Re:The world is awful, the world is much better, the world c...
by tsimionescu on Thursday July 21, 2022 @07:08AM
(#32177939)
> While we could be doing better, we've made immense strides over the past ten years, to the point where we've already avoided the worst outcome
This is only perhaps true if you project the current progress into the future as if this is a foregone conclusion. That is dangerously wrong - most of what has been done to combat global warming is the table stakes, the things that its easy to do and should have either been done decades ago, or are simple economic shifts (transitioning some coal power to wind and solar).
But reaching net 0 emissions is going to be extremely hard, much harder than halving our past emissions. And we have to do that in the next 30-40 years to avoid 2 degrees of warming, which is already catastrophic.
To get to net 0, we would have to replace virtually all transportation in the world with BEVs (cars are easy to replace, planes, trucks and cargo ships almost impossible, and definitely not in 30 years).
We will need to produce at least twice as much electricity as today while closing virtually all coal and gas power plants (but we don't have anywhere near enough energy storage to run the whole grid off renewables, nor is there any realistic chance to do so in the next 30 years).
And finally, we will have to close down the vast majority of industrial animal farming pursuits, which supply much of the world's food.
There is no real chance that the current rate of improvement will lead anywhere close to curtailing emissions enough to avoid 2-3 degrees of warming. Plus, the appetite for these changes may well sour as the bigger impact ones will come to pass.
This is only perhaps true if you project the current progress into the future as if this is a foregone conclusion. That is dangerously wrong - most of what has been done to combat global warming is the table stakes, the things that its easy to do and should have either been done decades ago, or are simple economic shifts (transitioning some coal power to wind and solar).
But reaching net 0 emissions is going to be extremely hard, much harder than halving our past emissions. And we have to do that in the next 30-40 years to avoid 2 degrees of warming, which is already catastrophic.
To get to net 0, we would have to replace virtually all transportation in the world with BEVs (cars are easy to replace, planes, trucks and cargo ships almost impossible, and definitely not in 30 years).
We will need to produce at least twice as much electricity as today while closing virtually all coal and gas power plants (but we don't have anywhere near enough energy storage to run the whole grid off renewables, nor is there any realistic chance to do so in the next 30 years).
And finally, we will have to close down the vast majority of industrial animal farming pursuits, which supply much of the world's food.
There is no real chance that the current rate of improvement will lead anywhere close to curtailing emissions enough to avoid 2-3 degrees of warming. Plus, the appetite for these changes may well sour as the bigger impact ones will come to pass.