I’ve thought for over a decade that we need to plan for climate change as a certainty.
Even if the US and Europe made huge emission cuts, the rest of the world will not. I’m sure developing nations will stay poor if we ask nicely. “Hey Africa. We know about the three centuries of exploitation and colonialism but hey… could you do us a favor now and stay poor to fix the problem we mostly created? Thanks!”
There is no chance of this happening.
There’s only one realistic solution. If renewable plus storage or some other non carbon based source can actually be cheaper and easier to deploy than coal and gas, it might replace them. As it stands coal and gas remain the cheapest sources of power (though the gap has narrowed) in most regions. They are also easy to deploy with a global market in both generation equipment and fuel and a huge global talent pool of people who know how to do it.
Even if the US and Europe made huge emission cuts, the rest of the world will not. I’m sure developing nations will stay poor if we ask nicely. “Hey Africa. We know about the three centuries of exploitation and colonialism but hey… could you do us a favor now and stay poor to fix the problem we mostly created? Thanks!”
There is no chance of this happening.
There’s only one realistic solution. If renewable plus storage or some other non carbon based source can actually be cheaper and easier to deploy than coal and gas, it might replace them. As it stands coal and gas remain the cheapest sources of power (though the gap has narrowed) in most regions. They are also easy to deploy with a global market in both generation equipment and fuel and a huge global talent pool of people who know how to do it.