"Zero carbon" is not a serious or viable goal, and the only politicians I'm aware of who are promising this are ones with big green constituencies that need to be mollified. Yes, they are lying, because their voters want what is impossible. If that's your voter base, then the politicians who get elected will be the ones who lie to you.

FYI, China is going to open 120 new coal plants this year, adding 100 million tons of coal capacity. It is already emitting more carbon than the Western world, and it's just getting going. There is no green movement there to placate, so they adopted efficency goals of reducing carbon emissions per unit of GDP. Primarily, they want to clean up the air, which means long term moving away from burning coal to generate power as well as cars that burn gasoline. But they are not willing to do this at the expense of economic growth - nor should they. They will reduce usage of coal once sufficient capacity for alternatives is in place, and not before. Nor will they stop doing things like flying planes or making plastics when there are no alternatives.

What is a viable goal is reducing the amount of carbon per dollar of GDP as more efficient processes are adopted, but it's not going to go to zero. As the reasonable costs of climate change (according to the latest IPCC report) have been estimated from 0.2% to 2% of global income, it makes little sense to cut GDP by 3% in order to save a reduction in 2%. So apart from those green constitutencies who are convinced the sky will turn red and the clouds will start burning, the rest of the world is not going to reduce carbon emissions at any cost. That's a non-starter.

That carbon/GDP ratio can however, fall quite a bit, for example with large scale adoption of nuclear power, so it's a bit puzzling why the same same absolutist groups also oppose nuclear power. I really wish they would join us pro-nuclear types. Similarly there seems to be a lot of opposition to things like hydrogen fuel, when that's the most likely replacement for planes and heavy trucks, due to its energy density. So really if we want more efficient use of energy, we should be investing in developing better energy sources rather than trying to convince the world to "change lifestyles". Who knows, maybe in 100 years fossil fuels will be looked at in the same way as burning wood for steam is today, but it's not going to happen by changing lifestyles, it will happen with technological breakthroughs.

I largely agree with what you said but:

>As the reasonable costs of climate change (according to the latest IPCC report) have been estimated from 0.2% to 2% of global income

That assumes we keep carbon below 450ppm and is only up to 2030. Also it only gets down to the bottom end of that range if you pick the most optimistic models.

It's easy to argue for ascetism for other people.

It's easy to stick you're head in the sand and ignore the problem.

Or we could just use nuclear and not have discomfort.

Nuclear won't help you fly across the Atlantic.

Sure it will. Split water, make hydrogen, burn it in gas turbines: https://www.cleansky.eu/sites/default/files/inline-files/202...

We have to line up a lot of things we haven't done before to make that work. Great in theory but the reality today is if I fly across the Atlantic it will create a ton of extra carbon in the atmosphere.

Out of all the things we do air travel looks like the least likely thing to be de-carbonised to me.

Do you actually think this will make a difference wrt to climate change when most of the carbon pollution in the new few decades will be coming from fast developing countries and China?

Carbon emissions are a problem caused by the rich, trying to cast the blame onto China is a red herring.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y?fbclid=Iw...

I wasn’t blaming anyone. I was just stating a fact. Americans consuming less energy is not going to prevent countries like China and India from consuming more energy coming from dirty sources such as coal. Americans consuming less material on the other hand can decrease carbon output in China but that will mostly like just be replaced by material consumption from the fast-developing nations.

Carbon emissions from India are 1.9 tons per capita, for China it is 7.38 per capita and America is 15.52 tons per capita. China would be lower still if it wasn't a factory for American consumer goods.

Looking at per capita is useless when those countries have a combined population of over 2 billion (~6x US population). Climate change and the Earth doesn’t care about per capita, it only cares about the total output of carbon. The reality is that American output has most likely peaked, while China and India will keep growing for decades to come.

Per-capita emissions are extremely important when you are trying to get the political will to make changes.