At the moment, 6 of the world’s 10 largest companies (by revenue) are oil and gas companies. 2 are car companies, still mostly fossil fuels. And 1 is an electricity company, almost certainly mostly fossil fuels.pic.twitter.com/7pEoYIpaBD
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Maybe tomorrow some magic genie will produce a way of doing scalable direct air carbon capture at 10 cents per tonne of CO2. If so, we can be back down to pre-industrial CO2 levels in a flash, if we choose.
The pessimistic view is that we keep playing with fire, & sometimes we get lucky. But eventually humanity will damage ourselves in a way that makes the financial crisis look like a rounding error. Maybe climate is it. But even if not...
... capitalism & growth models have this as an inevitable side effect. They’re the real culprits.
The trouble with this point of view is that the alternatives seem far worse. Yes, you can go for a low-growth or communist model. I’m sure the Amish CO2 emissions are much lower than middle America. North Korea’s are 1.6 t / yr, one tenth of the US per capita, one third of global
But I don’t want to live in North Korea, & I suspect most of the “down with capitalism” crowd don’t either.
(Of course, they don’t think of it that way. But whenever I’ve dug down into concrete plans, they seem poorly thought through, relying on wishful thinking and “this time will be different”.)
Now, the optimistic point of view here - the opportunity! - is to try to find smart and wise alternatives that are much better than capitalism’s current incarnation. That really is an exciting opportunity.
That’s one reason I’m enthused by charter cities. It’s why I’m enthused by the ideas of Elinor Ostrom. And by the liberal radicalism (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3243656 … ) of @VitalikButerin @zhitzig @glenweyl, a clever way of funding public goods and attacking collective action problems
I don’t mean to say I think liberal radicalism etc are likely to solve climate change! I just mean: this kind of thinking & work seems tremendously important, & worth supporting more experimentation in this direction. Reinventing capitalism will sound ludicrous until its not.
(The more conservative approach - probably more likely to work, in this context - is to make a small modification capitalism by introducing something like a carbon tax. I may say more about that later, but I’ll leave it aside for now.)
3. What about nuclear? I haven’t said much about nuclear (fission). That’s because, while in principle it ought to be an enormous help, there’s a set of problems with it that I just don’t know much about how to solve.
Between 1950 and the 1980s nuclear grew rapidly, from 0 GW to more than 300 GW of installed capacity. And then it levelled off, in the aftermath of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. It’s only 400 GW today, and provides about 10% of world electricity.
The problems are interlocking: political unpopularity, security (country A doesn’t want country B to use nuclear power, because it can be used for weapons), cost (in part due to regulations, politics, & security), waste, and more.
Worse, there’s a cadre of people who like to shout loudly “nuclear is the only possible answer, and if you don’t think so you’re an idiot” (or the equivalent). These are not the people you want on your side in a battle for hearts and minds.
I don’t know how to solve the problems above. I believe, however, that they genuinely _are_ soluble, and what’s needed is the right kind of marketing and political and entrepreneurial geniuses (genii?).
Actually, that's a little silly to say ("genius" can be such a discouraging word!) But: hard work and imagination may well go a long way. I'd like to learn more about the best ideas people have here! How to solve the unpopularity? Regulatory? Security? And so on!
4. A bit of a time out. Looking back at the above, it’s been a blizzard of facts and figures and charts.
What I really want (& I think many other people want) is a compelling overall narrative arc. And I don’t quite see that. I know a lot of people are prescribing narrative arcs for climate (“X is the answer!”) But I must admit I haven't been very compelled by what I've seen.
Anyways, failing an overall solution, I believe what you need to do is bite off sizeable chunks of the problem, build up your understanding. That’s what I’ve been trying to do in this thread, at least for myself!
4. Negative emissions technologies are essential CO2 likely (ordinarily) takes centuries to be removed from the atmosphere. Even if we went to zero emissions tomorrow, it’d keep getting warmer due to climate inertia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_inertia …
My opinion is that we need inexpensive (or even profit-turning) scalable NETs, fast. Here’s a really great report surveying NETs: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25259/negative-emissions-technologies-and-reliable-sequestration-a-research-agenda … Click on “download pdf”, not “pay $100+ dollars”, and enjoy the amusing survey.pic.twitter.com/bYblqpnf0x
Good news: there’s a lot of them, many seem quite promising. If we can do scalable NET at $10 per tonne, then we can get to net zero emissions at about the same price as for the Clean Air Act (& quickly reduce it). http://cognitivemedium.com/dac-notes pic.twitter.com/1HPHeVb9Qy
The bad news: we don’t have cheap, scalable NETs :-) I do think this is a wonderful research opportunity, though, and my impression is that it’s very under-invested in.
5. Final thoughts: I’m repeatedly struck by the incredible size of the opportunity here. We’re going to make much better institutions, discover many amazing things, & create incredible companies.
I know some people don’t like the last, but think it’s good when groups of people profit from providing an enormous social good, like scalable clean energy, or carbon removal. That's capitalism operating as it should, to serve the social good. I hope it does here.
Of course, the flip side: there’s damage already being done, and likely to be incredible damage done.
We don’t yet have institutions or norms that enable us to deal with problems where inaction over the next few decades may cause much of an ice sheet to melt a century or two from now. I hope we can develop such institutions and norms!
Postscript: a thoughtful thread and essay on this question:https://twitter.com/embrein/status/1222574151572979712 …
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