Yup. And I’ll be shocked if they meet that target. But moreover, emissions need to drop by 2030. Every time these plans come out, they shift the target date, kick the can further down the road. That’s why we’re not on target to hit the 1.5 degree rise that everyone swore up and down they’d make, back in 2015. At the time, they were talking about curbing emissions by 2025. Then 2030. 2035. Now it’s 2040.
This is the language of prophecy, not science. Climate change activists and politicians latch onto the newest results of buzzword bingo as if science isn’t an incremental process that takes decades, and then they make confident predictions. They might as well be declaring when the Rapture will happen.
Greening energy production will take a very long time, it will only slowly gain in efficiency, and every single one of those ‘green’ solutions has its own negative environmental impacts. Reduce usage. When possible—not ‘when convenient’, mind you, when possible—use mass transit. When the distance isn’t so much, and weather allows, ride a bike. Or give yourself an extra hour, and walk it. Turn off lights if you’re not in the room. Hell, keep doors closed and minimize how much of the house you need to heat. Turn off the cable box, ffs, don’t just turn off the TV.
And all that’s just a drop in the goddamned bucket. Get the trains onto electric power. Air travel and freight need to get hyperefficient (NASA and Boeing are working on a new wing design to reduce fuel use by 30%, so that’s a help, but it won’t be ready for a long time). Oceanic shipping needs to get more efficient—and we probably need to accept a much longer shipping time on most things.
Funny story: once upon a time, all oceanic travel was powered by renewables! Work’s being done to get back to that, though. It’s happening all the way from smaller, local routes to transoceanic container ships. Take a look at the credit on that last article’s header. That’s not a render. That’s a photo.
So work is being done… but it’s not cheap, and it’s not being done quickly. That smaller cargo ship they’re touting, Ceiba, carries 250 tons of cargo. Some of the big diesel container ships haul 165,000 tons. That’s a big difference. And it’s going to take a lot of time, and a lot of money, to make that change.
That’s true, it doesn’t. But wind is intermittent—that’s one of the drawbacks—and that’s one of the reasons the in-practice numbers for so-called ‘green hydrogen’ go back up: in order to be reliable, you have to supplement that wind power from someplace, and guess what that usually means.
As for hydroelectric… there are places where it’s definitely a solid choice. The Northeast, for example. Niagra isn’t going to have any problems generating power any time soon. Out west, though?
Lake Powell’s already at the ‘we may not be able to generate power soon’ point. Once that happens, once the turbines stop and the water’s only trickling out the gates, those shortages travel down the Colorado River pretty quick. Lake Mead’s already at record lows, despite heavy snow-fall. At current rates, the Hoover Dam stops generating power pretty much by 2030.
Including the power it currently sends to California, and partly upon which, I am absolutely positive this ‘ambitious new climate plan’ depends.
In addition to the power, the southwest needs to shut off the damned taps. agricultural water use rules haven’t changed in a long, long time, and they are no longer sufficient to maintain the water supply—if they ever were.
Getting through this is gonna take, at best, a massive amount of inconvenience. At worst… a massive amount of suffering, and death.