Essentially an end to fossil-fuel combustion as far as is technologically feasible. A large-scale rollout of nuclear power, replacing literally everything, with enough capacity to cover the peaks. Large-scale electric vehicle rollout where feasible, large-scale synthetic-liquid fuel (derived from nuclear energy and atmospheric sources) rolled out where direct electric is infeasible (colder climates and aircraft).
There is no technical impediment to a large-scale nuclear rollout. We literally have unlimited power at our fingertips and we cannot find the will to use it. The only thing we need is the political will to solve the waste disposal problem - which is another of those problems that humanity refuses to solve until their house is burning down. Between reprocessing and our geologically-sound repositories we can easily solve the problem until we have cheap and reliable launch capability in 50-100 years (eg launch loop) and launch it into the sun. Arguably we have that now - the Atlas-V has done 106 consecutive successful launches now.
This is actually why I say that we need to solve energy consumption on a long-term basis as well. Nuclear is so good that we will literally poison our planet with waste heat unless we preemptively solve that problem. Depending on your figures the impact of waste heat is between 1% and 50% as significant as the greenhouse impact of fossil fuels. The number varies based on how much of the atmosphere you are considering venting the heat towards - a vast majority of our energy is dissipated within say 100 meters of the surface and a vast majority occurs in cities that make up say 1% of the total surface area.
We can certainly bring everyone up to a first-world standard of living but we can't continue indefinite population growth and indefinite per-capita increases in energy consumption. A 25-100x increase in total energy consumption can easily happen within a few decades if we continue to allow population to boom while also increasing per-capita consumption, both at exponential rates. Exponential growth happens fast.
Essentially an end to fossil-fuel combustion as far as is technologically feasible. A large-scale rollout of nuclear power, replacing literally everything, with enough capacity to cover the peaks. Large-scale electric vehicle rollout where feasible, large-scale synthetic-liquid fuel (derived from nuclear energy and atmospheric sources) rolled out where direct electric is infeasible (colder climates and aircraft).
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jrse/4/3/10.106...
There is no technical impediment to a large-scale nuclear rollout. We literally have unlimited power at our fingertips and we cannot find the will to use it. The only thing we need is the political will to solve the waste disposal problem - which is another of those problems that humanity refuses to solve until their house is burning down. Between reprocessing and our geologically-sound repositories we can easily solve the problem until we have cheap and reliable launch capability in 50-100 years (eg launch loop) and launch it into the sun. Arguably we have that now - the Atlas-V has done 106 consecutive successful launches now.
This is actually why I say that we need to solve energy consumption on a long-term basis as well. Nuclear is so good that we will literally poison our planet with waste heat unless we preemptively solve that problem. Depending on your figures the impact of waste heat is between 1% and 50% as significant as the greenhouse impact of fossil fuels. The number varies based on how much of the atmosphere you are considering venting the heat towards - a vast majority of our energy is dissipated within say 100 meters of the surface and a vast majority occurs in cities that make up say 1% of the total surface area.
We can certainly bring everyone up to a first-world standard of living but we can't continue indefinite population growth and indefinite per-capita increases in energy consumption. A 25-100x increase in total energy consumption can easily happen within a few decades if we continue to allow population to boom while also increasing per-capita consumption, both at exponential rates. Exponential growth happens fast.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.h...
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/01/waste-heat-as-a-contribu...