Reason for Optimism in the Shift to Low-Carbon Energy
As previously noted, our civilization has the technology to mitigate climate change and avert the catastrophe that’s coming our way if we don’t take action. The issue is scale; decarbonizing our energy and improving our land management will require political will.
Fortunately, tremendous headway is being made. In particular, here are 10 things that are happening around the globe that are occurring as you’re reading this post to get our civilization off its current collision course with disaster: improvements that include new building codes, huge fossil fuel divestments, reforestation, and commitments at the national and state/local levels in countries all over the world to phase out of coal, natural gas and oil in favor of renewables.
It’s inspiring; I hope you’ll check it out.
Craig,
I afraid that such pathetically twee, simplistic, juvenile and preachy propaganda achieves nothing but entertainment for an increasingly small group of “true believers”.
In 2006, Sen.Bernie Sauders confidently predicted his absolute belief that world oil prices in 2016 would be $300 dollars a barrel and America would be in deep economic depression. He predicted an unrelenting shortage of oil due to “Peak oil” beginning in 2014.
Ol’ Bernie was a huge admirer of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, calling Chavez a “truly great man, destined to lead his nation to prosperity and social justice”.
Hmmm…, I dunno, unlike you, I just can’t find this guy “inspiring” !
Meanwhile,Research from the Fraunhofer Organization of Applied Science claimed German energy supplied from solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric generation units rose 4.3 percent last year to produce 219 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity out of 542 TWh overall, this exceeded coal which produced about 38 percent of the German electricity in 2018.
However, analysis of the study revealed a large number of error, assumptions and miscalculations. More disturbing was the large growth of “Bio-mass” from Russian sourced wood chips.
The devastation of Russian forests and the pollution from burning wood chips, makes a mockery of the term “renewable”.
Germany, is one industrialized nation which needs to replace coal urgently. Germany’s remaing coal deposits are largely low quality, highly pollutant brown coal burned in ancient, previously mothballed, power plants. Germany had almost completely phased out brown coal production, and mining had largely ceased until the German government unwisely closed down Germany’s Nuclear power generation, claiming 100% renewable power was economic and achievable.
The result has been catastrophic both environmentally and economically!
Power prices in Germany have tripled, while the economy staggers under the burden of huge subsidies. Environmentally, instead of lowering emissions, German emissions have steadily increased. German emissions would be even higher if the government had not agreed to import more black coal from the USA, while not including emissions from imported power generation.