None of them are crazy, all are doable
COP21
was arguably one of the most epic meetings in the history of humanity. In a
spirit of mutual cooperation, the international community agreed to
finally begin to turn away from a fossil fuel-powered economy toward a clean,
sustainable future.
While it may be important to make
general commitments to cut CO2 and methane emissions, and to keep under a
certain temperature increase, what it comes down to in the end is making
practical changes in how we live our lives and run our societies.
There are four giant keys for
unlocking a safer future with a balanced and livable climate. To ignore any of
these is a great risk, and to implement a few of them in just a half-hearted
way or with too much delay would be tragic.
Clean Power
Our
homes, offices, government buildings, shops, and the majority of our electricity
needs need to be powered
with clean, renewable energy.
Some might say “clean energy” and include nuclear energy under that label, but
nuclear energy is tremendously expensive and slow to install. It’s also
relatively inflexible and comes with great health/safety risk. For any of those
reasons, I’d say it’s not a logical choice for our energy future, but combining
them all, no intelligent person should be taking it seriously.
Wind
power, solar
power, and hydropower
have been improving for years, and they are typically now the cheapest options
for electricity production — thus, they’re
growing fast,
even in some surprising
places.
But there are
some places where natural gas is competitive or old coal power plants remain
competitive, so governments and companies need to work to make renewable energy
an even more obvious choice via various mandates, incentives, and education
campaigns.
Clean
power is a must,
and we’re just lucky that people have been working
for decades to make solar and wind cost competitive, because they finally are!
Electrification
of transport
Another huge piece of the global
warming pollution pie comes from transportation emissions — specifically, the
burning of oil. To tackle global warming, we need tackle this beast. Luckily,
we again have an option that is cost-competitive and comes with other
advantages.
Like
with renewable energy, electric
vehicles will make our air cleaner, our water cleaner, and our
lives better.
All of the cancer, asthma, heart problems, and general suffering that come from
burning fossil fuels to push large boxes of metal and plastic forward can be
avoided.
Furthermore, we can skip annoying trips to the gas station (the large
majority of EV charging is done at home while the owners are sleeping, eating
dinner, chilling out, etc) and enjoy quieter,
smoother, funner drives.
Improved efficiency
Switching
to electric transport would result in a massive improvement in energy
efficiency since electric motors are about 3 to 4 times more efficient than
internal combustion engines (i.e., gas car engines). However, we still need to
make our energy use much
more efficient in order to meet the CO2 reduction targets we need to meet.
Even
clean energy doesn’t match greater efficiency when it comes to quickly cutting
CO2 emissions and generating new jobs. There’s a tremendous amount of potential
to more efficiently use energy, and this should be realized via our individual
initiative, government policies, and corporate commonsense.
Less meat & dairy
Among
these four areas of improvement, the diet side of things is probably the least
discussed among policymakers, business people, and organizations pushing for
strong global action to stop catastrophic global warming and climate change.
But it shouldn’t be ignored. Meat and dairy account for anywhere from about 18
percent to 51 percent
of global warming emissions,
depending on which study and assumptions you trust.
Aside
from production-side policies to lessen deforestation and livestock pollution,
I’m not sure how much governments can do on this front, but it’s certainly a
matter for them, corporations, and individuals to consider.