficient economic motivation) without also blowing through our CO2 budget?
A back of the envelope calculation suggests that the necessary construction efforts require the emission of a couple of Gt CO2e. For comparison, at the start of 2018 our CO2 budget was 420 Gt (now it's about 320 Gt).
The figure about the proportion of nuclear power is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption, the figure "140 years" from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium.
> Could we really build enough solar and wind at today's level of technology (assuming sufficient economic motivation) without also blowing through our CO2 budget?
A back of the envelope calculation suggests that the necessary construction efforts require the emission of a couple of Gt CO2e. For comparison, at the start of 2018 our CO2 budget was 420 Gt (now it's about 320 Gt).