Recommended, go to Michael Bloomberg’s remarks starting at 56:00, followed by Jerry Brown. (fyi Brown gets interrupted by demonstrators)
Takeaway: Cities, states, corporations and communities were already doing most of the climate mitigation work in the US, now they are more than picking up the slack left by the irresponsible, and soon to be deposed, administration.
Both believe so much in climate change that they eat insects and live in a tent so as to not admit CO2, not for them the private jets, giant cars, many houses all 30,000 sq ft and better, and french restaurants, no sir it is tents and insects. I do wonder how they got to this confab and why do I see them going to the finest hotels and restaurants, must be to lecture the slime on how to live.
Actually the insects as a last resource for a hungry world is fading too. There are more and more reports of vastly reduced numbers of insects, and as a result, the thinning out of bird, frog, and other populations — the bottom of the pyramid is already starting to give way.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/12/25/us/00brownweb2/00brownweb2-master675.jpg
Jerry Brown’s private residence.
“keep it in the ground”, they don’t know what they are asking for, that will lead to our immediate collapse.
We are now totally dependent upon these TEMPORARY, FOSSIL RESOURCES, they grow our food, they make possible our transportation system they keep us warm, fed, clothed & on the job, without these resources, most of us will soon be DEAD.
Can “renewables” save us? of course NOT! They wouldn’t exist without OIL, COAL & NATURAL GAS, “keep it in the ground” also means an end to manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, home insulation, “modern” agriculture, transportation, plastics & most manufacturing & the almighty grid & the internet will be a thing of the past.
We will never “run out” of fossil resources but they will become too difficult & expensive to extract so what’s left will indeed get left in the ground.
We have consistantly refused to do the ONE THING that might have avoided our collapse, stop population growth when it had reached 1 billion humans, but instead we FED THAT GROWTH with temporary resources bringing us to the hopeless condition we have arrived at today, too many people, declining resources, deteriorating climate, dying oceans, polluted air, water, soil & food & still our numbers GROW, but not for much longer, we will never reach 8 billion humans.
Once you make a thermoplastic from oil (note: can also be made from agricultural products or algae), its completely reusable, ad-infinitum, rather like an aluminum can.
IF you have enough ENERGY anything is possible even making oil from plants however it takes more energy to produce that oil than what energy you can get back in return, it’s a loser!
Why can’t you believers in “renewables” comprehend that?
I would be as happy as a kid in a candy shop with a unlimited allowance if “renewables” could replace dirty, temporary oil however those “renewables” depend upon fossil resources to exist & those “renewables” produce NONE of the essential raw materials we now get from those fossil resources.
We need to recycle more of our plastics instead of dumping it into the ocean where it’s killing our sea life but even recycling plastic takes ENERGY & we will be very short of energy in the future because those “renewables” are also temporary.
I’m very sorry I can’t support your blind acceptance of “renewables” but only their source of energy is renewable, those high tech devices are not.
You cannot look at one country’s CO2 and GDP and learn anything about global CO2 and GDP. You have to START by looking at the world. We live in a world of massive global trade, with money and material and carbon crossing borders in vast quantities. We’ve outsourced our CO2-generating manufacturing to Asia and this skews the figures on “U.S. CO2”. Asia gets the blame for CO2 which should be paired with the GDP in the U.S. On the global stage, we’re only decarbonizing at a very slow rate, and that means CO2 per joule of energy generated. But in a GROWING economic world, as long as global growth continues, so will CO2 emissions, and therefore so will the exponential growth of atmospheric CO2, as we still see in the very latest Keeling data. FLAT level global CO2 emissions would still lead to straight upward sloping line growth of atmospheric CO2. That’s the math. ZERO anthropogenic CO2 emissions would lead to flat atmospheric CO2, as the CO2 soaked up by the oceans and some by land, would be filled back in by emissions from the melting permafrost, show the calculations of MacDougall et al 2013 and 2016. And flat level atmospheric CO2 still leads to rising temperatures due to the 0.58 W/m2 radiative imbalance we’ve imposed by past emissions.
Please Peter, don’t keep putting up these single-country figures and mislead people into thinking that they are saying what they seem to be saying. They’re just NOT.
It occurs to me, just randomly out of nowhere, that there are several fallacies that might be pushed in a discussion like this. Each involves denial of something crucial:
Ecological destruction is caused by the rich.
The richest 7-10% of people on Earth emit half the GHGs and cause similar proportions of other problems. The poorest 6 billion emit only about 20%, and the only place any significant population growth is still happening is among the poorest, who have virtually no effect on climate or most other global problems. Population growth rates have been slowing since the 60s, are now half what they were then, and population itself will probably peak by about 2050 (33 years from now) and then decline. We can help that by following the progressive agenda everywhere: guarantee political and economic equality; emphasize education and empowerment for all, especially women; ensure security in sickness, age and hard times; secure access to contraception and family planning.
Renewable power is the power of the present–and the future.
Clean safe renewable energy can and will power the world. Wind turbines and solar panels are already being built partly with renewable power. and the percentage is increasing in most places. The US lags behind, but aluminum is a major industry in Pacific Northwest and Iceland not because bauxite mines are there (they’re actually thousands of miles away) but because rock steady cheap renewable electricity is available–hydro in the PNW and geothermal in Iceland. Tesla and other companies including some in China are building megafactories powered by solar and wind to produce solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. The renewable percentage will grow there as it’s growing everywhere for every job. Recent discussions have been about whether renewables can provide 100% of what we need and how soon. Of course more and more people, institutions and studies are now showing that of course renewables can provide all of what we need.
Yet another study just out this week shows it again:
“The results of the study are revealing: A global electricity system fully based on renewable energy is feasible at every hour throughout the year and is more cost effective than the existing system…”
https://oilvoice.com/Press/10309/New-Study-100-Renewable-Electricity-Worldwide-is-Feasible-and-More-CostEffective-than-the-Existing-System-
The solution is political.
People obsessed with the individual, unable to see that we exist as a society, and eager to relieve corporations and rich people of their special responsibility for the crisis, often “fail to understand” that while individual effort is important for inspiration, experimentation and demonstration, integration of inner and outer lives, and more… only mass political action forcing radical policy changes will solve the climate and larger ecological crisis. Specifically, what we need is a climate mobilization. http://www.theclimatemobilization.org
“Forget shorter showers”
https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-showers/